RELATIVES AND OTHER SABOTEURS: Review

• Published in: The New York times 1990
• Main Authors: culture., DEBORAH MASON, Deborah Mason, a former editor at Vogue, often writes about fiction and
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Elder, Deborah; MASON, DEBORAH; Spilman, Richard
• ISSN: 0362-4331

For the scrupulous middle Americans in ''Hot Fudge,'' [Richard Spilman]'s first collection of stories, keeping a low profile has the authority of a chivalric code; covering one's tail is the stuff of heroism. The narrator of ''Eagles,'' whom Mr. Spilman pointedly leaves unnamed, is the president of a small Seattle company that manufactures drill bits for oil rigs. He offers his version of how he has worked his way up: ''I figured out what the fellow before me had done and kept on doing it. . . . I never ask myself if I'm qualified or if I know what the hell I'm doing. Those questions make you stop, and in this world, if you stop, somebody behind you is going to flatten [you] . I've taken what's come to hand and changed when the rules changed. The only question I've ever asked is, 'Does it work?' '' Many of Mr. Spilman's characters, like that narrator, grab early on for the explanation of the universe that best mirrors their own compulsions - sometimes it's God, sometimes their own obsessive version of honor or duty - and then cling to it with quiet fanaticism. In exchange for bending their lives to this terrible will, they receive the shelter of tidy, airtight certainty that explains away anything that doesn't fit and rules out anything they can't see with their own eyes. ''Once I had subordinates, I couldn't afford to have daydreams,'' says the man in ''Eagles.'' ''I told myself, 'No more.' And they stopped, just like that.'' The primary saboteur of [Deborah Elder]'s tidy universe is Granny Frisch, ''with eyes that swam in the thickness of her glasses, hands tugging at her dress as if she were testing rope.'' Even as she sits ''rocking and whispering to herself,'' Granny Frisch luxuriates in a rich underground life of lyrical memories. But as Deborah steps up her campaign to put Granny in a nursing home and begins to talk about her as if she weren't there, even that fragile world begins to slip away: ''Slowly, as if it wasn't their fault but hers, they'd stolen the sound of the leaves and they'd taken the fields that stretched out for miles - so that her mind wandered in silence like a lonely dog.''