NONFICTION - July 19, 1992

DOWN FROM TROY: A Doctor Comes of Age by Richard Selzer (William Morrow: $20; 300 pp.) For the first hundred or so pages of this book, and occasionally thereafter, one has the sense that Richard Selzer is holding back. Selzer, author of numerous works on his life as a surgeon (among them “Taking the World In for Repairs” and “Confessions of a Knife”), doesn’t return easily to his hometown of Troy, N. Y.; although he makes the city of his youth seem romantic, with its taverns and bordellos and riverfront, his relationship to Troy is more shadowed. Eventually we learn why: Selzer’s childhood, which initially seems an idyll, is fractured by his parents’ loveless marriage and the fact that his father patronized the very same prostitutes he treated in his medical practice. “Down from Troy” is an uneven, peculiarly paced book, but it does have its bright spots, such as Selzer’s accounts of a recent malpractice lawsuit against him, a love affair during army service in Korea that culminated in an unexpected reunion, and an AIDS patient’s valiant attempt to die with his dignity intact. There’s even one very nice story about Troy, in which Selzer tells of his desire to impress a girl upon whom he had a crush. Selzer attempted, in imitation of Leander’s love for Hero, to try to swim the Hudson, but only got 20 feet before being swept downstream and rescued, ignominiously, by a police launch.