THE WINTER RIDER <i> by Berry Fleming (Second Chance Press, Noyac Road, Sag Harbor, N.Y. 11963: $18.95; 173 pp.) </i>

“The novel is no good as an art form,” pronounces the irritating hitchhiker who has been foisted on the protagonist of Berry Fleming’s novel. It is a particularly annoying statement in view of the fact that the driver is, in fact, a novelist. He has just sold his latest work, and for the first time is tasting financial success. No matter that he is “of an age when life memberships are no longer a bargain”; even Hollywood has expressed interest in this book.

The aggravating young woman, it appears, is a violist. When the car breaks down on a deserted country road, each artist takes up the item most dear--the writer his bulky manuscript, the musician her two fiddles--and they prepare to hike in search of help. What ensues is a completely unexpected adventure in the backwoods of Georgia. Echoing the music of so many literary rivers, this trip downriver leads to self-discovery, as the tightly wrapped writer slowly unbends under the force of his companion’s intuitive, spontaneous personality.

Berry Fleming’s subtle style is beautifully suited to a novel of the road-almost-not-taken. He observes about the simple moment when the broken fan belt halts the car’s motion: “It is a strange feeling to walk along a road you have just a minute before been rolling over at fifty, to find yourself on foot in a landscape suddenly motionless, your eyes still remembering it in an indifferent blur of speed. Nothing has changed but a relationship; it is the same you, the same landscape, but something has shifted and you get a sensation of newness, newness often, for me, faintly hostile. . . .” With these words, he slows down the world of the novel to a pace allowing for introspection.

Second Chance Press specializes in reissues of neglected literary gems. “The Winter Rider” was first published in 1960, and in some ways mirrored Fleming’s own situation. His work was widely praised in the 1930s and ‘40s, but by the time of “The Winter Rider’s” publication he had lost his audience. Fleming died in September, 1989.