A Disappointing Mixture of Pop Style and Deep Ideas

IT may or may not be fair to the individual work, but any novel by Alice Walker invites comparison to The Color Purple, the book that brought her into the limelight. And her newest book, The Temple of My Familiar just cannot measure up.

Walker broke ground with The Color Purple by writing in the voice of a poor Black woman. She showed a stunning power over words by using simple language to develop complex characters and show strong emotion. In Temple, Walker has done just the opposite. The book is a string of cliches and reads like a pop novel--there is too much discussion of running shoes, crystals and jacuzzis and not enough about people.

THE book focuses on four characters--two married couples who have split up for complex reasons, which they try to work out during the course of the book. They find they cannot solve their current problems until they delve into their separate pasts--which connect in several instances.

The Temple of My Familiar

By Alice Walker

New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989

$18.95

As important to the story as the four protagonists are Lissie and Hal, elderly friends of the American history professor, Suwelo's deceased uncle. He meets them when he goes to dispose of his uncle's property. They bring him food and mow the lawn, and when he invites them in to talk, he finds that his dinner is being cooked by a mother goddess who has spent countless lifetimes in Africa and America, and mowing his lawn is her longtime companion.

At the same time, Suwelo's wife, Fanny Nzingha, daughter of Olivia from The Color Purple, goes to Africa to learn about her own roots. She finds her father, a dissident playwright who somehow manages to keep his job as Minister of Culture of a fictional African republic while he is regularly thrown into jail for writing scathing plays.

The other couple, the musician Arveyda and his Latin American wife Carlotta, split up when Arveyda has an affair with Carlotta's mother, Zede, and runs away to South America with her. He comes back, but in the meantime, Carlotta is able to have an affair with Suwelo.

We are thus given many perspectives on the characters, as they talk about themselves and are talked about by several different people. But one of the primary difficulties with the novel is that the accounts don't match. When Fanny talks, she does not seem like the same Fanny about which Suwelo talks. Not even like a Fanny whom Suwelo misunderstands.

PART of the problem is that the characters serve only as mouthpieces for Walker's ideas. They never develop any personality of their own. The novel is written as long strings of storytelling by the characters. but they all take the same tone and they all deliver the same, or at least complementary, messages. Walker called the book a "wisdom tale" and it is indeed didactic, at the expense of character.

The characters all speak in the same voice. Unlike Celie in The Color Purple, whose simple language and grammatical errors were emotionally powerful and expressive of a strong character, everyone in Temple uses a slick new-age vocabulary. Even the foreigners, the African and British, use the same language.

Another large problem with character is that Carlotta receives almost no attention. Her story opens up the book and she plays an important role at the end, but in between there is almost no notice of her, except to show her as Suwelo's lover. She gets less of a chance to reveal her character to the reader than the other three protagonists and they do not get much.

When Carlotta reappears at the end in a hot tub, telling Suwelo how she became a new-age musician, it is hard to believe she can have any important role to play. Yet Walker says the four "all vaguely realize they have a purpose in each other's lives. They are a collective means by which each of them will grow."

To fill out the roster of voiceless messengers from Walker, there are a host of stereotypical minor characters. An aged British aunt spits out attacks on the Victorian era on her deathbed. A poor little rich girl buys a yacht to rescue Carlotta and Zede from prison, and, after wandering through the jungle in pink boots, she makes a new identity as an art teacher in Africa. Her rich parents, she claims, have "personally assasinated six rivers and massacred twelve lakes." A vicious guerilla fighter with a heart mothers a child and dies of grief when the father takes the daughter away to the capital. The daughter is sent to the Sorbonne but rejects its imperialist values and comes home to Africa.

Walker said Temple is about a spirit which is all-encompassing and present on the earth, like the god in The color Purple, "but more so." Her new book seems to be a more explicit account of this spirit, which Lissie is responsible for describing.

MAYBE this book is no Color Purple. It should still be possible to appreciate it for what it is, and at times it is a good story, an entertaining read. It is certainly no worse than many pop novels, and Walker has not lost her power to keep the reader interested.

But the mix of substance and style are disappointing. Temple is more memorable for its enjoyable story of three marriages than for its message about religion, which is, I think, what an author of the caliber of Walker wanted to convey. Pop style and deep ideas just do not mix in any effective way. As a quick read the book is quite good, but Walker fails to present a moving story.