Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 81

SUNDAY MARCH 8 1981 £1981 FOUT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM 7D The club where good fellows get together It seems that we've all been myth-taken jri -mi hi unkii a am mm lm ilb i ROLL CALL By William Cohen Simon Schuster $1495 Reviewed by JEFF GUINN On the dust cover of this professional diary by Sen William Cohen of Maine Dan Rather offers a series of overwhelming superlatives that leaves the potential reader no choice other than to believe that Roll Call may be the most important literary discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls According to Rather Roll Call is "a classy and gutsy insider's primer on the Senate of the 1980s and beyond it tells what the United States Senate is about as opposed to what it may appear to be" The CBS Evening News may be in serious trouble when Rather replaces Walter Cronkite Cohen's effort at a meaningful glimpse into our system of government from an insider's point of view is earnest enough but tempered with such caution and frustrating bland-ness that the hoped-for major insightful work reads like The Bobbsey Twins at the Capitol Building Reviewed by JIM MARRS Along with cancer and influenza we now can add mass myth-steria to the list of human ailments if the conclusions of African studies writer Kenneth Wylie about the legendary Bigfoot are correct Wylie who describes himself as a trained historian anthropologist woodsman and amateur naturalist delves deeply into the Bigfoot phenomenon and finally decides there's nothing there His "personal inquiry into a phenomenon" is predominantly a rationalized argument against the so-called evidence of Bigfoot This includes a lengthy critique of the famous Patterson-Gimlin film footage of Bigfoot taken by two cowboys in 1967 Wylie's unstated conclusion is that the film is a hoax Although couched in twisted syntax and interrogatory sentences his basic conclusion is the same for the entire Bigfoot phenomenon rr Mima li r-" uwewuy 1 I tjin Kg LJL3 BIGFOOT: A Personal Inquiry into a Phenomenon By Kenneth Wylie Viking $1495 role in our cyberneticized bureau cratized civilization" Earlier in his book Wylie takes time from explaining away much of the Bigfoot "evidence" to present some interesting if questionable psychoanalysis of many of the leading Bigfoot proponents When Wylie sticks to describing these people and their habitats he can be quite effective But when he strikes out and tries to explain their motivations he often gets into the same murky pseudo-scientific areas as the more fervent Bigfootologists Likewise while Wylie attempts to be an objective scientific searcher his rationalizations over what might have produced the Bigfoot evidence are often as problematic as the giant creature itself A CERTAIN intellectual smugness appears to have crept into Wylie's personal inquiry It becomes irritating to read Wylie's unquestioning statements of known scientific "facts" even as he is explaining that many of these facts only became facts in recent years Yet for all its pretentiousness Wylie's book should be recommended to every intelligent person who would take a long hard look at Bigfoot It's a welcome addition to the lore with good overviews of the phenomenon and precious little of the lurid sensationalism in so many undocumented Bigfoot writings To his credit Wylie admits there possibly do exist some things which All of Texas is his turf and the rest is laughter regarding a difficult vote instead he must describe his loneliness as "darker and colder than the distance to the nearest star" This is typical of the writing style throughout If any truism regarding the Senate emerges from Roll Call it is the sense of group protectivism by out federal officials No one who wishes to remain an insider can violate the unwritten law against personal vilification of another member As in major league baseball clubhouses it's "What you see here what you say here must remain here" COHEN WANTS TO share insights with us but only those insights that won't offend his fellows When the senator clashes with President Carter during a White House breakfast we're told of the disagreement but not the gist of it Instead Carter "responds emotionally" to what Cohen has said It's a shame that Cohen once having made the decision to write his book couldn't also make a complete effort at his stated goal: "that this book may serve as a lens that will allow the viewer to see the flowing metamorphosis of power people and events" Somewhere between the innocuous lines of this book it's possible to hear the senator's mother saying proudly "William is such a good boy" A lot of relieved US senators may be saying the same thing if knowing Cohen they ever worried at all As for Cohen in '84 or '88 expect to hear the writing of Roll Call listed among his accomplishments as he campaigns for an office even higher than that of senator He'll probably never be president but if he's as dull and forgettableashisstyle of writing he'd make a perfect vice president (Jeff Guinn li Port Worth writer) COHEN IS remembered as the conscience-stricken young congressman from Maine who tearfully voted for Richard Nixon's impeachment during the televised congressional hearings in 1974 Even then Cohen tried hard to be inoffensive he tempered his vote with a long monologue about how kind Richard Nixon had always been to him In Roll Call Cohen again follows personal expeditious form for every real nugget of information he offers that may put a member of our governmental system in a revealing but less than flattering light the senator immediately backs off orofferscoun-terinformation evidently designed to convince his readers that nothing really bad could ever be insinuated aboutanyfederalofficial or activity Cohen previously has published a book of poetry and throughout this volume he demonstrates the amateur poet's tendency to utilize florid adjectives at every opportunity It's not enough for Cohen that he feels isolated as he wrestles with a decision WVLIE IS KINDER to the many Bigfoot believers than to the producers of the Patterson-Gimlin film According to Wylie we are all victims of the modern age Nature is on the run the concrete and the pollution of the cities press in upon us "In such a world our ancient myths and legends can have resurgent potency" he writes "The legendary giant MUST be out there all the better if it is manlike If so it reminds us of the mysterious lost of a time when we huddled in the night in the company of our familial band our extended family awaiting the dawn and the marvelous yet fearful chase that came with the sun of a time when legend adorned even the most familiar creatures with an aura of unknowability when even the slow-witted stallion could threaten death with flashing hooves even as it promised the feast of a time when the young ventured alone into the hills to come to terms with the beasts and with the grasses trees and waters For our having lost all this Wylie says Bigfoot fulfills "a legendary Ben Sargent is probably the best-known editorial cartoonist in Texas In any event he is one of the more acclaimed editorial cartoonists in America respected both for the scope and depth of his work and for his employment of zany humor and a crisp clean distinctive cartooning style Sargent's primary inspiration is the Texas Legislature and Texas Statenouse Blues: The Editorial Cartoons of Ben Sargent is a current publication of Texas Monthly Press Issued as a trade paperback in a horizontal format it retails for $595 It contains about 150 gems drawn by Sargent for the Austin American-Statesman over a five-year period Even with the many-splendored world of Texas politics as his personal artistic fief Sargent's concern doesn't end there He keeps an eye on Washington and follows other events on the national front Nor are his attentions to Texas restricted to politics as evidenced by the above cartoon produced in 1977 and pertaining to an event that captivated all of Fort Worth and much of Texas and beyond Texas Statenouse Blues is a most incisive entertainment amusing and ironic set up as a playful reminder for the future of what it was like in Texas in the turbulent '70s-into-'80s are not yet fully catalogued in man's library So when you're far away from the crowded cities and freeways that cry you hear may indeed be a bobcat or some trapped rabbit but it also might be something lurking on the fringes of our scientific knowledge (Jim Marrs is a Fort Worth journalist) We won the war apparently despite all of those generals THE WAR BETWEEN THE GENERALS By David Irving Congdon Lattes $1795 ---fc 'jm tzt VYMmmmmmmWOmWmm JLWtfkltfaValHaWHMMmMaW Reviewed by JOHN BARKHAM The best service a retired general can perform is to turn in his tongue along with his uniform" Thus spoke Gen Omar Bradley America's only living five-star World War II general and never was a truer word spoken The comment is equally applicable to generals before retirement specifically those in this new book by British World War II historian David Irving Based on documents released under Britain's Official Secrets Act his book is easily the frankest feistiest most unfettered account of the stinging rivalries that went on between the WW II generals during the European campaign that has yet been published Napoleon's marshals would never have dared to bicker like this: Napoleon was a stern commander and his generals were fellow Frenchmen But genial Gen Eisenhower with his infectious grin had to command an Allied army consisting of American forces (who supplied the main punch) British forces! who felt they were being downgraded by the Yankees) and the feeble French bringing up the rear For the first time in WW II literature Irving quoting from hitherto classified documents discloses the squabbling backbiting and locking of horns between the Allied generals To call them prima donnas as Eisenhower did is a huge IRVING HAS EXHUMED a bookful of such displays in telling his story of the last phase of the war We can now see how fortunate the Allies were in having as Supreme Commander the normally unflappable Eisenhower A naturally friendly gregarious man and a good soldier to boot only his even temper could have prevailed on his wrangling generals to work with instead of against each other Yet even Eishennower's limitless patience was sorely tried Irving quotes him as a having complained to Tedder: "I am tired of dealing with a lot of prima donnas By God you tell that bunch that if they can't get together and stop quarreling like children I'll tell the Prime Minister (Churchill) to get someone else to run this damn war" Every page bears testimony to the truth of that statement More than three decades after the guns fell silent David Irving has produced by far the most sensational and most human story of the men who won World War II The book deserves to be a best seller if only because it lets us see the victorious Allied commanders with the gloves off against each other Reading its prickly pages one can share the exasperation of Everett Hughes who said it all: "God I wish we could forget our egos for a while!" (Job! Bariham contributes to the StirTelrgrtm by special arrangement) THE PRINCIPAL SQUABBLER was Britain's Montgomery who seems to have had no friends at all a super-cautious commander who having defeated Rommel in the Western Desert became acutely afflicted with delusions of grandeur and insisted on a greater role in the European invasion Gen George Patton the US commander whose professional audacity rivaled that of Rommel could not abide Montgomery whom he called "the little monkey" Patton himself comes out of the book with tarnished reputation because of his race prejudice and his preference for the Germans his enemy over the Russians his ally Behind the lines were the political chiefs Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill getting the flack from the fronts as the generals strove to checkmate each other Britain's air chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder scorned Montgomery as "a little fellow of average ability who thinks of himself as Napoleon" Gen Bradley was no less contemptuous dismissing Montgomery as a "third-rate general" Patton's comments on Montgomery were probably unprintable Gen Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery The paperback helf yG' can mean good for kids better for adults Screams of a rare bird mm 61 '-I'd for Love ($495) The Temple of the Golden Pavilion ($595) Forbidden Colors ($695) and After the Bo liquet ($595) Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo reared in Manchuria and has received his country's most prestigious literary prizes Abe's four novels published by Perigee are The Box Man ($495) The Secret Rendezvous ($495) The Ruined Map ($595) and Die Face All but the firstaremakinga first appearance in paperback in this country ALSO NEW IN PAPERBACK is I'rMems and Other Stones (Fawcett $295) a collection by John Updike At last accounting Updike and John Cheever were running a close second for having the most stories appearing in The Sew Yorker John O'Hara is first The Gnostic Gospels (Vintage $295) by Elaine Pagels is a political analysis of the early development of Christianity Pagels' scholarly but readable book shows what for the sake of unification the early Christians chose to accept as gospel and what they chose to leave out It also shows that disagreement among Christians hasa long history (Karen Ray Is an Arlington Journalist and novelist I his young eyes laugh when he laughs are as amazed as he is by all that his grandfather knows and cry for him when he endures Little Tree is like Gulliver's Travels good for young people better for grownups Years later people told Carter the Indian ways are naive but he writes "If it is 'naive' it does not matter for it is also good Granpa said it would always carry me throygh which it has" You won't find Little Tree prominently displayed You'll have to ask for it or maybe even order it There is however one advantage to a G-rated book: The paperback edition has a cover price of $150 less than a movie rated or not THE WORKS OF TWO JAPANESE novelists Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima become more available here with the publication of Perigee's Japanese Library Mishima considered a Japanese Renaissance man committed seppuku (ritual suicide) in 1970 after writing 33 plays and 13 novels His The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea was made into a movie here several years ago Mishima '8 other novels in this new trade paperback series are: The Sound of Waves ($495) Thirst By KAREN RAY Special to the Star Telegram A lot has been written about the movie rating system Designed as a guide for parents and moviegoers it has instead become a guide for moviemakers An oddity of the rating scheme is that audiences now don't like movies with ratings so producers often insert an unnecessary "damn" or two to avoid the stigma Fortunately there is no rating system for books but in one respect there is a similarity: rated" books have a tough time finding an audience A book written for adolescents is one thing and both readerand bookseller know how to react to it but a book that in a two sentence description sounds like a book for kids is not going to find many adult readers A perfect example is The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter reprinted recently in paperback under Dell's young adult imprint Laurel Leaf Little Tree is Carter's American Indian name and Little Tree is the story of how he was reared in the 1930s by his Cherokee grandparents in the hills of Tennessee We see Little Tree's world through NIGHTHAWK BLUES By Peter Guralnick Sea view (1095 Reviewed by JON McCONAL Maybe if for no other reason readers will be hooked by this novel because of the Inside look it gives at the life of one Screamin' Nighthawk an old black blues singer whose treks across the nation left historic tracks in the blues Not being a student of the blues may have kept me from at first appreciating the dialogue between Screamin' Nighthawk in his various encounters as he heads home from an aborted road trip The book is built around this experience The trip had been arranged by his youthful manager Jerry Lipsshitz who had discovered the Hawk living in retirement in a small cafe in the South Nighthawk whose real name was Theodore Roosevelt Jefferson had been a blues god of the blacks and whites during his youth and the Depression His records were famous in the circles of blues' addicts Then he dropped out of sight Then came the discovery Lipsshitz who has a myriad of problems of his own decides to take the Hawk and two of his cronies on bookings across the country in colleges and universities He wants the youth to have a chance to hear this page of history from the blues But the trip is canceled after Nighthawk and his two fellow musicians are Involved a car wreck where it is discovered he has diabetes He is ordered to change his entire lifestyle He doesn't He slips out of the hospital and starts home Peter Guralnick's descriptions and dialogue are beautiful lapsing from exchanges between Nighthawk and his cronies to long passages of Nighthawk thinking of his past life as he weaves his way home The dialogue is powerful But nobody ever said that being a blues singer would belch up any Sunday school teacher The Screamin' Nighthawk certainly wasn't one of those as he took women by the dozens in his musical prowlings The chronicles of those escapades which come to a clima in one last performance are raw But so is life (Joa MrConal li a Str eolnn lit) A literary quiz that's absolutely glittering Just for Jan SPEND SUNDAY BROWSING 11:00 Am pm Free parking courtesy FWPD BARBER'S BOOK STORE DOWNTOWN 335-5469 Metro 429-7517 Match the title 1 The Gold Bug 2 Diamonds Are Forever 3 The Eustace Diamonds 4 The Golden Bowl 5 The Silver Cord 6 Ruby Red 7 Diamond Lil 8 Golden Boy 9 Gold 10 The Moonstone with the author: a Sidney Howard Anthony Trollope Edgar Allan Poe Mae West William Price Fox Eugene O'Neill Ian Fleming Wilkie Collins i Henry James Clifford Odets Six correct answers giveyou a passing score with eight the mark of excellence The answers: 1-c 2 3-b 4-i 5-a fte 7-d 8-J 9-f 10-h Nighthawk is taken to a hospital 4 tmi tkiitt an a a A a A a a a.