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destructiveness, but it's also about theholiness of the heart's affections.It's a long time since I read a novel asconfident and modest and spaciously saneas this one. There is very little in the way ofsurface drama in William Maxwell's book,but the intensity of the style is remarkable.Maxwell's writing is for people who likethe traditional satisfactions of sophisticatedstraightforward fiction but who won'tcompromise on subtlety and do not wantthem cut-price. The cover of this bookshows two boys boxing by what looks likea lake, the latter shining through thechiaroscuro of the sepia photograph. Theboy on the right, narrow-waisted with broadshoulders, looks as if he will rapidly disposeof his opponent, who has his head down, hisgloved hands shielding his face; but theyare locked in a formal dance.BOOKS: 2PETER PIERCEIt is perfectly suited to this flawlesslywritten story of private life in a socialsetting. My only question mark about TheFolded Life was whether it didn't once ortwice head towards sentimentalism, butI don't think that is a judgment which canstand. The moments of greatest dramaticintensity are very stark moments indeed.Besides, Maxwell's novel is, among otherthings, a novel about growth, and it earnsits optimism. A novel as unambiguouslygood as this (never mind great) makes youwant to sit down and read the rest of thewriter's work . Readers who are justdiscovering William Maxwell should begrateful to Harvill for the 1200 pages or soof his work which are now in print. •Peter Craven is currently editing the BestAustralian Essays 1999.Hannibal leftoversAHannibal, Thomas Harris, William Heinemann, London, 1999 .ISBN 0 434 00940 7, RRP $39.95LREADY AN INTEMPERATE admirer of resources of language, imagination andRed Dragon (1981) when in 1988 I came to cunning are at the service of a nihilisticreview its sequel, Thomas Harris' The vision of a world of serial killers, victimsSilence of the Lambs, I called him 'the poet and hunters.of horror'. Peter Craven once went further, The latest of Harris' novels marketslikening Harris to Dostoevsky.itself with a single word title: Hannibal.But Harris' lineage is American. Like The front cover blurb adds what fans ofhis great contemporary, Cormac McCarthy, Harris have long desired but-in the 11heisanheirofHemingway, whose influence years since The Silence of the Lambsisapparent in the command of dialogue and began to fear would never happen: 'Theinarrestingpassagesofviolentaction.Harris Return of Hannibal Lecter'. Yet,has other distinctive strengths: insight into intriguingly, disturbingly, that is not exactlythe psychopathology of his murderers, what we get. Lecter has altered himselfintricate but plausible criminal investiga- physically, better to hide from a legion oftions and a wide and esoteric body of pursuers and his internet fans. Collagen hasknowledge that he deploys with pedantic changed the shape of his nose, surgeryrelish.removed the extra middle finger on his leftAll his books contain brilliantly drawn hand ('the rarest form of polydactyly', asminor characters, who live for us vividly, in Harris precisely notes).their terrible isolation: the scandal- Lecter is older, nearing 60 (although, asmongering journalist Freddy Lounds; the John Sutherland observed in the TLS offuneral attendant Lamar; the grieving, 18 June, Harris fudges the chronology),upright parents of murdered Frederica but for all that, he remains a genius whoseBimmell; Will Graham's wife Molly; the IQ and ego (as Harris is fond of telling us)autodidact Barney, erstwhile gu ard of are not measurable by any means knownHannibal Lecter, among many. These are to man. Lecter is a polymath, a lover oftheachievements,notofaformulaicthriller arcane knowledge, a gifted musician and awriter, butofarichlyskillednovelist, whose man apparently immune to emotion.Among literary portraits of genius,Sherlock Holmes' dark side is perhaps thenearest analogue.In her essay in Cannibalism and theColonial World (1998), Maggie Kilgourobserved that Lecter's name holds outtantalising clues: Hannibal was Freud'sfavourite general, while the surnamereminds her of Baudelaire's line, 'hypocritelecteur, man semblable, man fr ere'('hypocrite reader, my likeness, mybrother'). In the earlier novels, suchresonances were part of a mystery cultivatedin tandem by Harris and Dr Lecter. Now,and with chilling unexpectedness, Hannibaldispels the mystery. The novel does not somuch complete the trilogy that began withRed Dragon, as form a sequel to the film ofThe Silence of the Lambs (1991). This lastincarnation of Lecter (a figure now belongingmore to cinema than literature) owes muchto Anthony Hopkins' silky performanceand to the weight of expectationwhich the film created.EULLY TO APPRECIATE what has been lost,we need to backtrack. Red Dragon beginswhen stoic Jack Crawford of the FBI luresWill Graham out of retirement to catch akiller of two families of five, whom tabloidssuch as the National Tattler have dubbed'Th e Tooth Fairy' because he likes to bite.Graham is the man who caught Lecter, andwas almost fatally stabbed for his pains. Itis he who informs a colleague, and thereader, that Lecter is 'not crazy', that 'he didsome hideous things because he enjoyedthem'. 'He has no remorse or guilt at all.'Ultimately, 'he's a monster'. That wordreverberates through each book of thetrilogy. Lecter, whom Graham interviewsboth to seek help with the 'Tooth Fairy'case and out of a fearful curiosity of hisown, has the last word on his 'manhunter'(title of the very good film made of RedDragon in 1986, directed by Michael Mann):'The reason you caught me is that we're justalike.' Lecter's horrible revenge is to set themurderer on Graham and his family, justwhen we assumed that the horrors of thenovel were done.In the next instalment, The Silen ce ofthe Lambs, another investigator calls onLecter. FBI rookie, Clarice Starling, has alsobeen despatched by Jack Crawford. She isafter another serial killer, whom the papershave rechristened 'Buffalo Bill', 'because heskins his humps'. Both this man, (actuallyJame Gumb) and 'The Tooth Fairy' cum'Red Dragon' (Francis Dolarhyde) desire atransformation of themselves. DolarhydeVOLUME 9 NUMBER 7 • EUREKA STREET 41