Agatite by Clay Reynolds (review)

Reviews 239 gullible objects of exploitation, or wildly insane murderers reminiscent of the savages bloodying the screens of John Wayne movies. While the intent of the author may have been far from the resulting stereotyping, it nevertheless remains stereotyping with a thin veneer of humor that as often as not falls flat. While Stewart’s earlier novel, The Tenth Virgin, focused much of this kind of narrative stereotyping on polygamous cults, the present book “exposes” mainstream Mormonism as blatantly and obsessively materialistic and manip­ ulative of its members, a kind of religious mafia in the West where the over­ throw of the godfather-like patriarchal prophet propels the narrative forward. Set alternately in the concrete headquarters of the church in Salt Lake City, and among the redrock canyons of southern Utah, Zarahemla focuses on the attempt Gabe Utley makes to piece together and make sense of two potentially related events, his cousin Parley’s supposed kidnapping of the Prophet after a revelation from an angel, and the announcement of the death and subse­ quent burial of that same Prophet. While a quick overview of the basic plot might seem promising to mystery buffs with a penchant for the bizarre, the promise remains unfulfilled in a narrative that too often lacks any real depth of characterization or subtlety of developing action. The real problem with the book lies, though, in what the reviews of his first novel reveal: that those unfamiliar with both the Mormon church and NativeAmericans will read this not as fantasy, but as ethnographic data couched in fictional form. While those in Salt Lake City might be able to sort through the stereotyped images, pulling out what they consider relevant and accurate descriptions of Mormons and Indians, far too many readers will buy into those stereotypes and agree with an early reviewer of this volume for “Publisher’s Weekly” who writes: “Stewart’s depiction of Salt Lake City and the Mormon religion and culture is masterly.” MARGARET K. BRADY University of Utah Agatite. By Clay Reynolds. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. 374 pages, $17.95.) Agatite, like agate for which it is named, is a many-layered composition. It is a mystery about a grotesque hanging in a deserted outhouse; it is a Western with a good sheriff, some bad guys, a drifter, seductive women, a bank robbery, and a shoot-out in the streets; it is a story about decadence in a West Texas town; and it is a story about retribution. Reynolds’ sense of place makes real the dusty, intolerably hot setting, with its blasts of scorching winds. Yet, more than setting, the town itself— 240 Western American Literature Agatite—is the catalyst for events one would consider absurd, even Gothic, were it not true that things of the sort do happen in that part of America so recently removed from the frontier. The townspeople have seen Agatite erode and wondered what power, what evil caused their town to die. They fear that someday something “will visit them in a horrible way,” their premonitions aggravated by “their preachers’ favorite texts from Revelations.” But they never understand that they are the guilty ones upon whom retribution will fall nor do they recognize that the uselessness of their lives has left the way open to the beast of the Apocalypse. Roy Breedlove had left home in 1966 to find the good life denied him by Agatite. Chapter by chapter, he drifts through time, like Yeats’beast in “The Second Coming,” ever slouching homeward. Parallel to this story is Sheriff Abie’s attempt to solve the mystery of the dead girl in the outhouse, his actions always placed in August of the Present. The reader’s anxiety rises as Fate moves the players into position for the showdown. Altogether the novel has the impact of rock video with rapid-fire crash­ ing, clashing scenes of violence leaving blood, mutilation, and death in the wake. But Reynolds, evidently aware of the saturation point of his audience, tempers shock with black humor. Readers will doubtless wait expectantly for the coming of further tales from Clay Reynolds. ERNESTINE P. SEWELL Commerce, Texas Demon Box. By Ken Kesey. (New York: Viking...