The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B by James Patrick Donleavy, (Delacorte Press $6.95)

By Virgil Christianson

J.P. Donleavy, an amused and yet lamentful examiner of that human heart which is invisible to the surgeon, announces his continued spiritual practice.

If the new novel seems, in theme and character and even title, to be no more than a long rewriting of recent work, it can only be said that Donleavy is against progress, on the principle of identity. As witch doctor, he knows the value of consistent ritual.

The reader is handed Balthazar B, another half-nameless innocent who cannot find fellowship in a fully-named, knowing world. He has brothers outside the book, though, in the George Smith of "A Singular Man," the Samuel S of "The Saddest Summer of Samuel S," and the Alphonse A, Franz F and Gustav G of "Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule." Like Franz, Balthazar is "a comma" in a world of capitals, colons and exclamation marks.

Balthazar is another orphan, borne by a mother who considers him an impediment to the fun she can have now that father has died during the pregnancy. Rich and blond, a Parisian, Balthazar even still is the little peasant who must be pawned off, first to nurses, next to prep school, then to a distant university.

A governess, of beauty and far greater age gives Balthazar warm, extra-scholastic study just after his thirteenth birthday, investing some reason and love in B's existence. But Balthazar finds in later years that the best women are seldom available for marriage. They die or disappear. Bella, the governess, is fired.

Donleavy succeeds, as in the four previous books, in sneaking his signature upon the billboard posted with familiar tales. Possessed of a poet's instinct for the full image, his own defiant man as a prose stylist, he is again able to advertise his presence.

Totally new for Donleavy, and an answer to the critics, is the beginning of the hero's biography at birth. In reaching back into those early days of gurgles and tears, a definition is given of the paradise lost by all these sad and sensitive men, including the rowdy Sebastian Dangerfield of the first novel, "The Ginger Man":

"...the sweet nut flavour and milk white beauty of my mother's breasts were taken away," Balthazar tells us on the first page, "And I made my first frown."