Inside Moves

There is something tragic in the obscurity of a writer as talented as Todd Walton; the fact that this was Walton's first novel intensifies the feeling. Notwithstanding the charisma and emotion with which Walton imbues his little creatures (Not to mention the fact of an equally obscure film based on the book), it would be a reasonable expectation to at least be able to get one's hands on the work without the hassle attendant to tracking down out of print books. Without a computer, mind you.Roary is a Vietnam vet: A big hearted but physically imposing fellow with a limp as a reminder of the war; his best friend is Jerry, a tough but likewise handicapped lad who happens to be a basketball virtuoso. The two are pieces of a set of pawns holed up in Max's bar in San Francisco, owned by enigmatic, legless Max. From this setting, Jerry's hopes of a miracle operation that could cure his limp drift up to us; the irrevocable fiats of finances, though, prevent this. Roary sets out to help, at first by going into business selling wooden signs, before his partner absconds, though not without leaving Roary his share of the fruits of their venture. Roary then picks up work at Max's; a philanthropic move by a basketball pro secures Jerry his operation, but at what cost? It seems, at the cost of old friends and familiar haunts.Walton is certainly a talented author; that said, there are flaws in this book that even the years that have elapsed since I read it can't erase. The writing style is sometimes prosy and predictable, with the characters talking in that grammatically correct "colloquial" language (look at Faulkner for what I mean; four hundred 'aint's' in a sentence, and they still say 'going to' instead of 'gonna'); also, Walton seems to think the reader will feel short changed if an ideal ending is withheld. But a book is a lot like a person: We have to weigh our complaints, and decide whether or not our reservations overpower our sense of good in the object being tested. In this case, for all the triteness and heavyhanded irony of this book, there seems to be a dearth of people looking hard enough at the many nice touches to the book's credit.