The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 146

Sunday. August 26, 1990 L5 The Pittsburgh Press BOOKSBRIDGE Alice Hoffman's new novel a warm slice of seventh heaven SEVENTH HEAVEN by Alice Hoffman. G.P. Putnam's Sons. $19.95.

By Betsy Kline The Pittsburgh Press in Hoffman's "Seventh Heaven," her eighth and finest novel to date. Every character in this splendid work is full-fleshed and worthy of every word devoted to his or her individual story. And the marvel is, there are so many -characters running around the astonishingly brief 256 pages. Hoffman's novel is nothing less than a masterpiece of compassion and compaction. Her setting is a suburban New York subdivision rooted in the '50s and teetering on the brink of the tumultuous Mothers stay at home, bake casseroles and go to PTA meetings; husbands go to work and mow the lawns outside their identical houses.

Seeds of rebellion germinate in the children, who commit petty larcenies and start to take sexual curiosity one step further on a dare. But decorum rules. If there are domestic disturbances, they are hushed behind tasteful living room drapes. Every man, woman and child harbors his own secrets. Into this Kennedy-era Camelot calm comes Nora Silk, a young divorced mother of two with flashy fingernails, black stretch pants and a battered Volkswagen that is an even match for the sorry mess of a long-vacant house she has purchased in hopes of a better life.

Nora doesn't expect or want pity, she merely wants to be liked and accepted by better people. But no one will have anything to do with a divorced woman who feeds her kids Frosted Flakes for dinner and sells Tupperware in order to make ends meet. The other mothers shun her at the supermarket; their children taunt her oldest son Billy, a sensitive and acutely perceptive 8-year-old who misses his magician father. But Nora is naively optimistic that everyone is basically good and will come to accept her small, incomplete family. As she settles in, dramatic cracks start to appear in the subdivision's Saturday Evening Post patina.

Domestic disturbances, long simmering, boil over. A boy who can't 'stand another beating stabs his father to death. A dumpy but devoted mother and model housekeeper disappears into the night and later turns up svelte and happy as a Lord Taylor's store clerk. The high school good-time girl dies in a freak car accident because of a classmate's callousness. IN THE ENSUING confusion, parents start to question the quality of their' lives.

With their own expectations out of sync with reality, they turn to Nora, whose refreshing candor points out the obvious errors of their ways. Nora is more a catalyst than a central character, because as Hoffman skillfully introduces each character, he or she be- -comes a central character of her life- -embracing drama. There are hints of witchery Nora employs some of the charms taught her by grandfather who raised her but they are just hints, nothing more than comical asides" -that the reader can toy with or reject. One wants to believe, like Nora, that people are basically good, and when treated -with kindness, will become even better. THERE IS an aura of warmth about Alice Hoffman's latest novel that is barely noticeable in her other fiction.

Before, one could sense the heartbeat of her well-delineated characters, but not feel it. There always seemed to be a barrier, the author's, not the reader's, which allowed readers to empathize but not connect, which communicated that the author regarded them merely as characters, not flesh-and-blood people. That barrier dissolves in mirth and tears Make peace with author urges; nations MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET by Barry Commoner. Pantheon Books. $19.95.

By Michael Wink 'Killing Spirit' scholarly search for problems in education KILLING THE SPIRIT: HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA by Page Smith. Viking. $19.95. By Philip Smith Sally Hobart Alexander, with daughter Leslie, 9, went blind at the age of 26 Mom Cant See Me THERE'S a story about a tribe in the jungles of South Ameri- ca who, when they want to cut down a tree, yell at it for a good long while until it finally falls. Environmentalist and former -presidential candidate Barry Com- moner has been screaming a lot the last couple of decades but nobody's listened much.

The question is still open for debate: Can trees fall when they are screamed at? Members of the aforementioned tribe say it works. Commoner for it to work. And what is Commoner shouting about? A shift to renewable energy, pollution prevention rather than af-. ter-the-fact control, active recyclings -plans and an environmental ship role on the part of the United States in combating the catastrophes of hazardous waste and the greenr house effect. In "Making Peace With the et," Commoner also discusses popu- lation control but dismisses radical notions that discriminate against Third World cultures.

If we work on-" eradicating poverty, population con trol will take care of itself, he argues. Describing our problems as "the: war between nature and man, be- tween the ecosphere and the techno- sphere," he rejects steps that would move us backwards in order to combat technological decay. He calls for "a negotiated peace that takes into account both nature's need for self-sustenance and the human need not only to maintain our present level of material welfare but to increase and disseminate it, and bring an end to poverty." The situation in Iraq and the' ensuing gas price hikes have made Commoner's calls more urgent. By calling for the technosphere to become more compatible with the, ecosphere, he argues for a shift to solar energy. "All of the solar energy technologies that can replace gaseous, liquid and solid fossil fuels are in hand; some are already economically com-petitive with conventional sources, and many are rapidly approaching that point Several technologies that can convert cars and trucks to solar fuels ethanol and methane from biomass are in hand, and solar sources of electricity can be used to drive electric-powered vehicles." Commoner notes that ethanol is compatible with Third World technologies and would remove their dependence on foreign oil.

It's sickening to think that our country and our politicians are under -the thumb of Big Oil and no one has the tools to fight back. It's equally sickening to think that a shift to renewable fuels that could have begun 10 years ago didn't happen. Instead, we became more depen- -dent on foreign oil. The events in Eastern Europe provide encouragement for Commoner. If change can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

(Michael Winks is a free-lance writer with a master's of fine arts degree in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University.) PITTSBURGH'S universities and colleges, we're constantly reminding ourselves, should be recognized as one of the region's most important assets. Yet we constantly read and hear of problems related to funding shortfalls, curricular controversies, sports scandals, the promotion of research instead of teaching, entrepreneurial commitments to robotics, biotechnology and secret defense work. According to Page Smith, such local manifestations of the national problems of our university system come from several causes and faculty, administrations, boards of trustees and students all have helped in fostering conditions that prevent effective teaching and learning. His diagnosis of what has gone awry includes several "major "the impoverishment of the spirit by 'academic the flight from teaching, the meretriciousness of most academic research, the disintegration of the disciplines, the alliance of the universities with the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, etc. and, more recently, with biotechnology and communications corporations, and, last but not least, the corruptions incident in big-time collegiate sports." Smith has substantial credentials as a critic and historian of higher education: He studied at Dartmouth and Harvard; he taught at William and Mary and at UCLA; and became the founding provost of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

He has written 15 books, including the eight-volume "People's History" of the United States. "Killing the Spirit" fittingly tries to locate many of today's problems as results of historical trends in American higher education. "There has been," Smith says, "no golden age of teaching" in American universities. He quotes personal accounts of students from well-known schools over the last 150 years to show a heritage of neglect for undergraduate education. One of his sources, the municipal reformer Frederic Howe, recalled his undergraduate years at Allegheny College in Meadville as "very nearly barren None of the subjects stirred in me the least enthusiasm." SMITH NOTES that while American universities and colleges think of themselves as espousing freedom of thought, some ideas are simply not tolerated.

He believes that academic self-interest and university alliances with boards of trustees and founding tycoons like Leland Stanford, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt (and in Pittsburgh we could add Andrew Carnegie and the Mellons) stifled teaching and discussion of what he calls "the Big Questions" of civic virtue, truth, love, hope, courage and justice in favor of a narrow scientism, and professionalism. He contends that "good teaching is far more complex, difficult and demanding than mediocre research, which may explain why professors try so hard to avoid it." He favors reforms that begin "with the ordinary student," not the genius; he finds current curricular controversies useful in focusing attention on the neglected larger issues. Two of the innovations attacked by academic conservatives, women's studies and deconstruction, he sees as hopeful. The French philosopher of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, "has quite literally 'deconstructed' higher education and left us with the question of how we are to regain our moral and intellectual equilibrium." While he worries about the stultification of the feminist ethic and women's studies in institutions, he sees women students as "the last Utopians; they have revived the dream of a better, more humane society." To someone currently working in a university or college, Smith's analyses will sometimes seem reductive and his history occasionally simplistic and anecdotal.

His 15 years away from direct contact with university life rob some chapters of an up-to-date perspective. But these are small quibbles. Smith's diagnosis is far more interesting and pertinent than Allan Bloom's, E.D. Hirsch's or William Bennett's. "Killing the Spirit," if read by students, faculty, parents, trustees, administrators and taxpayers, could usefully fire up debates about how to improve higher education in the United States.

(Philip Smith chairs the English department at the University of Pittsburgh.) Squirrel Hill author's books offer lesson in living If not a tragedy, Alexander's blindness is time-consuming. When a child forgets a lunch, Alexander must take two buses to deliver the lunch to school. She attaches Braille metal clips to her clothes to color-coordinate her own wardrobe and tapes Braille labels to her spice jars to be able to cook. Simply written and beautifully illustrated, "Mom Can't See Me" conveys facts like these in a warmly accessible way. It is a universal story, including incidents with which anyone might identify.

With just the right touch, Leslie relates her embarrassment once at an airport when her mother hugged a pilot she mistakenly thought was her brother. But "Mom Can't See Me" also expresses the love and warmth engendered by that mother who must hug or hear her children to know where they are. Winner of the Junior Library Guild Award, it is a book for children and adults alike to read and to cherish. Alexander's second book, a fictional picture book, is geared more specifically to children. An adventure story, "Sarah's Surprise" features a 7-year-old girl who rescues her mother during a trip to the beach to pick mussels.

All the classic elements of a good story are present: a dangerous storm, a secret, the young girl's growing self-confidence and ability to solve problems herself. Like the character in the classic children's story, "The Little Engine That Could," a favorite of the Alexander family, Sally Alexander herself has proven with these two books that she "could." Once an elementary schoolteacher, she is now a full-time writer and mother. Her computer "talks" to her the words others read. Soon, she will join her husband and family on a "Semester-at-Sea," traveling halfway around the world by ship as her husband teaches English courses. Her only regret about the leaving guide dog Marit behind.

(Ann McKenna Fromm has taught English at the University of Pittsburgh and is a free-lance journalist) MOM CANT SEE ME by Sally Hobart Alexander, photographs by George Ancona. Macmillan Co. $14.95. SARAH'S SURPRISE by Sally Hobart Alexander, illustrated by Jill Kastner. Macmillan Co.

$13.95. By Ann McKenna Fromm HAVE a wonderful life," says Sally Alexander, a I Pittsburgher whose first two children's books have just appeared. With her husband, an English professor, Alexander is raising two children through the whirl of schoolwork, soccer games, canoeing trips and bicycle jaunts. The Alexanders own a home in Squirrel Hill. Their beloved German shepherd, Marit, is 13V4 years old.

They travel to places as exotic as Malaysia and as homey as the Eastern Shore. There's only one complication. Sally Alexander is blind. "It's not a tragedy," Alexander claims. "I went blind at 26; I was sad for a year.

Then I went on." Her first book, "Mom Can't See Me," termed a photo-essay by the publishers, is a moving testament to just how Sally Alexander went on. The book is narrated by Alexander's 9-year-old daughter, Leslie, who relates that Marit actually is a working dog, joining the family soccer games and canoe trips, and that Sally Alexander looks completely normal except for the sunglasses she wears even in the house. In the book, Leslie says, "When Dad first saw Mom in those glasses, he thought she looked like a movie star. Later he learned that she was funny and independent, too, and asked her to marry him." Alexander has never seen her children. She has never seen her husband, either.

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All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, By James Jacoby HEROICfSTORIES of declarer play often begin with a favorable opening lead. So it was in today's hand. West led a spade against two hearts. East won the ace and returned a spade. He hoped his partner held the spade king and would switch to a heart.

But dummy's queen won the Declarer South was certain of the location of the diamond ace because of East's repeated takeout doubles, so he led a low diamond from dummy. East ducked and declarer grabbed the king. Now a spade was ruffed, dummy's A-K of clubs were cashed (South throwing his remaining diamonds) and a club was ruffed. Declarer played the king of spades, and West ruffed, forcing dummy to use the king of hearts. But declarer was able to ruff another.