The Other Hand Clapping

Larry, a student of Zen who is dealing with a difficult phase of enlightenment, is suddenly confronted with his wife's possible infidelity

For no discernible reason, except possibly the banal search for "real identity," bookstore owner Larry, the 37-year-old protagonist here, enters the life of Zen meditation with a vengeance. Obsessed by the Zen mystique, he virtually abandons all else, including his ravishing wife Eleanor, an aspiring actress. He becomes "quietistic in bed," moving from "shared eroticism into solitary meditation," and from that inert state into absolute celibacy, a condition Eleanor doesn't much care for. Suddenly evidence of her infidelity mounts and along with it Larry's jealousy. But wait: Is it fact or Zen hallucination? Does Eleanor actually leave Larry and move in with a rich mobster who can advance her theatrical career, or is it all a ruse, an exercise in theater? What was meant as enigma and mystery soon dissolves into trickery, a sequence of puzzles within puzzles. Some signs suggest that Larry will kick Zen and return to sanity and the Scrabble games of the couple's good old days. Vassi has a considerable underground reputation as an "erotic" writer established over a dozen such novels. In this one, an attempted departure from that mode, his control of a tautly told tale slips badly and ends in sheer silliness.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.