Self-Help Spoof

THE REVELATIONS OF DR. MODESTO (256 pp.)--Alan Harrington--Knopf ($3.50).

If Hal Hingham were a philosopher instead of a life-insurance salesman, he might sum himself up by saying: "I dread, therefore I am." The realest thing about young Hal, a tenth-rate agent for Arcadia Life, is the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach when he faces his boss, his girl, or anyone else. As he somnambulates through life with a nagging sense of being out of step, people bump into him as if he were invisible, and prospects look out the window when he wants them to sign on the dotted line. Snaps his girl friend Rose: "You don't even look as if you were going anywhere."

Then, leafing idly through a magazine one evening, Hal is speared by a finger pointing at him from one of the ads:

"STOP! WHY ARE YOU UNHAPPY? FAIL URE? TRY CENTRALISM! . . . My system erases the qualities that make you 'different' from other people. It makes you Absolutely Normal--in a matter of hours . . . Gives you a STRANGE POWER over others, for no one can help loving you." The ad is signed in towering capitals: DR. MODESTO.

Moderation Plus Mediocrity. The "revelations" of Dr. Modesto arrive in a large white envelope stamped "CENTRALISM is FOR YOU," and form the core of this uneven but intriguing first novel by Alan Harrington. The doctrine of "Centralism" and what it does to Hal Hingham gives Author Harrington, a Manhattan public-relations man, a slingshot with which to launch provocative pebbles at the panjandrums of selfhelp, the positive thinkers, the conformists, and the problems of 20th-century "adjustment."

Dr. Modesto breaks down Centralism into 30 rules, but its heart is "Don't Be Yourself" ("Since your self grates on others, and makes you miserable, get rid of it"). The happy man is the one "Just Like Everybody Else." To be "more average than anyone,' one must "live centrally," even moving to the center of town.

Modestotality further demands: 1) "Think centrally, which is to say, believe in nothing, but give your loyalty to any popular cause in the vicinity." 2) "Work centrally . . . You should not rise to the top. Get ahead, but moderately." 3) "Play centrally. Never be a champion . . . You will know the joys of coming in second when the chips are down." The reward for all this: "The ecstasy of mediocrity."

O. Henry Plus Riesman. Centralism works wonders for Hal Hingham. He moves out of his roach-ridden boardinghouse and into a smart hotel; he gets waiters to seat him where he wishes; he sweeps a startled Rose into bed with her clothes on after a three-year kissless courtship. And in one day on the road, he sells enough insurance to become one of Arcadia's top-ranking salesmen and nearly violate the Centralist rule of moderation.

Despite his seeming success in becoming what Sociologist David Riesman has called an "other-directed" person, Hal Hingham develops a bad case of jitters. At novel's end, he goes in search of the great confidence man himself and, in a sardonic, O. Henry-sudden finale, finds Dr. Modesto rattling the bars in a progressive insane asylum. Hal Hingham is as appealing as he is weak-kneed, and Author Harrington manages to squeeze a wry, comic moral out of his dilemma: self-help is really an inside job, and to pull it off successfully, one must have a self to help.

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