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5.0étoiles sur 5
A Great Underappreciated Novel, Avril 30 2000
This novel, in its different way, is as great or greater than the author's most famous novel, The Little Big Man. It is a shame that it is out of print, and I hope this will be rectified soon.Reinhart in Love is the second in a series of novels about Carlo Reinhart, Berger's Everyman. The first novel in the series was Crazy in Berlin, Vital Parts followed RIL, and the last, thus far, is Reinhart's Women. They are all good in their way, Vital Parts almost on the level of this one There is no more fuller realized character in American fiction than Reinhart. A good man with strengths and flaws, Reinhart is easy to identify with. RIL begins in 1946 with Reinhart returning from Germany to his hometown in Indiana, a blond, overweight, young man of 22 years in the throes of some real anomie. It follows his adventures in readjusting to civilian life, as he gets a job as a real estate agent with one Claude Humbold, a truly great comic creation--the satire of the go-getting salesmen, a Music Man without the music but with more outrageous humor, is tempered by real sympathy and affection for the type. Reinhart also gets married, his wife and her father are mindboggling, goes to college, drops out, makes friends with a Negro, Splendor Mainwaring (the episodes where Reinhart goes to Splendor's house for dinner, making the acquaintence of Splendor's father as that man is working an insurance scam by setting an abandoned car of fire, and where he substitutes for Splendor at a motivational type of meeting,in the disguise of Dr. Goodykuntz, a sort of Ronco Chopra, are comic gems of the highest order), ultimately disgraces himself by letting himself be duped by Humbold and some corrupt pols in a shady business deal, and heads out on the highway to make amends by committing suicide, meeting another great subsidiary comic character, Homer T. Blesserhart. Reinhart is a great, full, rounded character. Sensitive, intelligent, yet not above fooling himself and acting dishonestly sometimes--usually in minor ways. His milquetoast father with hidden strenghts, his most unmaternal mother, his pushy, conniving wife, her self-important drunken father, Splendor, the Maker, Fedder--all varopis comic creation of the first order that enrich the book and instruct Carlo in the way of the world. Reinhart is not a naif, but is a man who genuinely likes people and believes that they can and will rise to their best. And believes that so will he. A lovely man, a great book. Read it slow, savoring the slightly cockeyed perambulating narrative style, and appreciating the rich characters and comic invention.
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