ALP.

By William R. Hjortsberg '62. NewYork: Simon & Schuster, 1969. 157 pp.$4.95.

High in the Swiss Alps stands the Gasthaus zum Schwarzen Schwein, owned and operated by Max and Felix Henker. The major attraction for tourists at the Gasthaus is a five-franc telescopic view of the north face of the Juggernaut, whereon yet hangs the body of Willi Henker, legendary climber and father of Max and Felix, strangled by his own rope years ago in a pioneering attempt to scale the forbidding mountain. In the air the tinkle of cow-bells mingles with the jingle of cash-registers and the sighing of the wind portending avalanche.

This first novel's pastoral bedlam is populated by characters such as Frau Gernrich, a decaying witch; farmer Strueli, who copulates with his artificially-inseminated cows to keep them contented; Babs and Howard Cooper, American newlyweds; Tom Horn and Bill Staggs, young American mountaineers; Heidi and Gretel, Max's dotty Swiss daughters; Herr Krepps of the Alpine Safety League, who sports ladies' unmentionables and a false mustache of pubic hair; and a nameless dwarf who feeds upon the bodies of lost travelers, including two nuns.

Hjorstberg winds them all up and sets them to caroming off each other in a series of comic fragments like so many manic music-box figurines. The results sometimes disappoint: Hjorstberg too often rests satisfied with the easy laugh of the sick joke; yet some scenes attack the nerves with the venom of true black comedy. Some of the writing seems awkward, as when Babs sheds "a large, latemodel tear"; but other lines are nearly perfect, such as Strueli's explanation of his method with the livestock —"I take them ten a day before each calfing season. It's worse than mowing hay."

Eventually and imperceptibly the comedy takes a serious turn. The shadow of World War darkens the landscape: the spotlight with which Max lights up his dangling father's tragic heroism for the evening's paying guests is a relic of the Berlin blackout. Europe and America somehow seem to become characters as demented as the rest: Felix is impelled to repeat and surpass his father's climb by the dim-witted sentimental urgings of his new American mistress, Babs Cooper; but the young American mountaineers are defeated in their similar attempt by the effects of some aphrodisiac Marzipan cookies cooked up by Gretel and Heidi, who chant hopefully "Broadway... Sunset Boulevard... cha cha cha." Only gradually does one perceive that Hjorstberg's funny fragments are jigsawed to make a grim puzzle. He has not smoothed all the rough edges, and the completed picture remains still somewhat puzzling; but the pieces seem worth the effort involved in putting them togeth

Mr. Kane is an Instructor in English atDartmouth.