THE LAST OF LAZARUS

A satiric, controversial chronicle of despair (with more to it than his last book- The Shore Dimly Seen -1963), some scenes of shock, and nausea, this damns the vagaries of both the flesh and intellect. Lazarus, alias Paul Webster, is the victim of his body and civilization run amok. He is raised from the dead in a bed at the Foundation where he had willed his dying self to this anonymous institution. From his bed Webster remembers repellent physical humiliations (he had been fired as a professor because he had unwittingly wiped his brow with his dirty underwear, at a faculty reception; he had lost his wife; etc.). There was Harry, in a condemned building, electrocuted on the toilet. And Suskind, the Chinese Jew who analyzed the Junk of civilization. Webster finally tries, to escape the(Foundation, after knocking out au ""Institute"" spy in the mortuary. And so it goes through endless subsequent deaths and revivals.... The book has a certain ghoulish humor but none of the incidents are gratuitous. The angered protests against present and everpresent fears come through. Though they are occasionally predictable, the book demands reaction.