Word: algonquin
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WASHINGTON-In Algonquin Peace City people are afraid. Mayday leaders are afraid that internal disputes may destroy the sense of community they are trying to build. They are afraid that the government may be trying to trap them in their campground. They are afraid of a massive influx of people looking for another Woodstock or a chance to trash...
...comic novelist. In MF, Burgess takes off from a Levi-Strauss contention that a universal connection exists between answering conundrums and committing incest. According to this view, it was not by chance that Oedipus' unwitting incest occurred after he solved the riddle of the Sphinx. Among the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes, there is a legend of brother-and-sister love in which riddles are posed by talking owls. In a 1967 essay, Burgess marvels at this transcultural yoking. In MF, the old Algonquin yarn is the mother of one of his richest comic inventions...
Burgess leaves a plethora of clues as to his abstruse purposes-most of them in multilingual hints and guesses. The story starts in Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel. The man who encouraged Miles' interest in Sib Legeru, for instance, is one Professor Keteki-Sanskrit for riddle. While killing time with TV in his hotel room, Miles watches an old movie with Death and Transfiguration (by Richard Strauss) on the sound track...
Even for readers who have never read Levi-Strauss and think Algonquin legends are about Dorothy Parker, MF still works as a comic novel. It is not Burgess's best book because it is rather too schematic. The effort of dragging his mythic story into the 20th century has left the author with too little chance to flesh out his hero. Burgess is better remembered for characters like Enderby -decent, quirky men weathering the infirmities of the body and the indignities of the soul with awkward gallantry. By contrast, Miles Faber is a disappointment -nutty, knowledgeable, but finally...
Within minutes, he is sprinting to the Algonquin, where he table-hops counterclockwise, pausing for quick chats with Norman Mailer and Bruce Catton. Lyons, who has a law degree from St. John's University (it was Sylvia who talked him into giving up law for newspapering), stops to say hello to a judge or two. But his eyes keep flicking ahead...