WAKING SLOW

Mr. Mewshaw's Man in Motion (1970) this time appears as recently orphaned, college drop-out Carter White, and he's still straining for some sort of status while mostly back-peddling. Because he feels death-ridden and rootless since the death of both parents, Carter decides to help pregnant Elaine, whose abortion plans he put down becuase he is Catholic although the baby is not his. The two travel to Los Angeles and Carter flounders until shifty entrepreneur Eddie Brown (who handles placement problems) finds him an L.A. image: "". . . your trouble isn't that you're not good enough. It's that you're nothing."" Carter does land a job but subterfuges involving Eddie and a vicious security police thug, plus Elaine's growing ambivalence about the baby, crack their protective shell. At last Elaine has the baby and leaves Carter for her mother. Carter, after a fight and flight, discovers, miraculously, that he's still entire. Mewshaw settles for a string of mini-scenes, with his caricatures stronger than characters (Elaine is only dimly seen out of bed) but the author has a caustic, often hilarious, sense of farce cum psychical pratfalls so that the reader can enjoy the motion.