THE KLOOCHMAN

Some people find it in Israel, others in the Archipelago, still others in Venice, Nantucket, New York or Alexandria. For young Jim Carondelet, it's Fairbanks, Alaska, under the midnight sun. He leaves Fresno, California and his beautiful, ""fluffy,"" pregnant Frieda on a grant. He finds life organic, truth dynamic, and what it's all about in the arms of a tubercular Irish-Eskimo ""Klooch"" named Nomi Mountain. Crazy `bout the Klooch, manifestly so about four times on each page, he tries to get her to a clinic. She refuses. She's had it with American clinics and what they represent. To Jim, the phlegmy, scarred, quite ugly whore Nomi is ""the active and the passive, the Yang and Yin."" She is everything that he is not. She talks funny (""They say me old man was Irish. Me mother was a queen."") but she is wise (""You can't owe me anything. You can't pay for what I have. I don't give a damn. I am proud of myself.""). Jim is tempted to stay in Fairbanks, but Nomi dies. He returns to ""fluffy Frieda"" a better man. Another ""where it's at"" novel that ends up nowhere at all.