In his first novel. The same River Twice. Chris Offutt Plungers directly into the sophisticate realm of high fiction. Directly, that is, if you discount his only other published work, Kentucky Straight. In that collection of short fiction. Offutt shamelessly sold out his Kentucky heritage to Random. House. After slogging through the nine stories in the Paw-dun-hung-himself-with-his-belt vein. I was dreading the two hundred pages of memoir that make up. The Same River Twice. But Offutt has tired of Flogging the dead horse of his homeland, and has produced as intelligent and enthralling account of his journey across America and towards fatherhood.

Offutt was raised in the hills of Kentucky. "Hillbilly was what the people in town called us," he writes. "Hick, ridgerunner, redneck, inbred ingrate, and my personal favorite, pig-fucker. My mother is my sixth cousin. My brother and sister are also my cousins but nobody in my family ever seduced a hog." Dissatisfied by the prospect of a life lived by moonshine and bluegrass, Offutt sets out for New York City to become an actor. He roams the U.S., never managing to hold down a job or a relationship; we see him dodge an arranged marriage in Minneapolis, grab a drag queen's penis in New York (mistaking it for a gun) and lose a job with the circus when he slithers, hung-over, out of his walrus suit in the middle of an act.

The memoir cleverly intersperses the narrative of Offutt's wife's pregnancy with the sordid anecdotes of his youth. He sets his fifteen years of wandering against the nine months of expectancy, illustrating the transformation from carefree adventurer to father with well-ordered contrast. The father-to-be balks at the notion of parental responsibility, just as his youthful self fled from the restraints of any long-term career or romance.

Offutt often adopts a dreamlike tone groping towards depicting a more universal experience of ambition and failure. He questions his role in life by means of a close examination of his past follies and future duties.

In these passages he employs the imagery of water: the river that runs past his lows home. a different stream every day; the rhythm of its droughts and floods, in tune with Offutt's changing perspectives on his unborn child, and above all, the still waters of the amnion that houses the fetus. The novel reaches its climax in a narrative juxtaposition; Offutt braves a surprisingly mild hurricane in Florida as his wife's water breaks and his son is born, In both cases, Offutt's anxieties prove unfounded.

The same River Twice reads at times like a D. H. Lawrence novella. It shares the same elaborate vision of a natural world at once aloof from and akin to humanity. But the autobiographical reminiscences add an endearing personal flourish.

Offutt blends wit, compassion and insight to make this memoir a much more palatable brew than the crude Kentucky Straight. At its heart, The Same River Twice is touchingly human. Offutt's honest, self- effacing style seduces the reader with its openness. Twenty-five centuries ago, Heraclitus asserted that you cannot step into the same river twice. Offutt, too immerses himself in the old conundrum of change and decay. His story springs from time-honored tradition and flows it course with a river's enchanting elegance.