THE LATEST NOVEL in Hugh Hood`s "New Age" series, BeSure to Close Your Eyes, comes wrapped in a smart dust-jacket: stylish typography anda black-and-white image of a distraught woman all on a trendy matte finish. Thebook looks very modem, very late-20th-century. The writing, unfortunately, shifts frompassages that are lyrical and realistic in a 19th-century kind of mode - andenjoyable for that - to those that are pedantic, jingoistic, and just plain awful. At the heart of Hood`s novel is thecomingof-age saga of May-Beth Sleaford. We first meet her in 1908 as a five-year-old girl, watching workerserect feeding towers on her father`s farm in King City, Ontario. ProfessorSleaford a religious eccentric and inventor, is building the "SleafordAutomatic Feeder," so that "No head of cattle should freeze or starveto death." When the designs fail in King City, Professor Sleaford abruptly moves his family to the"new province of Saskatchewan, where a theorist might find space for largeimaginings." Hood fills in the pioneer landscape of Canada`s newestprovince: the founding of Regina, the building of the Hotel Saskatchewan. TheSleafords settle in the small town of Hanbury, attend the pentecostal servicesof one Dwight Huskisson, and May-Beth becomes a boarder at Branksome Hall, aposh girls` school in Toronto. The best 100 or so pages of the novel begin whenHood introduces Petter Arnesson, arich character who becomes May-Beth`s boyfriend. Petter has a special gift formusic. He plays hymns on the cornet at religious gatherings but is soonconverted to the jerky, strange rhythms of jazz. Hood`s love of early jazzcomes through keenly when he writes about Petter`s playing: His lower register was dusky and veryfluent, shining with a deeply moving, dark velvety quality ... as his tones of molten gold flowed over his hearers, high, gorgeouslyovertoned,v infinitely persuasive, he quickened his tempo.... Hood`s talent isagain on display when he describes a late-fall picnic embarked on by thelovers. May-Beth accidentally plunges the car into a snow drift and the couplebegins a dangerous walk home through a blizzard. But in the middle of asuspenseful episode, where Hood has us caring for these characters, the proseturns pedantic. Hood can`t resist lecturing us on art: "The greatest artemerges from the holy, the sacred ....Theoretical analysis of the powerand the action of the arts is often perverse, even untruthful." Hood makesa strategic mistake when he kills off one of the central characters. The finalthird of the story descends to a wholly mediocre account of May-Beth`s nursingapprenticeship in Toronto and her courtship by Earl Codrington, heir to amodest hardware business. Hood`s contribution to the social history of Canadais nothing more than a schoolboy myth of nation-building. The novel is filledwith hard-working, Godfearing immigrants struggling to settle the land. There`sa pervasive Christian ethic here that seems at odds with the celebration ofthat subversive, passionate music called jazz. Would prudes like May-Beth andEarl - in New York for their honeymoon - really stay up all night at a jazzclub in Harlem waiting for Louis Armstrong to play, and then sleep on the trainback to Toronto? As well, Hood has a penchant for flights of goshwowboosterism. When Professor Sleafordc finally creates a feeder that works, Hoodintones: Hanbury Holstein Day! The feeder wasfinished, all set to go... Eighteen purebred Holsteins, massive blackand-whiteforms, mighty milk producers, big butterfat content. A step forward in localdairying, making Hanbury history. Monty Python material perhaps? HughHood`s first book, Flying a Red Kite, was published in 1962. It inspired theseprescient words from a critic writing in the (now defunct) Toronto Telegramnewspaper: "Mr. Hood writes as no other Canadian can. Such talent appearsonce or twice in a generation and it will not be silenced." Twentyeightbooks later, Hood can still write beautifully, but too often he loses the museand follows the pedantic impulse. In Be Sure to Close Your Eyes, Hood deliversa good novella-size story about the deepening love of Petter and MayBeth for each other. The rest isdogma, laid on like bricks and mortar to prop up the larger ambitions of Hood`s"New Age" cycle.