Daily Hampshire Gazette from Northampton, Massachusetts • 26

PAGE 26 DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 24 1990 Boohs Art of laughing and forgetting the talks in explicit code a neurosis that ultimately fails The code is never so secret it be deciphered a diaphanous stronghold a chiffon wall is her personality: it is a pack of wild dogs on a leash dragging her around dogs rabid lor conversation it is an eleven-year-old loose in a toy store pulling his father through the fun-packed aisles searching for treasure Her voice is a brass band parading through her throat Squeezing her personality a giant thing through a tiny throatish hole working its way back to you babe clear and singing An express train to your ears She was dropped into the center of her personality decades ago and has been trying to crawl to the edge of it ever since Either there is no edge or all edge endless stretches of edge flat on its back and sunning in the heat of who she is dreaming that she is herself and she wake up come to the surface world without rad a world without end aerobic to be Carrie Fisher Surrender the Pink by Carrie Fisher' Simon and Schuster 280 pp $1895 By JEAN HANFF KORELITZ Special to the Gazette Contrary to what might be assumed given the overflow of publicity accorded the double release ucity i of Carrie first film and second novel not everyone was united in praise of from the Having read the novel three years ago when it was first published I remember next to nothing about it today never a good sign What I do remember was the wit: all over every page emerging almost indiscriminately out of every mouth Every line was a punch line everyone seemed extraordinarily clever For this reason the novel was at least pleasant to read but without the concentration on the mother-daughter relationship added later for the film the book evaporated in retrospect If strengths have remained intact with her second novel so too have her weaknesses the Pink" focuses on Dinah Kaufman a writer for the soap opera and a native Californian tongue is her weapon and her shield Drenched in cynicism and rolling between the up- and down-moods which she has given the names Roy and Pam respectively she meets her match in Rudy Gendler a successful playwright On meeting him for the first time she notes that he has the kind of eyes not only undressed you unblinkingly but shaved your head called your parents and refused to refinance your But though she is drawn to something in him that reminds her of herself she is also all too willing to put herself in his power: and she said to her assembled collective unconsciousness have ai new presi- RICHARD CARPENTERGantl Phatanrapfetr Benjamin DeMott retired professor of English at Amherst College is the author of a new book on class in America titled Imperial Middle: Why Americans Think Straight About DeMott book hits body politic nerve Grass remembers fears reunification But when the real Rudy shows up to tell her about his new girlfriend' Lindsay and then stays for a bout of Dinah becomes inflamed with a determination to get him back Taking advantage of a strike Dinah travels east to the Hamptons rents an overpriced shack with view and proceeds to spy on her ex-husband and his new girlfriend In one memorable episode rite actually hides in a hall closet of their house listening to Lindsay rustling im dinner while singing the theme from the Flints tones Clearly Rudy has not found another Dinah The exercise in obsession is short-lived however Finally Rudy confronts Dinah saves her life by performing this Heimlich Maneuver on her when she is choking and tells her paradox is that a center of attention drawn to centers of This seems to break the spell and Dinah will return to a more rewarding autonomy Still the author tells us the relationship will somehow continue to Book Review year-old Grass who has been called a traitor to his fatherland has argued against reunification Like his trust in the prescience of writers he sees culture not capitalism as the one force that could have brought a sense of unity not reunification to the two German nations in the form of a loose confederation of German states He writes so many lost wars after blitzkrieg victories and battles of encirclement after all the horrors we have been capable of we should finally let reason moderation and the fatherland's real talent triumph a talent for scholarship which once flourished and then was increasingly His culture over capitalism polemic becomes extreme when he fails to recognize that culture a trip to an art exhibit is not a solution to unemployment or hungry and shelterless people But to say -the East Germans have made a go of it if what started in the streets of Leipzig Dresden Rostock and East Berlin had played out or if the border opened up Had the capitalists and politicians from the west not stepped in east would have iapit the perhaps the CARRIE FISHER Book Review Dictator mumbled her superego its evil yellow eyes leering she said louder doubtfully Dictator ruler boss king snarled the Such beginnings do not bode well for marital bliss and Fisher show us any Her theme is the creative warfare between men ami women and indeed the novel is spattered with descriptions of animal mating rituals some of them hilarious polecat places his paws on the shoulder and bites her neck inducing for fifteen minutes a condition of muscular One page after Rudy's and meeting several years have passed and Dinah is back in LA divorced from Rudy and punishing herself by writing heart-rending scenes for the Rudy-character she has created on De GUNTER GRASS the Nazi regime notable among them Thomas Mann In this thin volume of 123 pages! he has assembled 10 essays letters and conversations that range back to 1961 the year the Berlin Wall was erected Only three of the essays were written since the wall came down or rather was opened up last November In those three decades the 63- free time exist even after they have finished participating in it it on without them leaving them behind The missed boat the jumped ship the wayward While it may be true that Carrie Fisher is as her friend Meg Wolitzer writes love child of Eddie Fisher and Dorothy worth remembering that neither Fisher nor Parker were novelists Wit remains Carrie strong suit and one-liners propel the story The writing itself however is uneven and apparent habit of brainstorming humorous imagery lacks the discipline it requires to be truly successful or for that matter truly funnv was not her middle Fisher writes "Rebecca What seems so hilarious at the moment of inspiration may dull on reflection and a good floor is littered with such discarded moments But Fisher seems to have let nothing go the is a long comic monologue sometimes funny sometimes not Literature it but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon crafted its own destiny Grass agonizes over what he calls German hubris the gall to forget Auschwitz and two world wars the millions killed because of the irrationalism and nationalism that seem to have characterized a one Germany With such a shameful past something grotesque about boasts about their economic miracle of their material success Grass believes Reunification simply tempts a dangerous fate He predicts the doom of a unified Germany writing that neighbors would draw away from us with distrust and the feeling at being isolated would rear its head giving rise to the dangerous self-pity that sees itself as by Born and raised in Danzig now Gdansk Poland on the Baltic Sea Grass has felt the shame firsthand of having been in the Hitler Youth of having never seriously questioned the war machine ana of having disbelieved the photographs of piles of bodies from places never heard of Treblinka Sobibor Auschwitz Now he warns against the demagogues the politicians who have promised to return lost lands such as Danzig Silesia and Pomerania to Germans who became refugees of these places songs specifically written for my voice rm also working with two violin players doing a different repertoire of traditional stuff and we will be doing a European tour That permutation may be over here next summer to play One of biggest fans is Elvis Costello has said extremely nice things about me and that was just nearing me on record He finally heard me play live twice in the last sue weeks in Dublin and in Los Angeles better write you a he said I am so pleased and proud as got a lot of things eoina on A lot of So being unemployed really fra it concentrates the mind wonderfully dear By CHRIS BURRELL Gazette Staff WORTHINGTON Benjamin DeMott is astonished so many people want political commentary from ah English professor these days But book about social classes in America has put him on the phone for half-hour interviews with Time Magazine and in front of a national television camera last week for morning news show Chalk it up to good timing Imperial Middle: Why Americans Think Straight About (William Morrow $1895) has come out just as battles with President Bush go right to the heart of class issues in this country The book received critical praise in The New York Times Book Magazine DeMott a retired English professor at Amherst College who lives in Worthington said that if one good thing about the budget crisis that Americans will awaken to class issues The tax debate points to a premise of his book pulling the lid off a system that might not be as fair to all taxpayers as we have been led to believe DeMott tells us that there's a ful myth in America that wrought some serious damage the myth of classlessness and to hear DeMott explain it an ideal of social mobility and equal opportunity gone sour Take one of the book's earliest and most tragic examples to understand a consequence the drowning of a black Amherst College freshman Gerald Penny 17 years ago when he jumped in the pool for a compulsory swimming test No one thought that a new student amidst the affluence and privilege wouldn't know how to swim and DeMott speculates about what Penny must have thought before jumping in The myth took hold He could just jump in the water and swim But there are problems The myth that we all get a fair shake that there are no class differences is finally destructive and unfair says DeMott DeMott holds up some of the injustices: a Dan Quayle-style draft system which keeps some out of war and sends others exemptions for mortgage interest and property taxes while there are homeless on the streets unequal medical care depending on a person's ability to pay "On every single issue in contemporary American life the rules are not the same from class to DeMott said High on a hill at his country home in Worthington or even from the protected and privileged ting of Amherst College DeMott may not seem the likeliest person to comment on class inequities But the 68-year-old social critic grew up in a working class family ana he has always kept himself close to contemporary life in America whether by watching TV sitcoms or through teaching stints at a small black college in Florida and at City University of New York DeMott credits these two schools vastly different from Amherst with enlightening him At the Florida college called Be-thune-Cookman in Daytona Beach there was a spirit of solidarity whole faculty was rooting fen: (the students) keeping them on DeMott said Once they graduated their ties severed Instead students returned after failed job hunts to get help course on rary culture which attempted to lay bare some of the myths managed to fit the school's philosophy it pays to know the realities to prepare for the prejudice and Bookmarks hard knocks one will inevitably face were glad to know how the system worts and glad not to be the DeMott said He saw the daunting paradox facing minorities in America a ghetto DeMott said placing you at the bottom and saying you should lift yourself up by the bootstraps a recipe for confusion for psychological Another experience also put DeMott on the track to explore class issues in America It was the response to a film his daughter Joel DeMott had helped make about working class teenagers in Muncie Ind The corporate backers of the documentary film along with television critics and other media attacked the film when they saw it A Public Broad- casting System spokesman called it and PBS refused to show it Why? DeMott tells readers in his final pages that this corporate and media elite want to see some of the realities of working class lives The film finally made it to cinemas and was praised by critics DeMott was heartened by that and his book adds more to the discourse And now with communism on the ropes he is hopeful class differences can be talked about without the stigma of being called a communist books This is the week children's book writers and illustrators come out with books open and pens in hand First up will be Barry Moser and Jane Yolen at Michelson Galleries in Northampton tomor- row at 7 pm Moser will read from (Little Brown $1495) a Hans Christian Anderson story which he retold and illustrated Yolen will read from her book (Har-court Brace Jovanovich $1595) which Moser illustrated Both Yolen and Moser are both from Hatfield They will also sign copies of their books Saturday from 1 to 2 pm at The Globe Bookshop Northamp-- ton Lauren Mills Dennis Nolan and Ruth Sanderson will sign their recent releases Mills' book is An ABC of (Little Brown $1495) which she illustrated (Macmillan $1395) shows off both his writing and illustrating talents as does Twelve Dancing Princesses" (Little Brown $1495) Nolan and Mills live in Westhampton Sanderson lives in Ware Finally at pm Saturday Jan Brett will be at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley to sign copies of her book Christmas Reindeer" (GP $1495) Brett lives in Norwell Reading at library NORTHAMPTON Tonight at 7 pm at Forbes Library Tim Salvner and John Norris will read from their fiction and poetry Salvner who lives in Springfield is a music reviewer for The Berkshire Eagle Norris lives in Northampton and is a teacher Book celebration AMHERST Robert Creed will do a live performance Of Beowulf tomorrow from 3 to 5 pm at the Albion Bookshop in celebration of the publication of his book the Rhythm of (University of Missouri Press $4250) Creed who teaches English at the University of Massachusetts has written and per-formed prize-winning dramatizations of Beowulf for National Public Radio to expand horizons Two States One Nation? by Gunter Grass Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 123 pp $1895 By CHRIS BURRELL Gazette Staff To Gunter Grass the mounds of bodies at Auschwitz should have been enough of a barrier to keep the two Germanys from becoming one again Grass the German novelist who brought us Tin Drum" and and among others equates a unified Germany with Auschwitz It's a simple equation and one that would probably be questioned by historians who prefer to lay out a complex series of conditions that led Germany to commit the horrors of the gas chambers Still neither this nor the fact that the two Germanys have already become one make what Grass writes in States One any less chilling We are bound to listen to him writers in Germany we've had experiences and it was always the writers who were driven out of the country first They would predict bad devlopments very early on but no one ever listened to them As proof Grass calls forth the ghosts of German writers early soothsayers who criticized and then fled Tabor uses Continued from Page 25 days I perform almost exclusively modern material I still do some traditional material I write so basically I am looking at other work I'm always on the lookout for good material good words strong visual Tabor has three separate British record contracts and her albums are licensed to Rykodisc Shanachie Carthage and Green Linnet in America Such an arrangement allows her a wide range of artistic freedom Other Time" is a collection of jazz standards including Cole Porter and George Gershwin compositions Why did she record the album without using jazz arrangements? was not attempting to perform them as a jazz singer which not I just wanted people to look at them maybe for the first time as words rather than just a set of lyrics to keep the solos In collaboration with the Oyster Band and Rain" is a collection of cover songs divided between folk and rock Folkies covering the Velvet Underground? reading of Tomorrow's is as chilling as the original version that featured Nico the chanteuse Tabor responded with a laugh when compared to Nico Velvet Underground song is very power- Until about three years ago I always held jobs Professionally a librarian and I also owned a restaurant It was only when I sold the restaurant that I had the time to explore a lot of new possibilities June Tabor prodding we got from Shanachie Records as much as anything And how of Silly occurred So the of Silly may or may not occur it surprise me but not in the foreseeable and I are doing a short tour of England with a modem jazz quartet performing new ful grew up listening to whatever popular music was on the radio so I listened to all kinds of things A lot of the jazz standards would have filtered into my mind when I was about 5-years-old I sang with a soft rock band as well as having gotten into folk music when I was at college When I was 19 I wanted to be Grace Slick and now maybe my wish has been granted because actually- doing In America Tabor is probably brat-known for the album which was orginally released by Chrysalis Records in -1976 It took Tabor and Prior 12 years to release the follow-up More To The Silly Sisters was con- ceived as a one-off project I was busy and Maddy was extremely busy with Steeleye We got together again after I had moved four miles from house We said see if we can still sing together and we could It was the Mass Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Providing preventive education and counseling for abused and neglected children and their families Another local agency you help when you give to the United Way Hampshire Community United Way 584-3962.