The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 146

BOOKS Spectrum 10A SMH, Saturday, March 25, 199.5 Shout Stri king a new pose with oro Seven hundred metres up you are underwater here manta-ray clouds drift imperceptibly over valleys coral'd with eucalypt reefs sea-weed streaming in the breeze as you dive down through mottled limbs drunk on reverberating sunlight and come up for air in late afternoon to yank down a storm dark and swift as sharks spawning hailstones hard as shell, electric eels of lightning seeming to sizzle eyelashes in a negative retina flash, and the ultimate dumper of thunder clapping you on the back, forging bone and water earth and sky in an elemental shout of Life Frances Rouse pooch. Come to think of it, the closest I came to sport as a young man was being a snooker shark. I worked after college as a marker in a billiard room in a School of Arts building, alternating between the snooker tables downstairs and the lending library upstairs. Where are the Schools of Arts of yesteryear? Martin Amis observes of the US Open tennis tournament: "The women have been getting equal money at the Open for longer than they've been getting it at any other major. They get equal pay, but they don't get equal space; and their column inches, I suspect, will continue to shrink." Like Andrew Ettingshausen's award for damages.

As if to validate the English Amis's claim (the essay was published in The New Yorker) the editor of Tlie Best American Sports Writing, Tom Boswell, includes no fewer than two women in his 23 contributors. About 8 per cent. George Orwell observed that "serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, 1994 Edited by Tracy Kidder 32 1 pp, ISBN 0 395 69254 7 THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 1994 Edited by Tobias Wolff 364pp, ISBN 0 395 68102 2 THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING, 1994 Edited by Tom Boswell 303pp, ISBN 0 395 63325 7 Houghton Mifflin, 1 9.95 ea Reviewed by DON ANDERSON pleasure in witnessing violence in other words it is war minus the There is much to verify Orwell in this anthology, though none perhaps so memorably as Roy Masters's essay on Wally Lewis as Coriolanus in this paper some years ago. Still, there are great waiters (John McPhee, George Plimpton, Roger Angell) and great sportsmen (Arthur Ashe, Muhammad Ali, Julie Kione) in Boswell's collection.

By not including himself, Tobias Wolff has edited The Best Celebrations of the citiest cities lous prose no less significant than his tortured body. Almost a third of these essays appeared first in The New Yorker, a fifth in Harper's. Which says something about their editors' judgment, and perhaps about the magazines' rates of pay. David Denby's return to Columbia to study Lit. Hum.

as an adult reveals that the Iliad is "shocking" totally alien to us. Louise Erdrich on skunks; Stephen Jay Gould on publication bias against negative findings; Lucy Grealey on reconstructive facial surgery; Vicki Hearne on apes as comedians; Lauren Slater on counselling a sociopath; Paul Theroux on the late Bruce Chatwin all illuminate. Perhaps they act as revelations for the reader because we observe the author in the act of learning while writing. No foregone conclusions that is implicit in the etymology of essai, "to to endeavour. To exert the "unconquerable will" in writing.

Don Anderson'1: new toUedinn ol Sex Text, mil he published hy Randf': House May new DAPHNE GUINNESS ETHIOPIA VITH A MULE By Dervla Murphy lamingo. SI 6.95 TIMELESS adventure writing about Ethiopia is possible. The whiff of rock-hewn churches and shonky priests is as strong in this 1968 book as it was years later Hying up the Historic Route and hearing of the intrepid Donkey Lady. Ethiopian time never changes: their 1 2 am is our 6 am. logical.

The new day begins at dawn, not when one goes to bed. And. even now, to visit a tukul (mud hut) in a compound, the year might as well be 1095 a 1995'. WITNESS TO MY LIFE Edited by Simone de Beauvuir Penguin, 44Spp, $16.95 THAT old three-face, Jean-Pau! Sartre, really put it on Simone. Someone asks in the preface what women saw in him? What, indeed? These letters to his lover from 1926 to 1939 are full of odious flatteries and explicit detail about his conquests of other women.

Yet she published nearly all, cutting a few embarrassing references to people still alive. That may be corrected in time, say the translators. CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS New Edition Edited bv Aneela Partington OUP, 5.81 pp, SI 8.95 TWO Yanks at Oxford, one Queen and one Oz. Bill Clinton's quote, "I experimented with marijuana, I didn't like it and I didn'r inhale" is in. So is George Bush "read my lips: no new Queen Elizabeth's 1992 "ha turned out to be an annus horribilus" makes it.

Likewise Paul Keatings "these are the same old fogies who doffed' their lids and tugged the forelock to the British referring to Pom Tory supporters in Australia. 1992. permits us imaginatively to experience other receptivities. Like the two other collections under review, Wolffs anthology appends biographical sketches and a list of "other distinguished stories" a sort of second XI. He also lists editorial addresses of American and Canadian magazines which may assist our fiction exporters.

Doubtless because of my "particular I found The observe the author in the act of learning while writing. Best American Essays the most interesting of these three volumes. In Rushdie in the Louvre, Cynthia Ozick observes of terrorism: "The arsenal of. intellect what we mean by the principles or intuitions of culture is helpless before such willed, wild atrocity: anybody here might overnight ambitious, due less to the lucidity of Homberger's words than to the striking maps, charts and illustrations assembled by his cartographic consultant Alice Hudson. Typically imaginative and informative is the reconstruction of gangland New York, with a splendid map and morgue shots showing the "turfs, hits and haunts" of various groups of operators such as the Hudson Dusters, the Gophers, the Five Points.

Fourth Avenue Tunnel and Gyp the Blood's Lennox Avenue gangs. It's the sort of stuff that would have native New Yorker Susan Sontag pining for the provinces. John Huxley is a much-travelled associate editoroflhe Herald. American Short Stories with a consummate modesty. It may be an index of the variousness of American writing, if not of the sheer bulk of its population, that Wolffs anthology of 21 writers has only one in common with Jay Mclnerney's rather more chic 1994 collection of 16 "new American Cowboys.

Indians and Commuters (Viking). So the Native American Sherman Alexie is doubly blessed and is a talent worth watching. I confess to being familiar with but two of Wolffs contributors Robert Olen Butler and Barry Hannah. Wolff chose blind, having contributors' names blacked out Eight of his 21 contributors are women: the same proportion, reversed, as Louise Erdrich chose for the previous years' anthology. "What can you make of this?" Wolff asks.

"The only answer is that with the best will in the world, neither she nor I could escape the particular receptivities that make us who we are." Yet isn't that why we read, and why the short story and the novel are indispensable humanising forces? Reading them New York? Significantly, perhaps, the final page of Homber-ger's book carries the verdict of John Steinbeck: New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten little children, its traffic is madness. But there is one thing about it once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. Of course, that was in 1953. How much has changed, for better or worse, is described in The Historical Atlas of New York, which is subtitled "a visual celebration of nearly 400 years of New York City's Of the three books, it is the least gushing, but arguably the most MY FEBRUARY Behind the Lines column provoked a letter from Bowral (in deploring my having referred to our new poodle as a Twice.

This, my correspondent upbraided, was a vile Americanism, an expression from the bowels of the Bronx. Though the New Shorter' Oxford Dictionary does not specify a US derivation for "pooch" and, while I heard the executive editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, Susan Butler, say on the radio the other day that Australians are "linguistically libertarian when it comes to American spellings and usages, I sense from the Letters page of the Herald, if no further, that there is a vehement anti-American(ism) contingent out there. Dare to update Alfred J. Prufrock, wear my baseball cap reversed? It is with some trepidation that I write about three American prose anthologies. I may not be the best judge of The Best American Sports Writing, given that the closest I come to sport these days is walking the A PLACE IN THE WORLD CALLED PARIS Edited by Steven Barclay Chronicle, 168pp, S35 ISBN 0 81 18 0586 7 LONDON By John Russell Thames Hudson, 256pp, $79.95 ISBN 0 8109 3570 8 THE HISTORICAL ATLAS OF NEW YORK By Eric Homberger Holt, ISBN 0 8050 2649 5 Reviewed by JOHN HUXLEY of the cabbie's good Oh, really? Though he has spent the past 20 years in "happy exile" in New York, Russell is an erudite, engaging and, above all, affectionate guide to London.

While the Paris book has simple black and white line drawings, Russell's is liberally sprinkled with sumptuous images (Turner and Rowlandson, Gainsborough and Reynolds) and illuminating quotes. For example, he approvingly quotes Wilkie Collins's description of the London bus "a perambu-latory exhibition-room of the eccentricities of human Yet Russell's book remains unashamedly idiosyncratic, unstint-ingly personal. And why" not? He was brought up in the capital, was educated and married there (more than once, he explains) and worked at several of the city's great institutions, including the Tate Gallery, the Admiralty, Times Newspapers and even Westminster Abbey, where he served on wartime firefighting duty. He lived at no fewer than 10 London addresses though, significantly, for those of us who never venture south of the Thames for fear of being left stranded by riots, Southern Region rail strikes and, yes, Mr Collins, staff shortages on ll --V akmmmifsX) 7 mi Mill i A- gfe ilriM'n Sw' l- tfAFRfc -JSZ Iiwr become Rushdie. The academy's president Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz, has already been Rushdie a human being pitilessly-hunted as prey." Permit me to extrapolate the essay as a form of expression manifests forth just that "arsenal of the intellect" that Ozick celebrates in Salman Rushdie and, in an inspired connection, Henry James.

Of course, the essay may overlap with sport, and the series editor's foreword cites William Hazlitt's great essay of 1821, TJie Fight, an eyewitness report. The essay is a speculative genre, but it also bears witness as the novelist Stanley Elkin's account of how the medication administered to him to assuage his multiple sclerosis sent him mad, crazy, out of his tree attests. The volume spans through to from Nicholson Baker on the semi-colon to John Updike on not the colon, but the penis. Which seems only appropriate, as the brilliant young Baker is the author of a book "about" the brilliant older Updike, and I (1991). Thus this volume embraces text and sex, with Elkin's miracu OTHER PEOPLE'S MARRIAGES By Rosie Thomas Penguin.

559pp, $12.95 BONKING on a car bonnet in the rain. Is this a first for American fiction? Anyway, into the Grafton clique comes the rich and newly widowed Nina, anxious to renew life with old friends after her husband's death. But her exotic arrival triggers off all kinds of action: money, sex, cruelty and adultery vie for attention on every page, yet what sounds like garbage is in fact a clever probe into middle-class suburban morals. Updike did it better but Thomas knows the unisex barber set: one colour, cut, blow-dry and manicure into the plot and clients won't even twitch at the bill. They will identify and stay glued.

LOVE IN VEIN Edited by Poppy Z. Brite HarperPrism, 405pp, SI 9.95 WITH a reputation as America's zingiest dark fantasy author (she writes like an angel, her Drawing Blood received rapturous rap), what's a girl to do next without overloading the vampire genre? Put fang-writing on hold and invite sympatico scribblers to tackle the subject. These tales of vampire erotica will either thrill or sicken. Actually, PZB's next novel, Exquisite Corpse, takes a fresh career twist into serial killers, AIDS terrorism and necrophilia. Aunt Mildred, don't look.

HARDY By Martin Seymour-Smith Bloomsbury, 886pp, $34.95 THE opening sentence says Thomas Hardy, the writer, was born dead. Then the nurse exclaims: "Dead? Stop a minute, he's alive!" Which is more than can be said of this tome. TEDDYBEAR STORIES FOR GROWN-UPS Compiler Catherine Taylor Pan, 214pp, $12.95 GOOD for a chuckle before lights out Shooting Teddy Bears Is No Picnic reveals a jealous husband who murders to make his wife kick the cuddly habit The unnamed teddy in the Titanic Bear doesn't drown he floats to fame and fortune. In Tedperfect, Henry's childhood bear hacks into his WordPerfect, puts his bizsex life in order, signs off, then turns beastly. DH0296 STATE LilJKARY OF NEW SOUTH WAUS $4 Town Hail Manufactured Homes Finance.

Health. Leisure anri Hicreauon FREE DEVONSHIRE Tues 4th, October 28, 1941. St Paul's Cathedral miraculously left standing after German bombers had flattened Cannon Street from 7770 Chronicles of London by Andrew Saint and Gillian Darley, Allen and Unwin, 320pp, $49.95. HELL with the rovinces. writes el Susan Sonta tak ing up her pen in praise of big cities in the foreword to A Place in the World called Paris.

And not just Paris, but all big cities. For, as she freely confesses, "a lover of cities is usually Or perhaps merely promiscuous. Anyway, three books; three big cities. Slick New York, sexy Paris and statuesque, if slightly staid, old London. Very definitely different, but each seductive in her own way.

Steven Barclay's anthology is thin, but deliciously thick with observations about the City of Light from writers as diverse as Adolf Hitler on art school and Erica Jong on seedy hotels, to Truman Capote on visiting Colette and Franz Kafka on riding the Metro. Not everyone bills and coos over boulevards and cafes. The American travel writer Bill Bryson suggests Paris is one of the least walker-friendly cities in the world: At the Arc de Triomphe alone 13 roads come together. Can you imagine that? I mean, here you have a city with the world's most pathologically aggressive drivers drivers who in other circumstances would be given injections of Thorazine from syringes the size of bicycle pumps and confined to their beds with leather straps and you can give them an open space where they can all try to go in any of 13 directions at once. Is that asking for trouble or what? Visitors to London will know that the Marble Arch has its moments, Trafalgar Square its tribulations.

But it is difficult to imagine John Russell being quite so caustic. Heavens, the dear man even speaks kindly of London taxis "ample, almost "democracy made with a "fabled potential for intimacy" and London taxi-drivers. Passengers, he promises, will be "warmed by the sunshine For Grants are London Transport's "perambula-tory exhibition rooms" all were on the northside. The intrepid Russell holds no such fears as he pokes around in the corners of the capital high and humble though he does have his blind spots. Science, sport and, especially, social problems receive only swift-passing reference.

Russell also recalls how, after taking James Thurber and his wife to dinner, the great American "drafts-man-cum-storyteller" asked to be taken on to "the Come again? "Where is it the place that people go?" demanded Thurber. "There's always a place." Nonplussed, Russell confesses: "As a nighthawk I had no creden award of up to tials then and have even fewer today. I have a horror of gambling. I can't dance. I have never set foot in a nightclub.

I never drink after dinner." More important than knowing the current Russell has a compelling, celebratory if occasionally quaint sense of place and of place in history. His is a living, breathing, brawling, sprawling, constantly changing London that, despite being choked by many of the extreme pressures of urban existence, remains one of the few "great" cities of the world where it is possible for most people to lead a civilised life for most of the time. Can the same still be said of NEW AUTHORS PUBLISH YOUR WORK AU SUBJECTS CONSIDERED Fiction, Non-Fiction, Biography. Ftoltgious. Podtry.

CtHtdrens AUTHORS WORLD-WIDE INVITED Wnte ot send your manuscript to MINERVA PRESS 2 OLD BROMPTON ROAO. LONDON SW7 3 DO. K. $45,416 ($39,909 YOUNG AUSTRALIANS and ORGANISATIONS now being awarded to help YOUNG AUSTRALIANS, aged 18 to 28 years, in the tjff S' ASCHAM 152j SCHOOL VI tT ANIMO Pursuit of Excellence and personal development in their chosen fields. ORGANISATIONS supporting youth with a special project may also apply.

515,000 in any one year may be awarded. In addition, a special national lEVrEMENT llFE STYLE lEISURE tfjps. CvM'nmOM TEA 10am-8pm, Wed 5th and Thurs 5th, $25,000 to honour SIR EDWARD DUNLOP'S memory, may be made to a YOUNG AUSTRALIAN ACHIEVER displaying special qualities of character and community service. APPLICATIONS CLOSE APRIL 30-APPLYNOW PHOSE 008 033 625 or write GPO 495 Sydney NSW 2001 Ascliam School has the following scholarships-available in 1996: The Gretel Packer Scholarship This scholarship, given hy Mr Kerry Packer in memory of his mother, covers all tuition and boarding fees from Grade 6 entry 1 1 years of age) to the Higher School Gertificatc. The scholarship is means tested and awarded on the basis of a competitive examination on Saturday, 27th May, 1 995 and an interview.

Ascham is a non-denominational school for girls from Kindergarten to Higher School Certificate with hoarding available from Grade 6(11 years of age) RLLS I II I I I SOI I I PETER LOCK'S LITERARY JOURNEY Some of Australia's most memorable literary works were written about parts of Australia simply too remote to $55,081 Salary Package to $48,402 p.a. Base Salary) The Australian Film Television and Radio School is the national creative centre for professional training for the film and broadcasting industries. The School is seeking a highly qualified and experienced film and television drama production lecturer to work in association with the Head of Producing in the design and implementation of courses for producers. The Position: The successful applicant will be required to develop and deliver a range of producing courses and work closely with students in the creative development of their ideas and projects. The position will be Sydney based but may involve occasional interstate and regional travel.

ExperienceSkills: The person we are looking for must be able to work with ideas and have an understanding of business and entrepreneurial aspects of the Australian film and television industry. A thorough knowledge of and extensive experiene in all areas of film and television production are required with the ability to communicate aspects of producing and production management from a practical point of view. Terms and Conditions: The position is available on a contract basis for a period of up to four years (with the possibility of access to a further two years). Please note that the position can only be offered to an applicant with Australian Citizenship or with Permanent Residency status. Enquiries: These should be directed to Gilda Baracchion (02) 805 6561.

It is in the applicant's interest to contact Personnel on (02) K05 6434 for a copy of the Position Description and Selection Criteria prior to drafting an application. Applications: Written applications giving full details of qualifications and experience should be forwarded to: The Human Resources Manager Australian Film Television and Radio School PO Box 126, North Ryde NSW 2 1 13. Closing Date for Applications: 19 April 1995.. The Ascham Foundation Scholarship The Ascham Foundation has established a scholarship for entry in Grade 6. The scholarship will cover part of the tuition fees but no boarding fees and will be awarded on the basis of the results of the competitive examination to be held on Saturday, 27th May, 1995, school reports, an interview and the completion of a confidential statement by parents.

presents Isaac Nathan: A Musical Celebration Thursday 30 March 1W5 at 6.00 pm Oscar Wilde 100: A Seminar Saturday 1 April: 1.00am 5.00 pm An Evening zritli Elizabeth Jolley Thursday 11 April at 6.00 pm Ml 'events $20.00 earh Booking, and prepay men essential on 02 230 1500 The Frontiers of Our Ignorance Great Questions Science Has Yet to Answer A FREE public lecture by Sir John Maddox, Editor of Nature Monday 27 March at 6pm Clancy Auditorium The University of New South Wales Pedestrian access: Gate 9, High Street, Randwick Parking: Gate 11, Botany Street, Randwick Life, the universe and everything what other puzzles remain for scientists to unravel? Sir John Maddox, Editor of the London-based popular and influential science magazine. Nature, will take a look into our future. Refreshments will be provided. There is no charge, but those wishing to attend are asked to advise the Protocol Office, preferably by fax on (02) 662 4241, otherwise by phone on (02) 385 31 1 2. Lf many I jTl I On the Vwnti Peter Luck escort a select group of fortunate travellers to discover many of the 1 outback areas that have provided the inspiration for many of Australia's best loved 10 12th June.

1995 will 252 053. AIRCRUI5JMG AUSTRALIA Aur Untatf AC (HO 484 H. 0M fc 162 Uc No. 2TM03S7 authors and poets. Explore this spectacular continent in first class comfort and style aboard Aircruising Australia's exclusive aircraft, with the very best available accommodation and excellent meals all inclusive.

French Horn Scholarship A French Horn Scholarship is otfered to a girl who will be at least 1 4 years of age in 1 996. A good standard of performance is essential, as is the ability to keep up with the academic work of the school. The scholarship covers up to full tuition fees, depending on circumstances. To fiBd out mare about this extraordinary journey, contact Aircruising Australia on Phone (02) 693 2233 Western Sydney is a Great place to work Multicultural Arts Organiser required for a community arts project at Blacktown Migrant Resource Centre. For details see Employment Section under Please write for application forms to: The Headmistress Ascham Sc hool 1K8 New South Head Road Edgeclilf.

NSW 2027 ATI UNSW Australian Film Television Radio School or tell free 1803 cJk Aacwg I PmH Tom U) AC 3S TheAFTRS is on Equal Opportunity Employer. lifts vm! viViM- 4.