The message of "Letters to Olga" might be: "Show them how a phenomenologist can withstand jail" Vaclav Havel's writings from four years in Czechoslovakia's prisons possess a wit, a serene toughness and a capacity to extract humane sermons from stones that could convert me. "City of Boys" also included in this year's "Editor's Choice" concerns a young woman who strays from her female lover to see what the story is with boys Her lover is everything to her, she says, ". Their concerns about these issues get in the way of their stated intent of giving readers an inside view of how large corporations work In looking at U. S. We are now in an era where reporters wind up reporting what has been seen and heard on television, and television "newsmen" hire ghost writers to jazz up their tinsel autobiographies Harrison E. A satire of Washington and Washington memoirs, "The White House Mess" is a tattling account of life in the Oval Office as seen by this nervous, pedantic weenie, whose job as personal assistant to the President is to stamp out fires before they become blazes His feet are kept jitterbug busy. Also scheduled for publication as part of the club's anniversary celebration will be an informal history of the club called "A Family of Readers" by William Zinsser. "Najari Levon's Old Country Advice to the Young Americans on How to Live With a Snake" like all the tales in this marvelous little collection, is a story that never ends.
Only the strength of the muscles in his legs kept the challenger from collapsing. On the one hand, the reader is grateful for the obeisance shown to the integrity of the record; on the other hand, the author tends to use this admission of fealty and homage to truth as a sign of grace for all conclusions to follow. This "very artful novel" about a wealthy emigre family living near London "is no pastiche but something new" Anita Brookner's "set pieces move in original ways, and it is in their movement that the novel finds its considerable witchery" (Richard Eder. Regional military conflicts-changing with each new attack-and books-usually documents of record-seem an unlikely pair. Canin makes us feel what he feels, using what is known as "deceptively simple" prose. But I suspect that many readers will, since few of us are equipped to analyze the scientific evidence that he adduces in such great detail and with such great enthusiasm. When a man wins the Nobel Prize not once but twice, and manages to reach his 80s with both body and mind in sound condition, he deserves to be taken seriously.
Little wonder then that the dependency of the colonial period also characterized the economy of the newly "independent" nations. 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. Whatever the individual views expressed about the speech (an enormous variety of opinion emerged in the usual flood of comment and letters to the press, one thing was undeniable: Solzhenitsyn had again fulfilled his self-chosen function of drawing attention to the subjects and ideas that preoccupied him and putting them on the public agenda. IN GOOD FAITH by Edith Reveley (Overlook: $15. 95. But Tesnohlidek's message is that life goes on, and that continuity down the generations is the law of nature. Corbin isn't sure what's happening to him, but through a chain of incidents, he's coming to believe someone is out to eradicate his whole family line, and they've been at it since, well, a hundred years ago. The names of current literary celebrities are sprinkled throughout the text.
Elson, who wrote Volumes One (1923-1941) and Two (1941-1960) of the official corporate history of Time Inc, quite clearly had the livelier time. His book, very possibly unintentionally, is a nonstop diatribe against the working conditions of the trucker and those responsible. White paper and a new black typeface were introduced; rose was used for the endpapers and as one of the illustrative colors. On other important issues she similarly misunderstands or misrepresents a number of other theoreticians, and theories of both film and literature, and the reviews in academic quarterlies will be merciless in their censure. The accounts of the biologist Anne's sexual activities are often gratuitous, but the setting and her reflections make 'Recombinations' more than a description of the joys of sex" (Bettyann Kevles. It was the idea of the West, not the grubby, cruddy day-to-day life of the cowboy that enthralled him. But there is a less familiar and darker side to the story, one marked by instances of brutality, insensitivity and failed idealism.
Because her writing is so restrained and clear-sighted, one might almost overlook the fact that much of Lewis' work is about sex. Two of the freshest, Beth Nugent's "City of Boys" and "The Johnstown Polka" by Sharon Sheehe Stark, were culled from The Northwest Review and West Branch, respectively. "Their Maginot Line in the sky cannot provide Mutual Assured Survival. "It is a miracle, a wonderful and beautiful miracle whereby people are taken out of a world of trial and suffering, and yet, at the same time, are here with us always" Social Graces by Larry Fink (Aperture/New Images: $17. 50) is a collection of black-and-white photographs-intense, expressive and deeply evocative-that document the subtle rituals of two disparate scenes, the society benefits of New York City, and the impoverished backwater of Martins Creek, Pa. Inside, Amy quietly gets up to go to the bathroom and since the door is ajar, the cat-and we-see her sitting on the toilet. 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.
A fair characterization of his final view on Latinos is revealed in the remark that "They will accomplish what black power was never able to do: change the character of American politics and culture. Falwell's maternity homes in Virginia where she can bear the child and then either keep it or put it up for adoption As it happens, she chooses the latter. (Elson, it is also clear, had the additional advantage of being able to write in the past tense by anywhere from 40 years to a decade at least. 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. Blurbs tend to overstate their case Not so in this instance.
His father was a younger son of a viscount; his mother, the daughter of a marquess. It worked in Berkeley, certainly, at the 11-year-old University Press Books/Berkeley. Church groups generally declared it ethically justifiable (a conclave of French Catholics decided that a lobotomized priest could not hear confession but could teach at a university. Small pox came ashore with the dirty washing and decimated the indigenous Khoikhoi. All these are considerable achievements for the man originally known as Nathan Birnbaum; but neither Burns nor his writers-that piteous cadre from the gulag at Nate 'n' Al's Deli-can write a book. THE RAILWAY MURDERS by Jonathan Goodman (Allison & Busby: $13. 95.
It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, "Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one? " I went on to work out equations of wobbles. "We were supposed to be perfect ladies, virgins, compliant hypocrites; and the future wives of Harvard men. Guidelines on how to prevent auto burglary are especially helpful, since auto theft is the least likely to be challenged by passers-by. It is both a man and a generation that discovered a few quiet but lethal answers to all but the most extreme spasms of totalitarian hegemony: Don't l. Looking at you tonight was like gazing at a Hindu goddess, one from a temple of Love, where there are prostitutes in the service of God or Krishna or whomever Where there is no sense of sin, adultery or evil. For all the benefits Fundamentalist schools render their students and religious communities as havens from a half-hearted world, Peshkin remains critical of them for enshrining beliefs that dismiss intellectual questioning and foreclose personal choice.
A close reading of these vignettes will often reveal an internal rhyme or two, but even without those clues, the discipline of the poet emerges; nothing extraneous, the mechanism all but invisible. Traditionally, though, our literature has its references more or less concealed. Here's Looking at Euclid: The Adventures of Archibald Higgins, Jean-Pierre Petit; translated by Ian Stewart (William Kaufmann Inc, Los Altos, Calif: $7. 95. There are many points of interest along the way: morning-long breakfasts following Heidegger's 7 a. m. The resurrection of his pride and confidence is warming but unsentimentally stated.