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By Root 4094 0

because he finds such an ambience uniquely cheerful. He is so determined that when he finally discovers the yellow-roomed house of one Dora Emmison, he proceeds to ply her with drink and thus cause her to die in an automobile accident—whereupon he buys the house and is happy for a while. Then his wife, Marietta, repaints the house pink and his cafard returns. At this point, the reader is perhaps too dumbfounded to wonder why the man doesn't simply buy a can of yellow paint. John Leonard, in his generous critique of the novel, suggested that Hammer “isn't intended to be believable” because he is “an aspect or fantasy of Nailles's mind … an Other fashioned from anarchic depths, a creature of repressed libidinal ferocity.” It may be so; one pictures Cheever nodding his head and wondering if that's what he meant after all. Indeed, it would explain just about everything, if not for the consummate banality of Nailles's mind: how could such a man begin to imagine a quest for yellow walls, a father who models for caryatids, the whole fantastic rigmarole?

As for Hammer's motive in attempting to murder Tony Nailles—it seems wholly random, contradictory, and yes, perfunctory. At first Hammer appears to be motivated by his mother's manifesto condemning the “spiritual poverty” of American life; exiled in Kitzbühel, the woman explains why she refrains from returning to her homeland: “ ‘I would settle in some place like Bullet Park. I would buy a house. I would be very inconspicuous. … I would single out as an example some young man, preferably an advertising executive … a good example of a life lived without any genuine emotion or value. … I would crucify him on the door of Christ's Church,’ she said passionately. ‘Nothing less than a crucifixion will wake the world.’ “ When Hammer hears this, he sensibly concludes that his mother is “a crazy old woman;” but later, for whatever reason (because of his rage over the “faggot” on the beach?), he decides his mother's plan is “sound” and proceeds to carry it out to a nicety, hoping eventually to murder Nailles, whose photograph he accidentally finds in a dental journal. Why Nailles? Because he's the very sort of vapid ad-man his mother had specified? Because of his idiotic commercials for Spang? Not at all: “It was infantile to rail at this sort of thing, Hammer thought. It had been the national fare for twenty-five years and it was not likely to improve. … Hammer had chosen the victim for his excellence.” What excellence? Nailles's happy home life? The author doesn't say, nor does he say why Hammer decides (in a one-sentence afterthought) to murder Tony instead.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the novel is the last few pages, where Nailles saves his son's life. Years later Cheever wrote in his journal that the scene “was almost never understood” and he wondered if he “could have done better.” If he was still wondering at that point, then he must have felt as though he'd accomplished at least something of what he'd intended: namely, a scene in which Nailles is able to “implement” his love for Tony in some redemptive, heroic fashion, and thereby recognize the reality of evil as embodied by Hammer and reflected somewhat in himself and the rest of humanity. And yet this climactic episode—so essential to the novel's gravitas—is written almost as slapstick. In oddly flat, declarative prose, Cheever describes his determined murderer, Hammer, dragging the unconscious Tony to the altar and dousing him with gasoline—then deciding to pause and smoke a cigarette and go on smoking as long as it takes for Nailles to drive home, fetch a chainsaw, and return to the locked church:

“Hammer?” [Nailles calls from outside]

“Yes.”

“Is Tony all right?”

“He's all right now but I'm going to kill him. First I want to finish this cigarette.”

… [Nailles] made a diagonal slash across the door and broke it easily with his shoulders. Hammer was sitting in a front pew, crying. The red gasoline tank was beside him. Nailles lifted his son off the altar and carried him out into the rain.

And then—quite