LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 141

RADIO READINGS a i 9 5 3 Joel Rose: Between D. KAREN LONG GALLERY presents an evening of poetry featuring Victor Charles, Ralph di Luzio, Jessica, Kathi Georges, Gill Fuhrer and Ginger Rossen. 2118 E. Fourth Oct, 23, 8.30 p.m.; free. 1213)434 7288.

BEYOND BAROQUE Readings by New York fiction writers Catherine Texier and Joel Rose. Old Venice City Hall, 681 Venice Venice; Oct. 23, 8:30 p.m.; $3, $5 (213) 8223006. KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT signs her book My Scrapbook Memories of Dark Shadows. Scott starred as "Maggie Evans" and "Josette Dupres" in the popular '60s gothic soap opera.

Collectors Book Store, 1708 N. Vine Oct, 24,13 p.m. (213) 467 3296. THE FOUNDRY is the Cast Theater's series for developing playworks, "where plays are wrought." Deborah Pryor reads her comedy about relationships entitled Burrhead. 804 El Centro Oct, 24, 3:30 p.m,; free.

(213) 462 9872. LARRY MARAVIGLIA reads from the works of Tennessee Williams and Oscar Wilde. A Different Light Bookstore, 4014 Santa Monica Silver Lake; Oct. 24, 8 p.m.; free (213) 668 0629. STAGED READING of Peter DeAnda's They Were Doin' a Jig but Mr.

Bones Didn't Feel Like Dancin'. William Grant Still Art Center, 2520 W. View Oct. 25, 1:30 p.m. (213) 735 5851.

PABLO NERUDAS POETRY READING Phyllis Copeland and Anne Greenfiel read. Lincoln Park, Wilshire Lincoln boulevards, S.M.; Oct. 25, 2 p.m. (213) 752 3193. POETRY ON MELROSE Benjamin Weissman co-ordinates the readingperformance series at Beyond Baroque.

Tonight he reads from his own work. Gasoline Alley, 7219 Melrose Oct. 25, 3 p.m.; donation. (213) 937 5177. FIRST STAGE Reading of Ned Racine's new play Sweet Surrender.

First Methodist Church, 6817 Franklin Oct. 26, 7 p.m. 1213) 850 6271. THE POECENTRIC LOUNGE An eclectic evening of poetry, music and performance art every fourth Tuesday of each 1 month. West Coast Ensemble Theater, 6240 Hollywood Oct.

27, 8 p.m. (213) 820 2275 or 851 6676. BETTY WHITE introduces her book Betty White: In Person at i the Round Table West luncheon program. Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Oct. 27, noon; $16; reserv.

(213) 386-3276. NEW DRAMA TISTS The staged reading series begins with Willy Holtzman's Bovver Boys this Wednesday. A reception follows each reading and members of New Dramatists will be available to answer questions about the company. USC Drama Center (Vermont Ave. at 36th Place), 7:30 p.m.; free; resv.

required. (213) 743-2703. -Su Knill Straus host this showcase for new and old local poets. KPFK 90.7 FM, first, third Et fifth Sat. of the month, 6 7 p.m.

CYNIC'S CHOICE A delightful program of British humour and music, ranging from the Goon Show to Spike Milligan and back again. Now in its 18th year, this show consistently provides the best in British nostalgia and tomfoolery. Brian Clewer hosts. KFAC 1330 AM, 10 a.m.-noon. THE MAN SAYS YES Believe it or not, a genuine radio game show that listeners can play at home and call in to win! Bob Shannon and Dee Dee Dunnavan host.

KCSN 88.5 FM, p.m. THE LEIGH SPEAR SHOW A magazine format talk program on topics of special interest to the gay community. KFOX 93.5 FM, 4 p.m. SUSAN BLOCK'S MATCH NITE Susan Block hosts a call-in personals column in which you can talk about yourself or chat with prospective dates an interesting listen even if you aren't looking. KFOX 93.5 FM, 9 11 p.m.

SPOKEN WORDS David U. hosts a program on which underground artists sermonize, verbalize and engage in various forms of oral communication so to speak. KXLU 88.9 FM, 11 p.m. -mid. THE HEALTH CONNECTION Dr.

Gershon Lesser answers your questions about holistic health and lifestyles. KCRW 89.9 FM, 12.30-1 p.m. ACCENT ON WOMEN A lively half hour magazine format featuring interviews, info, advice and the latest "hot flashes." KCSN 88.5 FM, 6:30 p.m. JOE FRANK: WORK IN PROGRESS Radio artist Joe Frank plumbs the cultural subconscious for the subtlest, funniest and just plain weirdest monologues on the airwaves. The New Age's answer to Woody Allen.

KCRW 89.9 FM, 7 8 p.m.; repeats 11 p.m.-mid. I THE MS. BIZ Magazine format program for the woman who wants to get ahead and the man who wants to keep up. Interviews and current events to inform and amuse the upscale working woman. KFOX 93.5 FM, 8 a.m.

-Bill Raden I THE PLA YS OF ROBERT ODELL Six weeks of staged i readings of the works of Robert Odell. This week, A Gentle Ram, a family drama. Good Futures Theater Garden Patio, 1305 N. McCadden Place, Oct. 22 23, Call 1213) 227-1890 for times.

Joel Rose wasn't the reason we'd gone to New York, Truth is, we didn't know he existed until we visited author Catherine Texier at the Lower East Side flat which they share. Rose impressed us right away. Calm and soft-spoken, he radiates the kind of confidence that comes from a singular sense of purpose and a prestigious publishing deal. It turns out that Rose's work caught the eye of influential editor Gary Fisketjon, who'd just left Vintage Contemporary Classics to join Atlantic Monthly Press, taking with him some of Vintage's most important young writers: Jay Mclnerny, John Sayles and Richard Ford, to name but a handful. After a few meetings with Fisketjon, Rose found himself a member of that illustrious crowd.

Kill the Poor, his first novel, will be published by Atlantic Monthly Press in December. Quite a feather, to be sure, and for a first novel, yet! But Rose deserves the break. His short stories, which have appeared in a number of magazines, including his own offbeat desk top publication, Between are scintillating slices of life in Manhattan's notorious Alphabet City. These stories plunge you headlong into a world of gang fights, sneak thieves and carniccrias that sell human meat as barbecue. Unimaginable horrors take place within a few square blocks of compressed misery, as a hodgepodge of street types go about the daily business of survival.

Rose renders it all in a strong, sure style that never strains. In short, we think the guy's worth a read and a listen. Joel Rose will read from his work at Beyond Baroque, 68 1 Venice Blvd in Venice Fri Oct. 23, 8.30 m. Call (213) 822 3006 acy (you cant understand a newspaper story on NATO unless you can decode the acronym) and citizenship (an informed populace needs to understand that story), Hirsch and a couple of colleagues offer up The List, 63 pages of terms, from abstract expressionism to Zurich, that constitute What Literate Americans Know.

Professor Bloom would probably find Professor Hirschs approach rote and shallow, while the E.D. might consider Allans prescription a little archival. Peter Plagens IN TIIE SKIN OF A LION. By Michael On-daatje. (Knopf; 256 pages; $16.95 hardcover.) Books continued from page 41 emancipation took 77 years and then came only as a strategic lance in the midst of a bloody civil war.) Blooms rhetorical force is considerable, and he is painfully accurate about the plight of black students within our major universities, but he is also hilariously wrong about rampant divorce closing students minds (children of broken homes self-evidently have less to lose by opening them than the Cleavers kids) and McCar-thyism never costing any professor his job (Bloom ought to be locked in the stacks with the 1946-60 back issues of the AAUP journal).

He is also blissfully unconcerned about universities being politicized from the unrelativist Right (boards of trustees, big corporations, Defense Department contracts, burgeoning business schools, Campus Crusade for Christ, Ihe Closing of the American Mind is best in its middle 200 pages, wherein Bloom recapitulates in plain English the (Leo) Straussian version of the history of political philosophy from Plato to Nietzsche. The beginning and end sections of the book are, unfortunately and respectively, contemporary social observation somewhat less trenchant than an average Mike Royko column, and standard faculty-meeting ful-mination. Professor E.D. Hirschs more modest volume, Cultural Literacy is part dour sociology and part Not-So-Trivial Pursuit. Rejecting progressive educations by now aged tenet that students should be taught floating skills unanchored to content, Hirsch cites, in the first deadly boring 145 pages, study after study demonstrating that already knowing something is essential to learning more- For reasons of both liter shows how self-conscious he is about this job of novel-writing.

Also how crafty. These asides are like a clever conjurers explanation of tricks, pretending to give away trade secrets while actually adding new layers of illusion. Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events, he whispers to us in one of these authorial interpolations. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become. Ondaatjes characters are mysterious and elusive, his episodes dreamlike and fragmentary.

Signs of chaos? Or another conjurers gimmick, disguising his novels extremely careful design? Skin is set in Ontario during the 1920s and 1930s. Its disjunct montage traces multiple, obliquely intersecting lives. The connecting link is a Canadian jack-of-all-trades named Patrick Lewis; through Lewis were made acquainted with Ondaatjes other Characters, a cast of working-class immigrants a Finnish logger, an Italian roadworkerburglar, a Macedonian bakerconstruction hand all caught in the quicksand of the new world. Moving through Torontos ethnic enclaves, Lewis develops into a revolutionary saboteur, his goal the destruction of the citys new waterworks. As we enter, a man who subsequently turns out to be Lewis is driving a young girl through the darkness of an unidentified early-morning countryside.

He keeps himself awake at the wheel by telling her a story that proceeds through a series of flashbacks, ultimately circling back to the opening scene. This tail- (or tale-) chasing structural device has been around as long as there have been novels and movies, but it serves Ondaatje well here; he covers his storytellers tracks, keeping the reader guessing where things are headed until the final scene. Unlike the official histories and news stories that surround us daily, Ondaatje warns that events of art reach us too late, travel languorously like messages in a bottle. The first stop on his slow, languorous journey is a remote backwoods region of the far North, site of Lewis boyhood among homesteaders and loggers. Ondaatjes vivid, precisionist prose captures the icy beauty of the place with moments like the one in which a rare blue winter moth lures the 11 -year-old Patrick out into the snow, then disappears, arcing up into the sky beyond the radius of the kerosene light.

Pursuing the moth, the lads drawn by an eerie amber glow he takes to be lightning bugs. Following it to its source, he discovers a group of loggers skating on a frozen pond, wielding flaming torches made of cattail sheafs. A spellbinding scene, and more than just a pretty lyrical interlude. Later in the novel one of the loggers reappears, taking a role in the story. Ondaatjes poetic moments do return like messages in a bottle.

Images of light and dark coalesce into dreamscapelike textures through which the novels mothlike, evanescent characters drift, living out half-lit lives in an unfinished world never completely seen, never completely vanished. You reach people through metaphor, one of Ondaatjes characters tells Patrick Lewis when instructing him in revolutionary politics. The poet-novelist knows this as well as anyone. His prestidigitators grasp of language has given us a highly imaginative, original and surprising book. Tom Clark ichael Ondaatje handles fiction with the deceptive touch of a magician.

This novel is a constructivist performance in sleight-of-hand; the construction everywhere gives way to its opposite weightlessness, flotation and free fall. If Ondaatje writes like a poet, thats because he is one. Born in Ceylon, educated in England, he now lives and teaches in Canada, where his poetry The Collected Works of Billy the Kid has won him a Governor Generals Award, more or less the equivalent of our National Book Award. The impressive achievement of In the Skin of a Lion, however, may lead to a revision of critical opinion about his work; one day people may say, He writes poetry like the novelist he is. Ondaatjes habit of stepping back from the intricate, allusive path of his narrative to slip us quiet behind-the-hand asides 740 WEEKLY October 23 29.

1987.