The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 108

'ji tiini 20 A Boston Sunday Globe August 17, 1969 Today's architecture Vacation New fiction shelf the best for Dona Only retreat with imagination 7-' J.f ms Can a lovable, latent sex-pot find complete fulfillment as a woman in marriage, with a spouse who brings out not, only the best but the very-best? Is it possible for a moral woman like Flor to enjoy two husbands at the same time? Yes. if she finds within her the mystical power to bring back her first husband rake, rascal and relentless in the boudoir to fill in the gaps with her second hushand square, solid and socially-acceptable. This merry menage a trois can't help but win a cheering section from both sides of the marital bed. No man can help but wish Dona Flor anything less than the best of everything. And no woman can but clap her hand to her head and wonder why she never thought of it herself.

Dona Flor's importation DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS, by Jorge Amado. Knepf, 553 $6.95. Dona Flor is the kind of girl you could take home to Mother, if Father didn't beat you to it. She also may be the reason some still use the endearing term Brazilian Bombshell. That most-happy combination of saint and sinner (more sinned against, really), this respectable swinger stands and reclines at the center of this clever, wickedly-amusing Latin carnival concoction.

The sugar and spice components of the basic female mysteique blend readily into a rich, dark accomplishment which Brazilian Amado has tactfully sub-titled "A Moral and Amorous Tale." may do more to strengthen Latin American relations than any item since the coffee bean. THE COST OF LIVING LIKE THIS, by James Ken-naway. Atheneum, 199 $5.95. The Eternal Triangle (Husband, Wife, The Other Woman) is drawn here as a sharp-angled barrier against Death, in this case the man's incurable cancer. Kennaway of Glory" who died before its publication, sets a high price on what is left of life for the doomed Julian, as well as what must be paid by wife, Christabel, and Sally, the girl from the office.

Sally's youth and optimism are the source of Julian's strength as he fights, with pills and vodka, against the deadly pain which is killing him. Yet it is his strong, sure marital bond with Christabel whigh, in the end, sustains his passing. Kennaway has explored the new morality which can acknowledge Julian's rules for survival and allow Christabel to accept and play by these rules. She pays, but it is Sally to whom the cost is too high and who, like Julian is destroyed. Kennaway has a knack for reader absorption and most will find Julian and his women difficult to forget.

ROBERT A. McLEAN THE FUTURO, a new idea in vacation HIJimiK I.JIILU II I -I I llllWlMllUIMlWlWlkMllllPMWItll.WWPWWWI i ii INSIDE the Futuro the emphasis is on comfort. Each seat in the living room converts to a bed for nighttime use. Intrigue from World War II foreign government and migrant housing, commercial sales offices, guest house, teenage house, studio." One buyer plans to float and motor the house. Perfectly possible.

A California company will house visiting professors, according to vice president-Warren Browne, a former Phialdelphia brown-stone restorer. As with every novel housing notion of the last decades, the emphasis seems to be on the vacation, out-of-a-rut living: "fun," is the 1960's adjective. The maintenance carefree Fibre-Glass permits cleaning by hosing. The interior here a mix of red carpet, baby blue walls, and purple cushions consists of plastic and cushion. Nothing moves, scratches or dirties permanently.

The life guarantee is for 30 years. "It should last forever," says Browne. His partner, physicist H. Leonard Fruchter, and others yearly seek improvements on the moldable durable matter. The Corporation has organized to' provide their own-in-factory assemblers and to send "a single leader to help set it up with minimally skilled help at the site.

As a problem-solver, almost every aspect of the module gives an intellectual satisfaction. As a place to visit for a morning! chat, it seemed a spirited environment and a relatively uncon-fined space to this visitor: modernly minimal without being faked or self-consciously forced and "modernistic." For a long rainy day with a parcel of youngsters or an evening's corner of privacy, it offers no real retreat, of course. But in the large sense, its locale movability and relatively inexpensive existence themselves allow the real retreat from city living. As you tit outside the Futuro House on a balmy Summer night or march through the snow on a ski afternoon, the house would look something like a Plastic Age apparition in the natural landscape. Indeed, it, might make you wonder for the future of mass factory building when one of the few decently designed prefabricated pieces demands so radical a shift in life style, why, you might ask yourself, such space restrictions or alterations? But then again, after you wonder a bit, you realize that if it hadn't been for this assembly line nesting egg, you might not have so sat on a balmy night or so marched through the snow at all.

Ancient art from Japan A CHIME OF WINDBELLS, by Harold Stewart. Charltt E. TuttU Rutland, 236 $6.00. The title sets the tone for this delightful anthology of Haiku translated from the Japanese. It is airy, mysterious and provocative.

So are the 364 Haiku. This volume serves the uninitiated as well as the serious student of this ancient Japanese art form. The 18 pages of indepth research on the traditional background of Haiku set the stage for those not too familiar with this style of communication. In order to be appreciated to its fullest, a haiku needs to be read several times, so the serious reader will find deeply profound meanings in these varied rhyming couplets. Some devotees of this art may not relish the rhyming lines of each poem, it is not necessary in a haiku, but the quality of the content compensates for what otherwise might be monotonous reading, as the following examples exemplify: On page 76: At dawn the dews of Heaven dry away: The seeds of Hell are sown again today.

Issa. and on page 28: A crab sidles suspiciously around The ebb-tide footprint that its fear has found. Rofu. The Haiku poets were greatly influenced by the four traditions of the Far Eastern cultures: Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. By studying each tradition in its own frame of reference the reader is afforded a greater understanding and appreciation of an ancient art which is timeless even in this day of scientific space ex: ploration.

This book is recommended for schools and libraries as well as for anyone who would enjoy a stimulating change in their reading habits. MAEVE O. FINLEY (Mr: Finlty is the author of "Haiku For The Renaissance: an understanding By JANE IIOLTZ KAY PHILADELPHIA It's round on the outside, round on the inside, floatable, flya-ble and livable. Want sounds like a lunar module sinks its scrawny "legs" into earth and provides one of the more imaginative mobile housing ideas to roll off the assemblyline. The factory-built Fibre-Glass structure was designed in Finland by architect Matti Suronnen and dubbed in America: The Futuro House.

A few weeks ago, the Philadelphia manufacturers dropped it in place by helicopter at the airport here. Last week they dedicated it. This Fall its bright toned lookalikes will be installed at several sites including a Connecticut vacation area. More than 200 similar models have appeared in Europe since the design first emerged about a year ago. The Futuro House sits here, parked like a vacation home for moon-dwellers; or maybe like the vehicle to take the flight itself.

The prefabricated colored houses are the car age, space age version of the conventionally constructed house. The manufacturers shudder at any parallels to the mobile home. For Futuro does look more like a well-groomed pristine scene from "2001" than a square metallic buggy for a trailer camp. The space age capsule chic of the Futuro House has a valid physical rationale behind it. The Finnish architect-designer did not so much style the round room as blow up the plastic material for its strength as ture.

Like the geodesic dome, Futuro House is strongest in the elipse form. What looks like a flattened ball has a diameter of 26 feet with a center height of 11 feet. The 20 tipped oval portholes which circle it parallel the overall oval shape. Six steps drop down out of the side to lower residents to earth. Inside the sloping sides of the ball are filled in With lounges encircling it beneath the windows.

They project from the outer ring of the "capsule" like passenger chairs and slide out at night to form a star of beds, foot to foot, for as many dwellers passengers as the buyer chooses to share his sleeping space. To the center, a kind of stylish barbecue pit provides a camping motif. The 16-wedge construction allows for partitions for the kitchen, closet space, bathrooms, and the like. A $14,000 price tag is fixed on the thus completely furnished home. Installation consists of sending the dismantled 8000 pounds of house and bolting down its legs in concrete piers.

Utilities can link into existing outlets. But the Futuro House is ready to operate independently, as self-contained as an airplane aloft. Dismantling is as easy as assembling, the manufacturers say. The Futuro Corporation owners like to elaborate on its uses: "vacation house, motel units, ski and resort area lodges, temporary class rooms and housing, portable housing for military and forestry personnel, boys and girls camp bunks, tourist housing and guest cabanas, homes. aspect of his character which, if this book were not so thoroughly documented, would be unbelievable.

To many of us who were stationed in the United King-don during 1942-44 and heard the endless praise of our President and his hands across-the-sea policies wherever we went, we cannot help but wonder who else is secretly selling an ally down the river at this very moment. ROY STRATTON fantasy to his relatives, their poverty an image of the atrocity-weary contemporary world at its most hopeless, yet persistant for survival. Yeats bemoaned the passing of the ceremony of innocence; Hawkes, who follows the conventions of fiction with a poet's pen, creates ceremonies of experience. "The Owl," the most powerful of the short novels collected here, breathes the air of perverse ritual, beautifully teaching us how, in effect, a society should properly conduct a hanging. What is touched continuously is the reader's own fascination with the forms the imagination elaborates out of a libidinous root.

There is a certain amount of inadvertant self-parody in this volume, where the curious and grotesque turns on its maker. At the opposite extreme, is a masterpiece of short fiction, a brief tone-poem entitled "A Little Bit of the Old Slap and Tickle," full of tenderness toward human hurt and want as it evokes the home-leave of a soldier with his wife and children in a mired minesweeper on a decimated stretch of sea-cost. Like the ganders in "The Owl," "whose eyes gleamed logically, whose march was rhetorical," and who were yet "not so beautiful that they would keep from scavenging," the fiction of John Hawkes moves through beauty and terror. This book will serve as an introduction to one of the master-stylists of our time. BARRY SPACKS (Mr.

Spacks, a poet and novelist, teaches at M.l.T.) Book dividend From HOUND OF THE SEA, by Leonard Wibberly. Ives Washburn, 152 $4.95. THE MYTH OF THE RENAISSANCE, 1420-1520, bv Andrew Chattel. Skira World Publishing N.Y., 230 quarto, $25.00. The Renaissance is continually misunderstood, too often seen as a break between the 13th century and the two centuries that followed, and as a break between the north of Europe and the South.

The opposite is true. The 14th and 15th centuries grew out of the 13th and Cambridge University has combined the chairs of Medieval and Renaissance literature. The transfer of power sian bandit, cutthroat and schemer, to meet with him privately without advising Churchill of his action. This, in view of the close bonds these leaders had forged between them, was unconscionable. Worse yet was his denial when the Prime Minister discovered his duplicity.

According to the author, Roosevelt considered Stalin as his greatest living contemporary. His willingness to make any concession and accept any humiliation in his desire to please Stalin is an stylist of guage under grave pressure, amid chaos and terror." In recent years, Hawkes has written two exceptionally powerful novels: "The Lime Twig," a study of violence and the libido set in a surreal world of gangsters and horseracing, and "Second Skin," a celebration of the zests and flavors of the passionate life. The present volume offers a large sampling of what is mainly earlier work, six short stories and three novellas. These pieces are made up of strange happenings and partial gestures, scents of the seaside and nightmare landscapes; a vulture-eyed view of a desert town; a stolid German uncle bearing a horrible, butchered lamb War at sea: eyewitness accounts THE WAR AT SEA The British Navy in World War II, Edited by John Winton. William Morrow 402 $7.95.

Here in one volume is a generous and outstanding selection of personal experience, written by those who were there, of the terror, humor and heroism of the war at sea, from 1939 to 1945. For most of us, interest in matters naval centered around the United States fleet, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor. But Britain was engaged on the seven seas for two years before we entered the war. Stalking these pages are Dunkirk, Ark Royal, Taran-to, Lord Haw-Haw, Hood, Tirpitz, "The Man Who Never Was," Bismarck, and many others famous and infamous names that emerged from the hundreds of actions and incidents involving the Royal Navy in the greatest sea war ever waged. The majority of the items in this collection are eyewitness accounts, written by a variety of people survivors, seamen, captains of ships, Wrens, pilots, poets, admirals, war correspond-dents.

Every navy has its laughs. Here's a delightful one from this collection. The following occurred on the bridge of a destroyer in the North Sea: First Lieutenant: "We're stopping, sir. Captain: 'I know. There's a submarine somewhere about First Lieutenant: 'Are we going to depth-charge him, sir? Captain: 'No.

I'm sending down a diver with details (at least to me) of letters exchanged between Roosevelt and Stalin and promises made at Teheran makes me wonder if FDR wasn't one of the most romantic, weak, stubborn and easily impressed presidents we've ever had. Most astounding is that the head of the greatest nation on earth should on three occasions beg, cajole and implore Stalin, whom his advisers told him was cunning, hypocritical and nothing more than a Cauca Master LUNAR LANDSCAPES: Stories and Short Novels 1950-1963, by John Hawkes. New Directions, 275 $5.95. John Hawkes gives appropriately fantastic expression to our deepest fears and fantasies, anticipations and desires. Reading him can be a forbidding experience, for his very committment to the unusual in language and perception sometimes creates a tedium of intensity; one feels called upon to admire but feels exhausted instead.

This is a natural danger in encountering so generously inventive a writer, one who takes such extraordinary risks. He has always sought discovery through the at-tentuations of a severely fastidious style, playing on material both gothic and poignant, salty and sordid, in a prose well-described by the young novelist Jerome Char-yn as "a poetic, trouble'd lan- city to town seeking commissions to paint the wife or daughter of a wealthy merchant. Although he painted hundreds of portraits, only seven are known to exist. Many of his portraits must still hang in homes in the regions where he painted. About 1355, Heade abandoned his nomadic existence to live in Providence and paint the lovely countryside and the Rhode Island shore.

In the early 1860's, maintaining a studio in Boston, he painted the seacoast and marshlands of the North Shore, in particular the Newburyport area. Unfortunately Martin J. Heade was not in the habit of signng his work; much of it remains undiscovered in private homes or attics. When Heade did sign his work, it was in a fine brush stroke usually in a written script J. Heade." HITLER'S PLOT TO KILL THE BIG THREE, by Laslo Havas.

Cowles, 280 $5.95. How little our public knows about the international intrigue of our leaders, the ineptness of our intelligence officers and the vulnerability of our most secret codes in time of war has always amazed me. This book tops them all as an eye-opener. Well do I recall the image of solidarity between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt that our propo-gandists fed us throughout World War II. also how, in 1943, their meeting at Teheran with Josef Stalin was reported as one of the greatest in history.

Now it appears as if its greatest accomplishment was to assure the creation of Russia's Iron Curtain. The story of Hitler's plot to kill the Big Three and the action of counter and double spies to foil it makes fascinating reading. It confirms my suspicion of several years that John la Carre's "The Spy Who Came in From The Cold" and Ian Fleming's 'Smersh" stories are dressed-up ones of conditions which actually existed. Readers of these authors' books should enjoy this one very much. The methods employed by the spies to confuse their enemies through chicanery, duplicity, even stupidity tantalized me and kept me on the front of my chair for several hours with its rich gallery of characters and gut-churning accounts of kidnapping, rape and murder.

The writing is smooth and effortlessly convincing. Many hitherto unknown exhibit. Twenty -three works are from the Muse M. and M. Karolik collection.

About 20 years ago, Maxim Karolik, a great collector of paintings and antiques, was among the first to "rediscover" Heade and recognize the uniqueness and importance of his art Quietly Karolik began to seek some of the artist's finer pieces and eventually gave them to the Museum of Fine Arts. It was only then that dealers and others realized the value of Heade's work. Martin Johnson Heade was the son of a wealthy Pennsylvania lumberman, and was encouraged to be an artist by his parents. At nineteen his father sent him to Rome to study. Returning to America in the early 1840's, Heade roamed the eastern seaboard as a portrait painter, moving from Bookseller's choice FICTION 1.

Duplicate Death, by Georgette Heyer. 2. Fairing Off, by Julian Moynahan. 3. New Moon Rising, by Eugenia Price.

4. Climbing Willie's by Alan Lebowitz. 5. Sons, by Evan Hunter. NON-FICTION 1.

A Poet And Her Book, by Jean Gould." 2. The Pill, by Robert Kistner, M.D. 3. Doctor's Quick Inches-Off Diet, by Irwin StiUman, M.D. and Samm Baker.

4. The Peabody Influence, by Edwin Hoyt. 5. The Stuff of Fiction, by Gerald Warner Brace. Courtesy of: Jordan's Book Clearing Roust.

Old Corner Beok Stora, Laortat'l, BrenUna'a. ujmuwiwuMwJWw iiiuii ii hi 1 1 I 11 1 11 1 from the south of Europe to the north is now seen as the education of the north by the south. Prof. Andrew Chastal of the Sorbonne recognizes fully that it was a new beginning but it was also an "integratio." His is the latest in Skira's magnificent "Art Ideas History," which is surely the best history of art that has yet been given to the world. There are 143 illustrations, the great majority in color, all exquisite reproductions.

The break came with the Reformation and the tragic conflict of the churches. The hope is that from today's ecumenism, the strength of art may return. H.A.K. and marshlands. Today I cannox neip dui ieei inai we stumbled on a "sleeper" vhat morning in Haverhill and dids't realize it.

The grime and dark paint of a century obliterated perhaps part of the name. As I recall the painting was bought by a New York dealer for $35, which at the time made me a bit suspicious because it was in such rough shape. I bid $50, thinking in terms of the additional expense to properiy clean and restore the canvas. Last week I was again reminded of that day nearly two decades ago, for Monday was the anniversary of Martin J. Heade's birth 150 years ago, August 11.

1819. To commemorate the occasion and to display their own very fine collection of his works, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is presenting through Aug. 24, a Heade M. J. HEADE'S "Approaching Storm: Beach Near Newport" Collecting antiques 'Sleepers' waiting for discovery I used to smoke until three years ago.

I smoked perhaps a pack of cigarettes and three or four pipes of tobacco a day. I gave up because I found myself ridiculously out of breath after only medium exertion. In my smoking days, when I went swimming I could stay only perhaps ten minutes in sixty-five-degree water and when I came out I shivered myself warm. Also I was getting very bald. Some months ago after stopping smoking, I found an enormous improvement in my resistance to cold.

I could stay swimming and diving In sixty-five-degree water without a wetsuit for half an hour or more. Exercise no longer left me breathless. And the two hairs on the top of my head have now increased to a hundred and perhaps more. All this, I think, resulted from the reopening of the capillary blood vessels which had been restricted, if not closed, by my daily intake of nicotine. It was not as hard to stop smoking as I had thought it would be.

I was able to stop because I gave myself a positive rather than a negative reason for so doing. I asked myself if, by miracle, I had received a new pair of lungs would I smoke? The answer was no. So I pretended I had a new pair of lungs and it was quite easy to stop smoking to avoid coating them with nicotine. By CHARLES W. CHISHOLM Fifteen or twenty years ago one could still find Martin Johnson Heade's work in second hand shops and back-water auctions.

In those days antique dealers and collectors had never heard of Heade, a remarkable 19th century American painter. In the late Spring of 1952, unaware of Heade's work, I missed an auction "sleeper," painted I'm certain, by this prolific American artist. Nor was I alone in my ignorance, obviously the auctioneer didn't know who Heade was. He identified the artist as "Head" and when a friend and I hurried up the aisle to examine the painting on the block, all we could make out in the right hand corner was an indistinct Head." Year later I became a-ware of Martin J. Heade's work and his love of the sea.