The Sacramento Bee from Sacramento, California • 142

OKS Sunday October 12 1980 Forum 4 The Sacramento Bee '1 sv Weekly Point Reyes Light The Little Paper That San Francisco Examiner and eventually extracted $2600000 from that paper In out-of-court settlements After discovering that other news agencies were afraid to say anything about Synanon the Mitchells started a series of stories and editorials The more they investigated the more the mystery deepened They learned of both men and women members shaving their heads and of the ordering all its men to have vasectomies and its pregnant women to have abortions Stranger however was the increased violence the organization offered to the community At this point the book assumes some characteristics of a western The smalltown paper takes on the bad guys who control local government The paper calls for someone in authority to take notice No one does The goal from the beginning was simply to persuade government to do something about the inequities created by increasingly insane and irresponsible behavior Even after the Guyana affair in which The Temple showed the world the dangers of cults there continued a government apathy about Synanon The Mitchells were eventually joined in their campaign by Richard Ofshe a sociology professor from Berkeley who had studied Synanon and who was convinced that something horrible had happened to the organization He knew their operation their language and the details of game" was a therapeutic technique gone wild It started as a kind of encounter group and became a device used by the organization to control its members and make them do outlandish things such as having mass sterilizations and changing sexual partners at the whim of the leaders It was not until the nearly fatal attack on Paul Morantz in October of 1978 he was bitten by a rattlesnake that a Synanon official had deposited in his THE LIGHT ON SYNANON by Dave and Cathy Mitchell and Richard Ofshe Seaview $1195 This book written from the point of view of Dave Mitchell editor-owner of the Point Reyes Light tells the story of his small weekly newspaper and how It persisted for two years in exposing the activities of Synanon in west Marin County a campaign that won it the Pulitzer Prize The story is like the in some respects but in others more akin to a horror novel The book reveals the tremendous courage it took for this tiny newspaper with a reader-ship of less than 3000 as it tackled the Cyclopean and malevolent Synanon Dave and Cathy Mitchell had been living in Point Reyes for 2'j years when they began hearing rumors of disturbing events at the Synanon Facility in Marshal on Tomales Bay The story was vague but a number of environmentalists were disturbed by the expansion without the necessary permits Then attacks began on local citizens Alvin Gambonini a rancher whose property bordered Synanon was attacked and beaten by some Synanon members A young man caught near the property was held prisoner and beaten Some teenagers were seized by Synanon squads and had their heads shaved There were reports of child abuse As many as 15 runaway children a month told of beatings and other violence at the hands of Synanon The Mitchells uncovered a series of bizarre relationships between Synanon and various local officials When people were beaten the authorities took no action The organization that had started as a drug rehabilitation center had turned unaccountably into a mad cult Synanon had attacked with surprising zeal anyone who criticized it The group was suing Time magazine and it sued the 4 I 9 '4 Elements Of The Dance 4 a- The Pied Typer by Max Norris Anthony Dowell does a jete'en (above) and a to two of the basic movements illustrated in Principles of Modern (Knopf $1295) by Joan Lawson a teacher at Royal Ballet School The book contains 70 pictures of Dowell best-known male dancer all the work of photographer Anthony Crickmay A quite different book about the same general subject is Apart The Autobiography of a Dancer From (Coward McCann Geog-hegan $995) in which Robert Maiorano a soloist with the New York City Ballet tells of how his boyhood dream of playing baseball for the Dodgers eventually was superseded by the desire to do The Five Faces Of Sally Could mailbox that state and local authorities actually took any action That incident seemed to vindicate the concern Major newspapers suddenly found that the single greatest repository for information on Synanon was the tiny weekly at Point Reyes Later Ralph Craib a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle nominated the Light for the Pulitzer It was only the fourth time since the prize was instituted that a weekly had won The book is easy to read and full of local color Many Sacramento readers will recognize the description of different parts of Marin County Somehow the events dramatic in themselves seem more compelling because they took place so close to home Light on is well worth reading and adds a new dimension to the California experience Michael Friedlander Dropping Out Tuning In Switching On GRACE by Scott Sommer Pivot Books $395 (paper) Lost in a world of recreational drugs and the New Morality 18-year-old Henry Nearing is a sort of switched-on Holden Caulfield Eleven days before graduation he drops out of his New Jersey high school and moves into the family basement His father Shepard been on an alcohol binge since mother died two years ago has just indulged his death wish by purchasing a Honda 350 motorcycle (nicknamed Thanatos) His brother Blair lives in a tent in the backyard existing in a state of perpetual and watching technicolor sunsets from his perch in a mulberry tree Henry writes letters (unsent of course) to his mother asking for counsel from beyond the grave: Mother What is innocence anyway: not knowing any better or living the best we can in the belief that we all deserve Mercy no matter what the evidence Henry is soon seduced from his lair by Grace Change senior class beauty and nymphomaniac-in-training who offers him any sexual fantasy he can conjure up all in the privacy of her suburban home But when Shepard smashes his motorcycle through a store-frong window and winds up in the hospital ensconced in a body cast young Henry begins to straighten out He writes his mother you could please give me a hint as to where it is I will be going and if it is no further away than six feet under I re-evaluate what I want to do 'with my Torn between the empty sensuality of Grace and the platonic friendship of Mema Ashley (the only virgin on her block) pursued by a solicitous guidance counsellor and vengeful boyfriend poor Henry is faced with only desperate choices is a delight to read: laced with slang It moves with the dizzying speed of a benzedrine freak zip-zipzip through a procession of Seconals Quaaludes acid hash and sex portraying the highlights and insights of adolescent angst as Henry Nearing discovers the hard way that up is learning to take what you can get" Tom Miner Don't Believe All You Read On Dustjackets THE ENTWINING by Richard Condon Marek $1295 The publishers of Richard latest effort would like us all to believe that it is written in the own baroque and satiric Translated that means muddled and not that Condon hatch a good idea Orphaned heiress Jean Spa-no is driven to succeed and become powerful by the diaries of her mad dead mother Beautiful intelligent and posessing enough money to make her dreams reality there should be nothing to stop her from achieving the highest office in the land But just as she seems about to succeed Spano becomes embroiled in massive political corruption murder and blackmail and her plans are seriously endangered Not a bad start But Condon chose instead to twist this idea into a macabre story full of hoary ideas about women who demand equality And as usual he never decides whether he is writing a thriller a psychological portrait or just putting us all on Even sadder is the fact the editors bear to read the book closely enough to catch a major factual error In the first few pages of the noveL Baroque indeed -BiUBucy i' vW Mini-Reviews ALTHOUGH SOME THERAPISTS Insist they do not exist multiple personalities are among the more interesting psychological aberrations They also do wonderful things for actresses Joanne Woodward won the Academy Award for the lead role in the film Three Faces of and Sally Fields got the most-deserved Emmy in the history of those TV awards for her performance as Maybe some other actress will do as well with Fifth (Houghton Mifflin $1095) if and when an effort is made to translate it to the big or the little screen Written by Daniel Keyes the author of for Algernon" a story that Cliff Robertson turned into the Academy Award vehicle Fifth Sally" is a novel about a woman with five distinct personalities and the psychiatrist who blended those into one Successfully Successfully is the key word here because the women who inspired the stories about Eve and Sybil both claimed their recovery was considerably less triumphant than the dramas about them led people to believe Both said they had further problems with fragmentation long after their respective psychiatrists were boasting they had been made mentally whole THE ONLY PERSON in novel is Sally Porter but the story is narrated by Derry one of Sally's four alter egos Sally is in her late 20s dark pretty prim and divorced Although originally given custody of the twins a boy and a girl her behavior turned so bizarre that the court later changed its mind and awarded the children to their father Derry is the same age virginal funny forever looking on the bright side always thinking be a ever Derry is also the only one who knows all of Sally's five sides Sally is conscious of only the one self blanking out entirely when any of the others takes charge Those others are Nola brilliant and artistic but devoid of emotion Bella provocative sensual and round-heeled and Jinx burning with rage that alternately moves her to try to kill others or herself Between them the five have all the major charactertistics found in most normal people But with Sally only one is ever present at a time and she has no way of knowing or determining which personality it will be The consequences are startling and on a couple of occasions nearly fatal THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS about this book that ring true that it would be easy for me to pan it Instead I basically liked it weaknesses are simply outweighed in my estimation by its strong points foremost among them being Derry the eternal optimist a character dreamed up by Sally when she was a child and named for the middle syllable in Cinderella Derry is so engaging that when she is finally merged into Sally and ceases to exist as a distinct entity the reader experiences a genuine sense of loss It is incidentally from these mergings that the novel takes it title As Nola Bella Derry and ultimately Jinx are separately made a part of his patient the psychiatrist Roger Ash refers to the result as First Second Sally" etc Keyes says he did a lot of research on the subject of multiple personalities and their treatment enough to know that while a few still Insist there is no such thing other mental health professionals believe that up to three percent of the populace has experienced some fragmentation of the mind at one time or another Since I still have too vivid memories of a night nine years ago when after someone had climaxed a party by passing around some particularly potent pot my personality began changing like a flipped channel-selector on a television set very much a believer in this enomenon WHAT I FIND LESS EASY to believe about Fifth are some of its so-called people The two men that Sally works for as a nightclub waitress both fall in love with her attracted primarily by her decidedly weird and often dangerous behavior In one case these two are both watching as the Bella part of Sally takes over and starts to entertain the customers by stripping on the dance floor only to have Jinx suddenly come to the fore and try to commit suicide Love may be blind but not also deaf dumb and paralyzed The hardest of all for me to swallow though is Ash I can accept that somewhere out there is a psychiatrist who is dedicated and self-sacrificing but it would take a would-be kamikaze pilot to endure what Ash does on behalf of Sally Porter She twice undergoes the metamorphosis to Jinx once after finally luring him into her bed and tries to kill him inflicting knife wounds on one occasion I think have to be nuttier than she to put up with this But maybe my natural cowardice is coloring my viewpoint I Am Dubious Yellow These reservations aside though this is an interesting and readable book And when they make it into a film probably go 3 Court Novel Is Confusing But Amusing THE JUROR by Harvey Jacobs Watts $895 1 I suspect this tale of jury duty was meant to be a clever putdown of our i justice system I only suspect that for after finishing the book I'm still not sure Just as I am still unsure about the verdict in the case the jury sat on Be that as it may the book is fun and easy to read I run across such short sentences since Hemingway Example: Drew was balding He was a bit too fat But his shape was still there He was holding his When balding Leon Drew receives his jury summons he reacts as any typical civic-minded American would he tries to get out of it Denied he is forced to sit on a civil case involving the city of New York versus one Simon Varnick cab driver cab had been involved in an accident with two city buses Simon wants damage from the city The colorful witnesses give no conclusive evidence or sequence of events leading to the accident No two witnesses tell the same tale The most memorable character in the book is the judge He continually admonishes the lawyers to on with it This is not Watergate or the Brinks case" He seems to have sat on too many cases and has no sympathy for defen- dants plaintiffs or lawyers Especially lawyers I defy anyone after the evidence is all presented to sort out the truth They jury cannot So how do they resolve the 1 question of guilt? Their major concern throughout the trial is to get off jury duty and get on with their own business I found I was not able to reach a verdict myself and furthermore I found I care As far as I could tell they were all guilty as sin Wanda Segiund 1 A recent supreme court decision enabling scientists to patent genetically created bacteria seems to have spawned some science fiction (or did the science fiction come first?) In the 8th Day" (Celestial Arts $995) Laurence Okun explores the idea of genetic manipulation to produce highly talented people Bill Conover a writer between jobs runs into the first one at a Lake Tahoe blackjack table but is not impressed until he finds the same telekinetic powers in a golf pro and a magician He smells a mystery and starts looking for connections He finds that these three people and three others were all born the same month in the same hospital Okun has written a compelling mystery that will make you wonder the next time a golf pro makes an unusual shot or you see someone with a hot winning streak at the blackjack table Lilyan Mastrolia a scene in in which a woman tells Woody Allen all these years I finally had an orgasm And my doctor told me it was the wrong After a pause Woody quips I never had the wrong If one of those people who think there is a wrong kind of orgasm you should read Confidence: Discovering the Joys of by Dr Deborah Phillips (Houghton Mifflin $995) Written by one of the leaders in sex therapy this book is a delightful compendium of little-known facts (did you know that female animals probably even have orgasms?) step-by-step behavioral therapies for overcoming sexual hangups and some sensible advice on how to put romance back into the rush to bed Even if you think you know everything there is to know about sex it never hurts to learn a few refinements Tom Minor If you tolerate overpowering stress tension life-or-death drama or a constant drain on your emotions read by Victoria Poole (Little Brown $1195) This is not fictional drama it is the real story full of tears and heartaches and hope of Sam Poole of Portland Maine who underwent a heart transplant in Stanford University Medical Center in the prime of his teen years The book was written by his mother an extraordinary person who somehow retained her sanity her resilience and even her sense of humor during the months of her frightful experiences The youth himself must be congratulated too for he matched his great strength and that of his father and other family members who hung together through the hopeful hours and dreadful hours expect to read in short snatches It will hold you and dominate you throughout Jack A Rye John "Wizard" (Berkley $1295) is a delightful galactic odyssey on a world called Gaea that orbits near Saturn Gaea is the name of the world as well as of its indifferent God with 12 satellite brains Two humans travel to Gaea requesting to have their illnesses cured Both are subject to embarassing uncontro-lable fits Gaea tells them to travel on her world to do something to earn their cure and thus begins the odyssey In the process of proving themselves they become closely acquainted with Titanides sexy sensuous centaurs and the Wizard who is Immortal and alcoholic Their adventures are interesting and exciting with dangers galore and charming sexual fantasies If you enjoy science fantasy enjoy the Lilyan Mastrolia.