THE WRECKAGE OF AGATHON

Mad, raving old men with elegant pasts can make lunacy worth listening to—like a Shakespearean king or Mr. Gardner's Agathon, a self-styled seer holding forth at the time of the ascendance of Sparta. Again as in his Resurrection (1966) Mr. Gardner is concerned with rummaging among the meatier matters of human existence—the nature of reality, the relation of the individual to the scheme of things, the meaning of it all. His philosopher is rimey old Agathon orating to his likable, despairing, unstrung young disciple, Demodokos, who more or less against his will had followed his master into prison. In a kind of suspension amid the rats and refuse (one never learns the exact nature of his crime) the old man, with cheerful obscenities, flashes of brilliant wit and dreams, remembers and instructs his reluctant pupil. Before his assumed "idiocy" Agathon had stumbled through a life of some deceit, the love of two women, cruelty and betrayal. In repressive Sparta he had listened to the capricious wisdom of Solon and had been an indifferent adviser to the Spartan ruler Lykourgos. But the deaths of friends, wars and the warrior mentality had awakened him to the "monstrous foolishness of human beings," "the creative destruction" which is the law of the universe; and his own "Destiny"—in rags, filth and ancient antics—is simply to say "no." After a "rescue" and Agathon's death Demodokos begins to understand that, as he had said earlier, "People make too much of hate" Although distended with cerebration, the narrative offers some fine flights of inventive garrulity. Impressive thoughts on important concerns, but not always succeeding on fictional terms.