The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 24

BOOKS 4C DES MOINES SUNDAY REGISTER OCTOBER 26, 1980 Dos Passos' rise and fall FROM "ALAAOS: ISLANDS LOST TtfftC" Skewering the 70s SftTlkWkis. -IV'-: root malaises of post-World War I THE LIFE OF JOHN DOS lUk-CeafrTf CVry. ly Lsdisfua its fAfts, LV lustrated); Dtta. By HERBERT COLD I wiNft usual rmrm mockingbirds, like the birds' acting as Tni De Roy Moore's camera captures a common Galapagos sight: Iguanas give the privilege of a perch to on the Galapagos IN OUR TIME, by Tom Wolfe (lit pages, illustrated); Farrar Straus Gironx, lt5. By HARRY EAGAR AS ONE of the few writers to make money from essays, Tom Wolfe has stuck to a simple method: He walks down a street, usually in Manhattan, casting bilious glances at passers-by.

"Look," he cries, pointing: "There is an emperor without any clothes! And there, and there. "In Our Time" is a little essay on the 1970s, titled after Ernest Hemingway's first little book, which also was a series of bitter vignettes. Wolfe, however, is funny, while Hemingway was humorless. As essays go, "In Our Time" is a very good one, though the price is rather high. That is because 10 pages of Wolfe's prose are followed by 100 pages of bis drawings.

Many are repeated from his earlier books. Wolfe's special strength is that he can add and divide, which has been invaluable to his success as a trend-spotter. He writes: "I keep hearing the 1970s described as a lull, a rest period, following the uproars of the 1960s. I couldn't disagree more. With the single exception of the student New Left movement which evaporated mysteriously in 1970 the uproars did not subside in the least." He attributes this to the "boom of the unparalleled dispersion of money throughout the industrialized world.

Unlike the handwringers, Wolfe has done his math. He has not been blind to the fact that ordinary people in the 1970s had about twice the real income of people in the 1950s, perhaps three times that of the 1940s. He notes that the 19th-century socialists expected the proletariat to reach for the finer things in life once they got a big slice of the pie. Wolfe says they did so, indeed, only it turned out that what they regarded as finer things were Winnebagos, electronic TV games and season tickets to the Chicago Bears football games. (Pick your own list; Wolfe's list is second homes, vacations in Venice, sports cars and calfskin trench coats.) "Yet the pursuit of pleasure, like most monomanias, carries the seeds of spirituality," he says, trying to explain why materialism spawned so many astrologers, Zen Buddhists, ecofreaks, Jonestown pioneers and so on.

Lyric eye GALAPAGOS The Islands Lost in Time, by Tni De Roy Moore, with an Introduction by Peter Matthiessen (294 pages); Viking, $ZS. By ELIZABETH BALLANTINE Register Staff Writer "OR SCIENTISTS from I Darwin to Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I the fascinating Galapagos Archipelago, off the coast of Ecuador, has played a unique role in understanding the process of evolution. Like a simplified display of a complicated formula, the islands demonstrate how isolation and evolution have worked to form new and different types of animals and plants. This book is more than a coffee-table display of gorgeous photographs of that strange and exotic place. It's also a lyric evocation of the childhood of a young Belgian woman whose own evolution from infant to adult took place on the Galapagos Islands.

Tui De Roy Moore moved to the islands as a 2-year-old with her parents in 1956. Like homesteaders the world over, they lived in primitive circumstances, first on the green highlands of Santa Cruz, one of the largest islands, then down by the sea. They raised their own food, hunted and fished along with the local wildlife and made friends with the birds and tame goats. At that time, only about 400 persons lived on Santa Cruz, most of them Ecuadorians. Once every four to Los Angeles Tn 6 AN UNFLAGGING JA.Ludi2toa about the nag.j Jui fOz: 'user life of John Dcs Pisses unuartSs li most essential paiioj l-ivi uiofrwt Dos Passes' career He was a "wr.ua cc cf the writinges: ef a r.iju included Ernes: Fitzgerald and Edmund Wilson among its stars.

Althocgii kaewn as a novelist like Hemizgway and P.aer- aid, Dos Passos played a roi that was more like that of the "man of letters" in the Coconectal fashion, like Wilson. Among the readers of my tion, the trilogy "USA" was ooe of the exciting and inciting books, ranking with the first books of Thomas Wolfe. the stories of Hemingway, the jeweled lyricism of Fitzgerald. "USA" was read by all undergraduates in American Literature, not because of the story running through it often turgid, with blurred protagonists but because of the rhapsodies and arias, the Joycean news-eels, the attempt to grasp the vastness of America, the biting profiles of the heroes of the time, men like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, and the quacks and inventors and bosses and politicians. We saw Dos Passos as an elegant radical, stylishly without style.

He mediated modernism to us through a diction combining Harvard and newspaper jargon and Paris and the inventive stylists of the Bohemian in-ternationale. In addition, we saw him he saw himself as a radical, attacking the John Dos Passos 'if t.fl I Pitching and potshooting America. Young readers and writers took to him as they always do to a friend, pouring their own needs and desires and hopes into this angry and affable vessel. Alas, Dos Passos grew older, perhaps sooner than he should have. Aliough not forgotten so completely as what's-his-narne, the author of "By Love his later books lost is earnest audience while gaining aim a Reader's Digest, right-wing cotene of readers.

As his heart failed, his faith in the future failed. In addition to the congestive heart failure that finally killed him, be was choked by hatred oi Roosevelt and do-gooding, dislike-of Jews arid blacks, disdain for the new and distrust, dismay, disconnection. The radical of the 1930s welcomed Nixon's bombings of Cambodia in 1970. DOESN'T help any writer when his books and ideas are no longer taken seriously. Although Passos went in quest of stoicism, self-reliance, friendship, love the verities that might console him for neglect his pain comes through clearly in this detailed and serious biography.

He can be forgiven his rant about the New Left and at this stage In his life, he was out of touch and out of influence. Townsend Ludington, who edited a collection of Dos Passos' letters and diaries, "The Fourteenth Chronicle," has had the cooperation of the estate and the friends of Dos Passos. This is an "authorized" work, with all the advantages and difficulties the term implies. The advantage is one of completeness; the difficulty is a certain pressure to avoid energetic criticism of the subject Nevertheless, this is honest work, and enough of the evidence comes through to enable the reader to make his or her own judgment That the biographer clearly likes his subject, is sympathetic to his career, is not a disadvantage. For the rest of us, sometimes homesick for the '30s, for bread lines and revolution, for Spain and hunger marches, the life of John Dos Passos' provides a fresh return to picked-over country.

The detail about the "precious" side of Dos Passos' career the Paris-aesthete period adds to the immense and continously fascinating literature of expatriation. Among the writers of the time, Dos Passos was not like the others he was special and separate; and if he was not one of the great ones, his life provides another chance to evaluate the career of the writer in 20th-century America. We do not live in what Dos Passos hoped might be "the serene white light of a reasonable world." For any novel, but especially for a first one, this one is remarkably well-plotted and well-structured. The loose ends are tied up at the end; "Confederacy" is pretty funny, sometimes, and it is one of the few books with genuinely readable Southern dialect. But Toole, in the end, misses his mark.

Ignatius isn't a true genius, he's a true non-joiner. The dunces whose pretensions Ignatius aims himself against mostly are harmless flakes who aren't in league against anyone. There's no one in the confederacy mean enough or even focused enough to satirize. 6 A CONFEDERACY of wSl Dunces" has garnered vV attention in no small JL. JfaLpart because of the circumstances that surrounded its publication.

Toole had tried, unsuccessfully, to get the book published in the 1960s. He committed suicide in 1969. One could hypothesize that he was despondent over his book's non-publication, but that may not be the reason at all. Toole's mother, Thelma, finally was able to get writer Walker Percy to read her son's manuscript. Percy had the literary weight to get it published, and, in fact, he has written a glowing foreword to the novel.

Percy, too, acknowledges that the fascination with the book is with Toole as well as Toole's characters. "I think all this interest) is because of a combination of two things: the extraordinary quality of the novel 'and the tragic story of Toole's death. You hate to think so, but suicide seems to help sell books." One could argue with Percy, as I would, about whether the quality of the novel is extraordinary, but he was right in making the effort to get "A Confederacy of Dunces" published. Toole's "satire" isn't satire, but he created a complete world with his novel, an accomplishment that many serious writers don't even aim for any more. Walker Percy and Thelma Toole are right, and the rejecting publishers were wrong.

John Kennedy Toole has been vindicated, but not in time. 5 the one above, and finches in return for tick-removers. make the process of evolution obvious, the marine and land iguanas, the giant tortoises, petrels, frigates, boobies and gulls, geysers, fumaroles and five active volcanos the list goes on. There's a note of sadness as the author sees her garden of Eden invaded by tourists, who bring the inevitable modernization roads, houses and waste. But she's pleased that these precious islands, under management of the Ecuadorian government as a national park, form one of the most strictly managed parks in the world.

Moore's photographic skills were discovered by Peter Matthiessen when he visited the Galapagos while preparing an article for Audubon magazine. He and his photographer skeptically agreed to examine the young girl's portfolio. Their skepticism turned to amazement, and her photograph of a giant tortoise became the magazine's cover illustration. Her photographs have since appeared in numerous magazines. In the simple course of growing up amid her subject matter, Moore has been able to concentrate on capturing the most remote and revealing aspects of the islands, views that have eluded photographers with more limited time and access to remote areas.

This is a rewarding book. The only improvement would be to visit the islands yourself and then you would appreciate Moore's observations even more. pretation of Juliet, and there's a daydreaming professor of humanities called Kugelmass who revels in an interlude with Emma Bovary in the excellent English translation, of course. Allen's curves occasionally turn into bloopers. "The Query," a weird meditation on why someone asked Abraham Lincoln how long he thought a man's legs should be, ought to have been cut off at the eyebrows.

Somewhere, an editor liked it, and somewhere, there's a reader who'll tune in to even this juvenile excursion into fantasy. MOCKING FATE, corrupt politicians and late buses, Allen skewers the pretentious, portentous horrible-horizons commencement message in "My Speech to the Graduates." The curve holds, and so does the humor. "We are adrift alone in the cosmos wreaking monstrous violence on one another out of frustration and pain. Fortunately, we have not lost our sense of proportion. Summing up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities.

It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock." Allen's is a neat juggling act, keeping the spirit aware that while the puny individual may not matter in the long run, he makes the abort run bearable. GENERAL I. CRISIS INVESTINO, by Doaflu R. Cuoy.

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dunces six months a small ship sailed in from the port of Guayaquil, bringing such essentials as flour, sugar, matches and mail. Moore and her younger brother grew up amid this vast wilderness. They swam and played with the fur seals, befriended finches and ferral goats and spent many hours simply, observing the rich tapestry of birth and death woven through a centuries' long competition for survival. Moore's photographs capture the island's strange, harsh topography, 'In the simple course of growing up amid her subject matter, Moore has captured the most remote and revealing aspects of the islands. the wild, fearless animals, and the exotic, colorful plants.

She includes stunning pictures of erupting volcanos and their steamy caldera; plants and animals even have adapted to an existence there. Moore's text is absorbing and rich in description. Reaching beyond the remarkable perimeters of the book's setting, Moore displays a keen sense of scientific observation. She examines the 13 varieties of Darwin's finches, still so closely related as to Woody Allen malcino it laugh. Predictably, the food went down the wrong pipe, and choking occurred.

Grasping the mouse firmly by the tail, I snapped it like a small uhtp, and the morsel of cheese came loose." Ah, the "tailsnap procedure," good for almost as many laughs as the romantic preoccupations deciding between a sexy daughter and her sexier mother of one Harold Cohen in "Retribution" and the delicious odor of barbecued reviewer in a parody of restaurant critiques, "Fabrizio's: Criticism and Response." There's a Marxist interpretation of Fabrizio's, there's a Marxist inter Best sellers (Fram Tht Nw Virt Tknn) FICTION THK IKT REBECCA, ky la Pollttt. (Morrow, tltf). t. FnUSTAHTn, Vj SUptaa U. (Vtktot HUM.

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RANDOM WINDS, by Batra PUla. (DtlarorU, III. M). ft 7 HI'I 'l -jt Hi AVING ESTABLISHED his ground, he then devotes paragraph to each thing in the '70s that he thinks was significant: disco, Johnny Rotten, British soap operas, George McGovern, the movie "The Great Gatsby," Elvis Presley, Jonestown, designer jeans, box-office smashes, hand-held calculators, Alex Haley, Perrier water, light beer, Muhammad All, short hair, South Vietnam, Woody Allen, brain research, People magazine, Richard Nixon, ghetto-blaster radios and the New Left. Wolfe gave the "Me Decade" its name (though it's usually miscalled the "Me and this new essay is an attempt to explain what he really meant in the earlier essay: "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening." It reminds me of Susan Sontag's trying to explain what she really meant by "camp," after it had been taken over by the popular press and turned into "high camp," "low camp," etc.

We sure take ourselves seriously. Which is lucky for Tom Wolfe and his Drawing Pencil. Wolfe draws the way he capitalizes words right out of the 18th century. That is, the technique is reminiscent of the sketches any well-educated young grandee would make to illustrate his Grand Tour of the Continent after he left Eton. Though Wolfe's caricatures have been noticed in one-man shows and by museums, I find them less memorable than the captions.

Like this one, called "The Birds and the Bees," under a picture of a middle-aged man, a boy and a dog in a duck blind: "No, no, son, that's not how it works. When you're forty-five or fifty, you'll get a new wife, a young one, a girl in her twenties." "What happens to the old one?" "Well, she opens up a needlepoint shop and sells yarn to her friends and joins a discussion group." Harry Eagar Is a Register copy editor. Tom Wolfe SIDE EFFECTS, by Woody Allen (149 pages); Random House, $8.95. By JOAN BUNKE Boole and Arts Editor THIRD gallimaufry of irreverent absurdist fiction by Woody Allen manages to ti be droll, mocking, percep tive, unpretentious, and uneven like a lot of the work of the filmmaker and writer. When Allen's funny, he's very funny; when he misfires, the click is louder than a cannonade.

Fortunately for readers, most of "Side Effects" a collection of pieces reprinted from the New Yorker and New Republic magazines and The Kenyon Review consists of bull's-eye potshots by a literary rifleman who seems to take himself less seriously than his critics and fans seem to take him, and themselves. A sense of proportion and a sharp eye for perspective are lovely qualities. The clutch of humorless critics of Allen who've been stung by the sport he makes of them in his latest movie, "Stardust Memories" (and here New York magazine's heavily wounded David Denby comes to mind) might profit from reading a piece like Allen's "The Shallowest Man." In his needling, mock-erudite manner, Allen chips away at the shabby psyche of Lenny Mendel, an opportunist who spends much of the story analyzing why he is putting off a visit to a dying card-player-friend and the rest of it dealing with the fact that his motivation is a comely blonde. "The Shallowest Man" is about points of view and it's also an amusing commentary on the depth, or lack thereof, in many lives. Allen habitually punctures pretentiousness.

He loves to do a long, careful windup and then throw a curve, as in "The Condemned," an existentialist free-for-all "Ah, God, how the mind boggles when it turns to moral or ethical considerations! Better not to think too much. Rely more on the body the body is more dependable. It shows up for meetings, it looks good in a sports jacket, and where it really comes in handy is when you want to get a rubdown." He throws another in "A Giant Step for Mankind," in which he makes a comic meal of imagining the laboratory development of the Heimlich hug, developed to combat what seemed a veritable epidemic of choking diners: "Working around the clock, we induced strangulation in a mouse. This was accomplished by coaxing the rodent to ingest healthy portions of Gouda cheese and then A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, by John Kennedy Toole (338 pages); Louisiana State University Press, $12.95. By RHONDA DICKEY THIS satiric novel, set in modern New Orleans, it often is hard to determine what is being The book's title is taken from Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." The "true genius" of Toole's novel is 30-year-old Ignatius J.

Reilly, who lives with his mother, who sports a green hunting cap and excess weight and who sets down in Big Chief tablets his views on the regrettable turn of history since the Reformation. To call him eccentric is to put it He haunts movie houses and department stores for examples of bad taste; he is never disappointed. Here's Ignatius watching a rock-music TV program: "'Do I believe the total perversion that I am Ignatius screamed from the Thpro'r ni nno in the confederacy mean enough or even jocusea enough to satirize. panor. ine music naa a irantic, trinai rhythm; a chorus of falsettos sang insinuatingly about loving all night lnno" Ignatius Reilly's goal in life, since repeat oi ine neiormauon is impossible, is total anarchy.

His victories along the way are small. The confederacy of dunces includes, among others, his mother, whose drinking and bowling irritate him constantly; Police Officer who, doing penance, is pa-, trolling public restrooms for evidence of vice; and some characters employed at the Night of Joy bar. Rhonda Dickey is a member of The Register's editorial writers depart ment..