St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 36

It. January 15, 197K ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH book reviews lPeace With Reason m( y) JgagggLJ Wf Andrea McArdle as Annie (photo at left, being paddled by Dorothy Loudon), and Elsie Leslie, at right The Stars Are Small And 'Preshus page, Nancy Etheredge is credited as the volume's designer. If she indeed is responsible for this marvelous layout, her name should appear in capital letters on the title page! These seemingly countless production, rehearsal and backstage photos speak of humor and eloquence about the nature of the Broadway musical experience. Every time Charnin's breezy narrative begins to wane, there's yet another captivating picture of Andrea McArdle or Sandy, the dog, to bring a smile to your face and keep you reading.

Still, Charnin almost spoils everything when he brashly concludes, "The merchandising of this kind of event is comparable to what happened only one time before in the history of the theater when Snoopy and Charlie Brown became so successful the field is wide open. There will be 'Annie' jewelry 'Annie' toys 'Annie' patterns for dresses 'Annie' lockets 'Annie' towels 'Annie' T-shirts" and, need we add, "Annie" memoirs like this one. Despite Charnin's cynical tone, the book is joyously designed and a delight to view. In the long run, it probably has a lot more to offer than an "Annie" towel. Just don't expect the Elsie Leslie style of quaintness and especially not purity.

They aren't here. Dennis Brown narration is not as complete as it should be and one is left with various unanswered questions (especially about Elsie's later life). But it is difficult to imagine anyone especially young actresses failing to be entranced by the purity of this delicate book. Although 90 years have passed since Elsie Leslie enchanted America, perhaps it's more than coincidence that today's "hottest ticket" on Broadway is not for Liza Minelli, not for Anne Bancroft or Yul Brynner. No, it's to see young Andrea McArdle in "Annie," the musical based on the characters in the Little Orphan Annie comic strip.

"Annie: A Theatre Memoir" purports to be "the whole wonderful backstage story of Broadway's smash hit musical by 'Annie's' co-creator, lyricist and director." Martin Charnin spent six years getting his show produced, but it appears that he has spent only about six days writing this book. His text has all the depth and perception of an interview on Dinah Shore's TV show. But don't let that turn you off! After all, we live in a multimedia world, and an external text no longer necessitates a bad book. Charnin's behind-the-scenes saga has been salvaged, miraculously, by the most fascinating and fun graphic layout I've encountered in a book of this type. At the very bottom of the final how brilliant Kissinger's tactics often were and how barren his strategy could be.

There is an unpleasant note in this book of second-guessing, of amusement at the difficulties which others have in becoming immersed in complexities and failing to sort out means and ends. Certainly the American policy has always been exceptionally beset by paradoxes. How could a country be an ally and arms supplier of both Israel and Jordan, an associate of Russia in establishing world order and also a fierce foe of Soviet influence. The situation has been Bismarckian, at least since 1967, so it is no surprise that Kissinger, a pupil of the Iron Chancellor, should have tried to solve the problem. But what really is the problem? Quandt has not merely written an essay in modern diplomatic history, he has (like all the others) tried to see how the conflict could be resolved, and, as he is an influential participant in American decision-making about the Middle East, this book is worth studying for its own ideas as well as its treatment of others' viewpoints.

It seems clear that he is speaking for many others when he suggests that the Six Day War was truly a blessing. Since 1967 most of the Arabs have tacitly quit proposing the elimination of Israel, so that the issues of the dispute are within the range of agreement. After 1973 everyone had had their share of bloody setbacks; the remaining task is to apply reason where unreason had dominated. In this Quandt agrees completely with Kissinger, even when he faults his over-smoothness and desire for elegant solutions. There is only so much the United States can do, it is possible to bribe and cajole only so much.

Since Quandt and it is undeniable that he speaks here for the bulk of official American opinion accepts that the crucial moves toward peace must be made in the Middle East, by Middle Easterners, he shows little patience with what seems to him to be retrograde moves. The book ends at the eve of Sadat's journey to Jerusalem, so to speak, and the long hoped-for face to face peace conference is unfolding. This book may be smug or self-satisfied, but it presses a challenge which adherents of each side must consider. Quandt outlines a decade of talk about the prerequisites of peace; now is the time for hard concessions. Joseph Losos Petrarch work published 30 years ago.

That older work, like Mortimer's selection, is skillfully done in English rhyme and meter with the Italian and English texts on facing pages. While Mortimer translated just 46 poems, Ms. Armi translated all 366 poems, certainly a labor of rare dedication. Still, Mortimer's selection contains enough of Petrarch's finest work to acquaint us with that poet's themes, style and vision. This new translation has the flavor of the poet's own idiom, and we can easily see how Petrarch's imagery follows Dante's, as in these lines from canzone 129: "From thought to thought, from mountainside to mountainLove leads me on" "Among high mountains and wild woods I find some kind of rest" "Where a tall pine-tree or a hill gives shade sometimes I stop, and on the nearest stone my mind will draw her face" "Often I've seen (who will believe me the green grass or in transparent water her living self." Mortimer's Petrarch keeps the poet's elegance and strength.

This selection with its introduction and notes is basic Petrarch done in extremely good taste. Charles Guenther Susan Sontag Robert DECADE OF DECISIONS American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-1976 By William Quandt, 300 pages University of California, $14.95 God (and, of course, Allah) knows that there are plenty of books about the Arab-Israeli conflict, about the history of Zionism and the rise of Arab nationalism, and very other facet of Middle Eastern history and current affairs. However, most of these books are written from a strongly partisan viewpoint, while the others tend to be extremely dry, as if the task of disentanglement from the potent feelings of the adversaries had drained them of all wit. William Quandt, a professor who now serves on the staff of the National Security Council, has written a work of both detachment and grace. His skill in writing deserves good fortune; and it has gained it, for no more auspicious time for publication than the present can be 'imagined.

The incredibly exciting events of recent months did not come without a past, and that past is the subject of Quandt's book. He starts with the Six Day War, an obvious watershed in contemporary history. The Arabs gambled (with considerable encouragement from the Soviet Union) on altering the status quo fundamentally, and as a result of their actions was altered, but, to be sure, not in the way they had envisaged. The author develops this irony with wry understatement. The United States was not pre-' pared for the war, and Quandt shows njhow Lyndon Johnson was either too -clever by half or quite unable to domi-' hate the train of events.

Quandt suggests that the former is much less likely than the latter, that the power of our military and economic weapons could not guarantee real control over events in 1967, and has not at any time since. Johnson was succeeded by Nixon, who resolved to correct his predecessor's errors, but quickly came to repeat his efforts. There was only so much anyone could do, and especially any outside nation whose good intentions, the author maintains, often clouded its sense of reality. The Yom Kippur War offered new opportunities to Henry Kissinger, who determined to advance the old ideas of American diplomacy in new manners. Quandi emphasizes, with no little scorn, The Poetry of PETRARCH: SELECTED POEMS Translated into English by Anthony Mortimer 137 pages, Alabama, $7.95 The Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) was more than the maker of hundreds of songs and sonnets celebrating his love for a beautiful young lady named Laura.

With Dante and Boccaccio he was a father of the Italian language and, through his perfec-; tion of the sonnet form, the originator of a new school of poetry which quickly I spread to England, France and Spain. Petrarch's "scattered rhymes" were left untitled and, as critic Theodor Mommsen noted, lacked the organic unity of Dante's sonnets to Beatrice in "La vita nuova" (The New Life). Pe- trarch, who first met Laura some 35 years after Dante's work appeared in I 1292, owed much to Dante who, were it I not for his divine vision, was perhaps as much a Renaissance man as the younger I poet. Although it is out of print, the standard modern English version of Petrarch is still "Petrarch: Sonnets and Songs," translated by Anna Maria Armi and introduced by Mommsen, a 600-page Walter Jackson Bate i K'ntfui-uMjfclNiMI Rhythms Of-A Concrete World GRIEFS OF JOY Anthology of Contemporary Afro-American i Poetry for Students 4 Edited by Eugene B. Redmond 111 pages, Black River Writers, $4 "Griefs of Joy" is an "accessible" poetry anthology featuring nine black poets who think clearly and concretely about the world around which stem from personal insights about love, children, city life, blues and the black heritage are made as fresh as the yams, fireflies, "clothes-pen lingers" and violets found in some of the poems.

"Poetry, in the extended African sense, is a verbal display of the, intense presence of life," writes critic Clyde Taylor in his foreword. The writings in "Griefs of Joy" vividly illustrate the truth in this generalization. Although seven of the nine authors included teach at universities, the overall tone is far from academic. Styles range widely, from Joyce Carol Thomas' humorous pieces to Sterling Plumpp's blues-influenced poems: if i could sing blues on paper Mississippi would be more than just a river or a place where magnolias grow Some poems, such as "Dusk Song" by former St. Louisan Quincy Troupe, combine influences from both cultures, African and American: evening dusk songs descending gongs in africa baobab tree black sculpture of beauty inked snapped lithograph of fire wagon red set against screaming illuminousity of jaundiced sun stark hanging up there a lyrical silence a lyrical silence Several works describe the black culture in its American settings.

Eugene Redmond's writings contain rich sensory imagery, such as this description of Louisiana life in "Southern Creole, collard greens And hoodoo hyms against a gumbo sky The many poems which go beyond strictly black subject matter discuss everything from Yeats and Shakespeare to love and silence to the Peruvian earthquake in 1970. The anthology's paradoxical title poem, "griefs of joy," is Pinkie Gordon Lane's development of three images found in an cummings poem into a personal reflection on the nature of love. Editor Eugene Redmond has selected poets with distinctly different voices and thematic concerns, giving the book its unique diversity. Redmond, who, hails from East St. Louis and is currently literature professor at University of California at Sacramento, has edited nine other poetry volumes and has himself written several booHs.

He planned this anthology for use by students from junior high through college; the selections are suitable for this purpose and seem designed to stimulate discussion. The book also can he, appreciated by people of all ages and walks of life. It may be ordered directly, from Black River Writers (P.O. Box 2491, East St. Louis, 111.

62201). Jan Garden Castro Irish, French Mores THE SHRINE AND OTHER STORIES By Mary Lavin 156 pages, Houghton Mifflin, $6.95 SILKEN EYES Stories by Francoise Sagan 179 pages, Delacorte, $6.95 The celebrated Mary Lavin is distinctly an Irish writer, despite the fact that she was born in New England; her stories draw not only character and plot but moral form from the people and the mores of the poverty-stricken, agrarian, Catholic culture of her adopted homeland. Even though her style is simple, almost sparse, much of what she does could be described as a sort of Irish-gothic, involving characters of marginal sanity and great hidden vindictiveness. In the title story, for tyistance, a clergyman deliberately exploits a dubious miracle for commercial ournoses and coldly destroys his niece's fiance when the project is threatened. "Eter-na," involving a young doctor and a novice in a convent, might have come straight out of any current gothic paperback.

The two engage in a destructive if fleetingly brief affair which turns out to be more dreamlike than real. Lavin writes in depth and with impeccable taste in language, but I find her stories vaguely unfulfilling, as though she has captured the postures and conversations of her characters but not their hearts. Francois Sagan's pieces often are no more than vignettes, though that is not necessarily bad. They are peopled exclusively by the rich and the beautiful, by keepers of gigolos and those infatuated with others' spouses, by those who have discovered they are going to die and those who have discovered that there is nothing to live for though that is not necessarily bad either. What is bad about Sagan's writing is that it reflects an absolutely juvenile understanding of the facts of life.

Her plots, when she bothers to provide them, are resolutely simplistic. There is nothing left to admire, ultimately, but her elliptical prose, and that is not enough to make this book a success. Rolte.n Boyd A Good Man To Follow ANNIE: A Theatre Memoir By Martin Charnin, 136 pages Dutton, $14.95, $7.95 paper TRUSTABLE AND PRESHUS FRIENDS Edited by Jane Douglass, 95pages Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, $10 "Thank heaven," Maurice Chevalier crooned, "for little girls. For little girls get bigger every day." So they must, and so they are replaced in the entertainment world by other little girls. Through the years moviegoers have been charmed by the innocent likes of Shirley Temple, Margaret O'Brien, early Tatum O'Neal.

Theatergoers have been no different, as these two scrapbooks make abundantly clear. First charmers first. Everyone's heard of Temple, O'Brien and O'Neal. But have you ever heard of Elsie Leslie, America's first child star? You certainly would have if you had lived in the late nineteenth century. Elsie took to the stage in 1885 at age four and became a national celebrity at age six.

She played Little Lord Fauntleroy on Broadway, then created both the title roles in the stage version of Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper." When she was six Elsie's father gave her a diary, in which she both wrote frequent entries and enclosed the correspondence from her "trustable and preshus friends." This volume essentially is Elsie's reprinted journal. As Julie Harris so accurately suggests in the introduction, "There is a quaintness and beauty in this book that is hard to find in our lives today." The journal entries are interesting, often cute but such letters! Edwin Booth sends Elsie love and kisses; Elliott Roocavelt sends her bonbons, along with the affection of his little daughter Eleanor; a young Helen Keller writes to say "how happy it made me to touch your lovely hair;" Oliver Wendell Holmes forwards the sad opinion that Elsie's poems do not merit encouragement. Her most ardent correspondent was Samuel Clemens. He and Joseph Jefferson embroidered slippers for her. When Clemens sent Elsie a copy of "Huckleberry Finn," his accompanying note described the novel as "one of the stateliest poems of modern times." Most of the journal entries occur between 1887-1892.

They are profusely illustrated by numerous delectable photos of Elsie. Editor Jane Douglass' Toni Morrison tion of the the Vietnam War, "Dispatches" (Knopf), or with the sophisticated journalism of John McPhee's report on Alaska, "Coming into the Country" (Farrar, Straus Giroux), or with David McCullough's vivid recreation of the digging of the Panama Canal, "The Path Between the Seas" (Simon Schuster), or with Carl Sagan's fascinating speculations on the evolution of human intelligence, "The Dragons of Eden" (Random House)? The final vote was split between the emotional and flashy "Dispatches" and the definitive and erudite but sometimes ponderous "Samuel Johnson." Scholarship won over style this time and "Samuel Johnson" was the winner. The interesting thing about having 16 literary critics in one room (at the Algonquin hotel in New York) is that almost every book had at least one eloquent spokesman, and the split was about as diverse as might be expected from any 16 people selected at random. But there did seem to be, at the end, a solid consensus and a sense of relief that the decisions had been made. Although the board was not obliged to follow the voting patterns established by the NBCC general membership when the 20 nominees were selected, the four winners did, indeed, receive the most support in that earlier balloting.

Maybe they are the four best books of the year. The awards ceremony will be held in New York City on Thursday, Jan. 19. features, including the Arctic's Beaufort Sea, bear his name. His personality was as interesting as his accomplishments.

To Their Lordships of the Admiralty, Sir Francis was often a petulant, cantankerous, whining subordinate, ever jealous of his prerogatives. To those who sailed or worked under him, Sir Francis was a warmly loyal superior and a lifelong friend. He was a man of piety with a sense of duty; he unselfishly impoverished himself by paying the debts of his ne'er-do-well father. Yet, he carried on for some years an incestuous relationship with a younger sister. His interests included meteorology, archeology, cryptology, oceanography, geography, cartography.

He had the curious and probing mind of an inventor (yet suffered from a certain clumsiness in carrying out his ideas). He valued all forms of learning, insisting in 1831 that one of his chart-making ships recruit a natural scientist for its voyage to the South Atlantic. The ship was HMS Beagle; the scientist was Charles Darwin; the result was the theory of evolution. On Sir Francis's death, a colleague wrote, "And so poor Beaufort is gone! May his failings be written in water, his good deeds in brass." Author Friendly has written of both, and in crisp prose. Harry Levins Gained A Son court.

Their respective lawyers strip away graphically their pretensions and strengths. The novel is entirely told through the husband's eyes, and the reader is meant to identify with him. Ted is nice and hard, and he steadily wins the reader's sympathy. As for Joanna and this is one of the main troubles with the book she is only beautiful and immature, giving the story an anti-feminine tone. Despite the relative simplicity of the characterizations, Ted's included, the author has caught the atmosphere of New York and dramatized A human conflict that is increasing in frequency.

Peter Rowley tto reviewers Joseph Losos, St. Louis stock broker. Jan Garden Castro, a St. Louis poet and teacher, is co-editor of River Styx. Dennis Brown, St.

Louis, Peter Rowley, New York, are free-lance writers. Charles Guenther, St. Louis poet and translator. Robert Boyd teaches English at Meramec Community College. Harry Levins, Post-Dis patch night city editor.

ARTISTS Loft-Studios high ceilings EuclidMcPherson 621-0952 Available Departments, and BEAUFORT OF THE ADMIRALTY By Alfred Friendly 362 pages, Random House, $15 "Trust in God," British naval cadets are told, "and the Admiralty charts." The man who made those charts so trustworthy, Adm. Sir Francis Beaufort, is the subject of this intriguing biography by Alfred Friendly, former managing editor of the Washington Post. Sir Francis went to sea in the late eighteenth century as a swashbuckling young officer. But unlike most of his colleagues, he was also a keen reader with a scientific bent. Wounds suffered in a naval fray ticketed him for less strenuous chart-making duty and for a measure of quiet fame thereafter.

He made his mark by charting the coast and cataloging the classical ruins of Asia Minor. He rose through the naval bureaucracy to become (for a quarter of a century) the Admiralty's hydrogra-pher, the man responsible for charting the oceans that bounded Great Britain's rapidly growing empire. His standards established the British Navy's charts as the world's finest; Friendly insists that they remain so today. By the time Sir Francis died in 1857, he had, as one colleague wrote, "fixed the bounds of the oceans." Sailors today use his Beaufort wind scale; a dozen or so geographic How A Father KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER By Avery Corman 233 pages, Random House, $7.95 This is a good, tough novel set in New York city, providing an educational view of a modern marriage, divorce, the role of a working wife and the possibilities when a father raises a child alone. The three main characters are Ted and Joanna Kramer and their infant son, Billy.

Though both parents lack the subtlety and complexity of real people, Ted and Joanna typify nevertheless the "with-it" world of singles bars and young marrieds. They are upwardly mobile middle-class. Their conversation and that of their friends is unerring brutal, unsentimental and ambitious. Despite their hard-headed drive they become involved in the oldest of human emotions love, marriage and parenthood. Ted is in advertising as a space salesman.

Joanna is an executive secretary in a similar field. Becoming bored with bachelor life, weary of weekends on Fire Island and transitory affairs, they decide to get married. After a short while, just because it is the thing to do, they produce a baby. In his job Ted receives several raises, but Joanna finds motherhood increasingly uninteresting and longs to return to work. Ted refuses to allow her to, and suddenly Joanna leaves him and Billy.

Ted finds himself confronted with the task of caring for his small son while maintaining his career and this complex task is the essence of this book. Hiring a housekeeper, he devotes his evenings and weekends to the boy successfully, so it seems. Then, after a year or so, Joanna reappears, having floated around California, the tennis courts and temporary jobs. She settles in New York, acquires a lover, hires a lawyer, and informs Ted she wants their son back. Naturally Ted fights back, and the conflict winds up in -'-fln Lowell Selecting The NBCC Books Of 1977 aQfijafl mon is a vmrant 11 erratic worn mat captured the enthusiasm of many critics enough to carry the vote.

"Falconer" was a close second, and my choice, "A Book of Common Prayer" was a weak third. POETRY I have no such qualms about the other categories. Robert Lowell's "Day by Day" (Farrar, Straus Giroux) was clearly the "best" book of poetry published in 1977, although an enthusiastic minority voted for Gerald Stern's "Lucky Life" (Houghton Mifflin). CRITICISM "On Photography" by Susan Sontag (Farrar, Straus Giroux) was a strong winner in the criticism category, with Arlene Croce's collection of dance criticism, "Afterimages" (Knopf) getting secondary support. I was also impressed and a little overwhelmed by Richard Poirier's critical study, "Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing" (Oxford University Press).

It was third in the voting. NONFICTION The most difficult selection was, as usual, in the overcrowded general non-fiction category. I would have been satisfied with any of the five nominees as the winner. But how do you compare Walter Jackson Bate's scholarly literary biography, "Samuel Johnson" (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), with Michael Herr's eerie and almost surreal evoca By Clarence E. Olson Post-Dispatch Books Editor The "best" books of the year? The National Book Critics Circle board of directors met on Wednesday to select thd 1977 NBCC award winners in fiction, poetry, criticism and nonfiction.

Having participated in this literary bloodletting, and a previous nominating session in December, I felt a little uneasy when the television and newspaper reports I saw in New York boldly proclaimed that we had selected the best books of the year. I hope we did, but it's a matter of debate. The four winners are good books I think a couple of them are great, maybe the greatest but so many other books good, and even great, books were eliminated from consideration by not even being nominated. FICTION The news reports also played up what I considered the slightest of the winners, Toni Morrison's novel, "Song of Solomon" (Knopf). It was a relatively poor year for fiction at least of prize-winning caliber.

Three of the five fiction nominees were lesser works by top authors "Falconer" by John Cheever (Knopf), "A Book of Common Prayer" by Joan Didion (Simon Schuster) and "The Professor of Desire" by Philip Roth (Farrar, Straus Giroux). The fifth was "Union Dues" (Atlantic-Little, Brown) a fine novel in a more pedestrian style by John Sayles. "Song of Solo By Jock Zucknef, M.D. A new book -that explains hat arthritis really is. and exposes fraudulent cures and quackery.

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