"Gates of Grace" opens on a wrenching scene. The overriding concern of this regime is human reproduction; the time is the foreseeable future, when a devastating combination of chemical pollution, radiation and epidemic venereal disease has caused the national birthrate to fall below replacement level. Even in retirement in Phoenix (after an undisclosed heart attack, Luce had remained a force in the corporation, commuting to New York, addressing the troops at lunches and dinners, consulting with the great, firing off memos to the leadership he had chosen to succeed him, including Hedley Donovan, who became editor of all the publications. Comedy, mai oui ! Translator Mortimer, widely known for his own "Rumpole of the Bailey" and his TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" that svelte melodrama on God, money, companionship and booze, has given us an up-dated but generic Feydeau. . This is all heady stuff, and after his first "discovery" which led Hamilton to leap from his seat and shout "Will! By God. Besides, people said that even were it to come to that, a lady's thimble would hold all the blood that would be spilt. Some of the non-canonical texts are now studied for pre-New Testament ideas and formulations, and Funk greatly facilitates that work. .
Exposures occurred over the continental United States, with heavy fallout as far east as Albany, N. Y. After a few vain months of waiting in New York for books and movies to materialize, Pope returned to his home in Minneapolis, and Taylor, a fifth-generation Californian, settled in Hawaii where he was able to find a job. Another friend, a famous composer who has given music up, is also visiting, and the Chilean, Luisa Domic, is stunned to meet the artist she has long idolized. The two became lovers, took a small apartment, and informed Dora's father, a devout Hasid from Eastern Europe, of their wish to marry. Hugh Vicker's witty humor makes it all the more fun to read about the tenor who swallowed his mustache, the live horse that mistook the orchestra pit for a water jump, the opening that was interrupted-permanently-by an eruption of Vesuvius and the continuing foibles in staging " 'Tosca' by far the most jinxed of operas, as 'Macbeth' is in the theatre" The Cruise of a Deathtime, Marian Babson; Death in Sheep's Clothing, Stella Phillips (Walker. I do not know which of the words in this story belong to Taylor and which have been added by Steber, but one of them is one hell of a raconteur. Readers may remember that the Temple of Tenochtitlan was destroyed by Cortez after the Spanish conquistadors captured the Aztec capitol in 1521.
Without preaching, he has sought especially to prod the American conscience toward this one lofty objective: that we examine our discriminatory past, discern its flimsy basis in economic and class conflicts, and resolutely construct a more just future for us all The U. S. "Mire el rostro de la vida y de la muerte" the first stanza concludes. Her father, who was an English professor, encouraged her early interest in literature and writing, and after enrolling in the University of Chicago in 1918, she joined the university's Poetry Club. But no uniforms, Benjamin Franklin insisted, covering his regal joie de vivre with a rust-colored frock coat Our laureates will tuck their laurels inside their shirts.
After a few vain months of waiting in New York for books and movies to materialize, Pope returned to his home in Minneapolis, and Taylor, a fifth-generation Californian, settled in Hawaii where he was able to find a job. And I, in my old age, I who thought I had solved that problem, find it flaring up again" Whew!. The years since seem to have diminished none of those characters. But what also happened, as Israeli records show, is that thousands of Arabs were forcibly and sometimes violently expelled, both during and after the war, from areas originally assigned to Israel in the U N. Only her mother's dearest friend, a woman who has renounced the Mennonites and lives in France, can help; she writes to Dovie, and between them, they collaborate to preserve the memory of the woman they both love. Elegant, economical, evocative-these terms describe Janet Kauffman's short novel, "Collaborators" the story of a very special mother-daughter relationship. The 1970s, however, saw the beginning of a turnaround, a groundswell of interest in the female partner, a recognition that it takes two to tango and that the female leads many of the steps. The central ordeal is the war, particularly the struggle of soldiers and civilians to turn back the German invaders at Stalingrad.
The work is one whose metaphysical vein was to turn up again in later works of more surrealist inspiration-in "Cosmicomics" for example. Neil McLean, an MP who was a champion of the Royalist cause in British political circles. At the outset, we find him sitting in the waiting room beside an aquarium, being examined tentatively by its lone occupant, a fish that might be a goldfish. By this convenient twist of fortune, Pissarro, who had his heart set on becoming an artist, Stone tells us, was able to escape the family business and come to Paris to stay.
Canin's story originally appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, as did two other "Bests"Lily" by Jane Smiley, and Peter Meinke's "The Piano Tuner" Meinke's story is a decreasingly comic vision of paranoia borne out in the menacing person of a coarse intruder who arrives to tune a piano and stays to bully its owner. Undeterred by this and armed with Nader's near-fetish for researching every published detail about a subject he is interested in, the authors chose to proceed. It is as if Campbell's Soup had adapted a recipe for bourride. Berger erroneously slights the native leadership when he says: "These Native villagers, although they have no visible means of influencing the powerful, are nevertheless insisting on their sovereign rights" In fact, the native lobby in Washington and the native legislators in Juneau (Alaska's capital city) are among the most capable in both locations.
The present new book is a condensation of those five volumes, by Catharine Carver. Most of the case histories chronicled here defy popular conceptions. 'til one is tired / then they choose" Him With His Foot in His Mouth, (Pocket Books, To Jerusalem and Back (Penguin, Saul Bellow. A History of the English People, Paul Johnson (Harper & Row. I'll always have the memory" When doctors say it's possible for her to have a family, photos of Brian are retrieved from a drawer, and she again feels hope The idea of having a baby is "like a miracle I feel my blood rushing through me, my heart beating. Now I can hold my toothbrush in one hand, and with the other hand, hold the tube of toothpaste. Justice Downwind: The Story of America's Atomic Testing Program at the Nevada Test Site, Howard Ball (Oxford.
On the Scene Productions explains that the live satellite approach "reduces the exhausting traveling conditions and expensive touring costs" that are incurred on regular book tours. NEW YORK — A major national campaign, "Give the Gift of Literacy" will be launched at this May's convention of the American Booksellers Assn in New Orleans. I say this even though I am not completely convinced that its thesis is correct Charles E. A phone call from John Maguire would have been enough for me to eliminate the story, if that was what he wanted" The amount of the settlement was not disclosed. Bettyann Kevles, a science writer for the Los Angeles Times, has chronicled the recent plethora of experiments and observations in a comprehensive, encyclopedic book about female behavior in many species (not including the human.
Obviously, we are treading on sacred ground in Ten Years Beyond Baker Street by Cay Van Ash (Harper & Row: $14. 95. Stillman gets off the train at Grand Central, there are two of him-one shabby, one perfectly dressed. There is, however, less government interest in conceding to women control over fertility or to free them from "double shift" responsibilities, either by socializing domestic labor or by encouraging men to share domestic roles. What better way than this to get some notion of our Anglo-Saxon origins, along with gore enough to keep us flipping zestfully ahead through all the carnage.
But what Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Johanna Broda and David Carrasco report about the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan leaves no room for skepticism. On the other hand, Wolff's story about the duel between an aging boy-wonder of the electronics business, and a young and rigid technocrat, has a wildness that mounts steadily out of a casual encounter The duel is a mad series of wagers. The Court's ultimate decision to overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine in public schools resulted from a wide-ranging interpretation not only of the legislative history and past judicial construction of the 14th Amendment, but of the moral and practical importance of education in American life. We have instead an account of the multiplying household disruptions, from a need for two sets of dishes to lovemaking through a hole in a sheet But the parents will not separate "Who would it help" their mother asks. The stories, written by naval officers, military experts or journalists, transport readers into the center of the battle, rarely nestling in present-day scholarly perspectives.
Since then, the standard of living for the average American family has fallen, and the nation's worldwide military predominance has been irrevocably lost. For these, I think of Frances Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake" Gloria Emerson's "Winners and Losers" Bobby Ann Mason's "In Country" and now this dual memorial written by two women, one American and one Vietnamese. The author's grandmother kept a diary during the Anglo-Boer war when the British were at the Afrikaners' jugular; his great-aunt corresponded lastingly with Robert Sobukwe when the leader of the Pan African Congress was imprisoned on Robben Island. Something in the midst of one entry will lead the mind inevitably to another article, and that to a third, as the specialist reader wonders how the clash of theories and interpretations will work itself out. El Magico, the mathematician, transformer of discord into smooth tones I can be, when occasion calls, a master of arch savagery.
I read it nonstop, and many times found myself nodding in recognition. ONE DAY IN PARADISE, retold and illustrated by Helme Heine (Atheneum: $12. 95; 32 pp; ages 4-9. To mold the moral integrity of God's people, the school seeks to integrate Scriptural study and academic instruction. Functional and efficient, (Howard) Fast's prose is a machine in which plot and ideals mesh, turn and clash" (Elaine Kendall. .
Bradford begins with a short course on the principles of taxation. Still, I don't know when a versifier has proved better versed in a verse-form than Seth. On balance, however, this chapter does offer some interesting insights into how one large company works. Consumer advocate, author "Unsafe at Any Speed) and general purpose consciousness-raiser Ralph Nader has teamed up with William Taylor, a former feature writer for the Hartford Advocate, to give us in "The Big Boys" an up-close and personal view of nine major business leaders-seven of them CEOs of large companies. A grim joke making the rounds of American faculty clubs conveys the magnitude of the scandal-and the acrid taste it has left in many big academic mouths. To the delight of those who have read "Billy Baldwin Decorates" and "Billy Baldwin Remembers" this autobiography presents new and exciting material.
Bordering on self-parody, many poems indulge what Auden called "the Dada giggle: "Pascal's own/ Prize abyssologist/ In marriage/ On her knees/ Still scrubbing/ The marble stairs/ Of a Russian countess" The tired symbols are recycled again-gravediggers, their spades, mirrors, bones, utensils But they are no longer unnerving. What emerges is not a college-level survey of signs and symbols from smoke to sacrament, but an extended dissection and explanation of questions that concern semiotics today: Do animals understand signs as such? Are concepts private signs? Why are we able to talk about past and present, the real and the unreal, casting a net of significance over both?Philosophy these days has all the marks of a changing neighborhood. This is properly erotic domain, involving courtship practices and issues of honor, status and integrity that the Christian West was to focus on women, though in a different manner: The anxiety that the Greeks focused on being an object of pleasure was later transferred to truth, to the existence of wisdom, which is where, according to Foucault, the Greeks broke ground for inquiry into desiring man: when Plato, in the "Phaedrus" and the "Banquet" raised the question of love in its very being. Foucault's treatment of this last topic is not very probing, referring us instead to research conducted elsewhere. The author/illustrator, a research scientist living in France, creates cigar-smoking pelicans, menial demons and curvaceous women to help Archibald when he becomes frazzled. For each of them, the trip was to be the one great punctuation of a lifetime. No one can understand the significance of this social movement without consulting these volumes. . In a work of advocacy, it is not surprising that historical examples are often poorly chosen and inaccurately presented.
This polarity of interest is not surprising, for Delany's writing is rarefied and dense. One was to take one Gospel at a time, within its narrative order and limits, rather than the usual technique of weaving back and forth (often confusingly) between stories in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Most of the moguls profiled here live in California, and, if the descriptions in this book are on target, their presence is unlikely to damage California's reputation as an oddball state Take Sat Tara Sing Khalsa, for example. She is rendered speechless, partially paralyzed, (goes) into whatever hiding there is when the world flies apart and scatters itself out of reach. In these poems, Bly worships the mystery rather than trying, as many have, to destroy it by forcing it to make rational sense.
Payne rejects the current theory and practice of nuclear deterrence, which he characterizes as a system based wholly on "mutual vulnerability" and he finds SDI-with its promise, however dubious, of preserving the civilian population-infinitely more compelling. The error must have stung Payne, whose book is a layman's guide to ballistic missile defense technologies, and a carefully argued brief for further SDI research. The technique of blending autobiography with instructional commentary in rich, intimate prose-prose that manages to be meanderingly relaxed, yet always able to slip into truly rare and beautiful insight-is the essence of "The Seven Storey Mountain" That early book documents his own zigzagging path toward spiritual fulfillment as a Trappist monk. Lobotomy received the ultimate accolade when, in 1949, Egas Moniz shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine Prof. Living on and around a North Dakota Indian reservation from 1934 to 1984, the two Indian families profiled here-the Kashpaws and the Lamartines-weather through even the most cruel and somber of times because of strength of will, the binds of blood and the endurability of love. We get a wonderful portrait of Olga, even though none of her letters are printed. Next comes Thomas Pakenham, who has written acclaimed histories of the Irish rebellion of 1798 and the Boer War-interviewing, for the latter book, many grizzled survivors of that conflict.
The authors, a professor of finance at Montreal's McGill University and a European management consultant, write that "the Japanese have launched their Second Wave of competition" aimed at achieving in banking and investment services the kind of victories their industries scored earlier in cars and television sets. Unlike many other countries, he argues, America does not protect the individual from the callous marketplace. The first population exposed to nuclear fallout was American. Though these stories might strike terror in the heart, as in "The Education of Mingo" or the title story "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" gentleness, warmth and humor are by no means lacking. Q'S LEGACY by Helene Hanff (Little, Brown: $14. 45.