C01 1 <#FROWN:C01\>Earplay's Peterson premiere

C01 2 'Diptych' shows composer's wide experience

C01 3 By Allan Ulrich

C01 4 EXAMINER MUSIC CRITIC C01 5 A PREMIERE by the Bay Area's Wayne Peterson, this year's C01 6 Pulitzer Prize winner for composition, proved both the most C01 7 absorbing and most instructive work featured on this season's first C01 8 Earplay concert of contemporary music Monday evening at Fort C01 9 Mason's Cowell Theater.

C01 10 'Diptych,' a 21-minute opus, co-commissioned by the C01 11 Koussevitzky Foundation and the Earplay ensemble, makes no radical C01 12 statement and realigns no aesthetic priorities. But Peterson, the C01 13 senior contributor to Monday's concert, revealed a quality only C01 14 intermittently evident in his colleagues' offerings - the gift of C01 15 wide experience, and the ability to learn from intense listening. C01 16 They are not surprising virtues from someone you encounter at C01 17 almost every new music concert in town.

C01 18 (Peterson's next local premiere will be a string quartet for C01 19 the Alexander Quartet. Composers, Inc. will present it Nov. 10 in C01 20 the Veterans Building Green Room.)

C01 21 Much of the accompanying fare in Earplay's eighth season C01 22 curtain-raiser was honorably wrought, even arresting at C01 23 moments. Yet, except for James Dashow's 'Mnemonics' (1990) for C01 24 violin and tape, distinctive personalities failed to emerge.

C01 25 The program also included Gustavo Moretto's 'Silenciosamente' C01 26 (1990), David Vayo's 'Poem' (1990) and Scott Wheeler's 'Night Owl C01 27 Variations' (1987). The hard-working performers were Joseph C01 28 Edelberg, violin; George Thomson, violin/viola; Sarah Freiberg, C01 29 cello; Peter Josheff, clarinet/saxophone; Janet Kutulas, flutes; C01 30 Andrew Lewis, percussion, and Karen Rosenak, piano. J. Karla Lemon C01 31 conducted the Peterson, Vayo and Wheeler works.

C01 32 Peterson's wasn't the only piece on Monday's concert to C01 33 reconsider the past; he favors the dotted rhythms found in baroque C01 34 dance forms. Yet, it was the composer's gift for striking C01 35 instrumental sonorities and the constant direction of the C01 36 two-movement work that won the evening.

C01 37 Scored for flute, clarinet, piano, viola, cello and an C01 38 impressive array of percussion, 'Diptych' consistently surprises in C01 39 the clarity of its counterpoint and in its deployment of C01 40 instrumental timbres for both sensuous and dramatic possibilities. C01 41 Tensions grow organically from the material without seeming imposed C01 42 upon it.

C01 43 The first section, 'Aubade,' is a morning song in which C01 44 Peterson deftly conjures an emotionally charged landscape. Burbling C01 45 sounds from a vibraphone, soft drumrolls and descending chords C01 46 glory in pictorialism, yet there's an arch effect here that derives C01 47 from the subtle manipulation of textures.

C01 48 Peterson arranged 'Odyssey,' the second part, in rondo form, C01 49 but a rich vein of lyricism and widely contrasting textures sustain C01 50 the interest even when a breakdown seems imminent. And one discerns C01 51 a sophisticated wit. The strings, in one extended passage, are C01 52 assigned a syrupy theme that suggests Franck or Faure. A coda C01 53 highlighting piano and gentle percussion leaves the listener C01 54 wanting a bit more.

C01 55 Less, however, would have been preferable for 'Mnemonics.' C01 56 Chicago-born Dashow has worked extensively in both acoustic and C01 57 electronic music. Here the solo violinist (Thomson) finds his C01 58 sonority matched by the sound on type; that, in part, has been C01 59 determined by the harmonic structure of the string sound.

C01 60 The explanation in the program stresses the complexity of the C01 61 method. What one hears is elegantly assembled, but about halfway C01 62 through, the attention wanders. The aesthetic relationship of live C01 63 musician and electronic sound seems under-defined.

C01 64 'Silenciosamente' offered eight minutes of provocative and C01 65 inconclusive sounds for clarinet, violin and piano. Less is more C01 66 for Argentine-born Moretto, who favors dynamic extremes and C01 67 isolated notes, from which the violin line rises to occasional C01 68 lyrical statements.

C01 69 Vayo's 'Poem' (for flute, piano, clarinet, violin and cello) C01 70 often hints at a warm, almost Brahmsian sonority, from which C01 71 jocularity is not excluded. Wheeler's 'Night Owl Variations' C01 72 separates its four instruments (flute, clarinet, cello and marimba) C01 73 in agreeable, almost improvisatory fashion. Twelve minutes of the C01 74 work, however, left an impression of grayness.

C01 75 C01 76 Family struggles in 'God's Hands'

C01 77 Theatre Works musical just misses its calling

C01 78 By Robert Hurwitt

C01 79 EXAMINER THEATER CRITIC

C01 80 PALO ALTO - A crisis of faith has always been good grist for a C01 81 dramatist's mill, whether it's a religious leader's loss of faith C01 82 in his God (as in Ingmar Bergman's 'The Silence') or an artist's in C01 83 his craft (Ibsen's 'Master Builder,' John Osborne's 'The C01 84 Entertainer,' et al.). But when the artist is a kid just C01 85 discovering that others are as talented as he, or when the crisis C01 86 is an adolescent's belated discovery that his father isn't C01 87 omnipotent ... well, let's just say that not all crises are created C01 88 equal.

C01 89 That's one of the main problems with 'God's Hands,' a C01 90 semiautobiographical new musical by Douglas J. Cohen that opened C01 91 Theatre-Works' Stage II season at Palo Alto's Cubberley Theatre C01 92 Saturday. You want to like these people. You want to believe that C01 93 their story has significance beyond its particulars. You certainly C01 94 sympathize with them at times. But the whole thing feels like an C01 95 exercise in self-indulgence.

C01 96 The story starts in medias res, when Rabbi C01 97 Daniel Levy (Stephen Gill) heads for New York to search for his C01 98 18-year-old son, Benjamin (Mark Phillips), who's been missing from C01 99 Juilliard for several days. We're not worried though. We already C01 100 know what the rabbi won't discover for another 2 hours and 20 C01 101 minutes: Ben's dropped out and taken a job at a supermarket.

C01 102 Meanwhile, we flash back through the story of Ben's life, from C01 103 his birth - with Dad dreaming of his son, the first Jewish C01 104 president - through his prolonged adolescence. Ben has a mother, of C01 105 course, the quiet homemaker Ellie (Diana Torres Koss), and an older C01 106 sister Ruth (Rebecca Fink), eclipsed by her brother from the moment C01 107 he's born. But except for a brief look at Ruth's struggle for her C01 108 own identity, and a superfluous, obligatory nod to woman's lot in C01 109 the song 'Bloomin' Time,' they have little to do with the story.

C01 110 THE CENTRAL relationship is between Ben, his father and his C01 111 father's mother, Rhea (Miriam Babin), a concert pianist determined C01 112 to turn her grandson into the keyboard prodigy her son refused to C01 113 become. The close tie between Ben and Rhea not only fosters Ben's C01 114 musical talents but also precipitates his first crisis of faith, C01 115 when his father, who "wears God's hands" (the hands C01 116 of the rabbi raised in benediction), admits he can't pray Rhea back C01 117 to health after a stroke.

C01 118 Though played as background to Ben's story, his father's crisis C01 119 is more fertile dramatic ground. A reform rabbi whose progressive C01 120 views lose him congregations in Walnut Creek and Illinois, he's a C01 121 grown man still struggling for his mother's approval. The show's C01 122 most interesting moment, too soon over, is a flashback to their C01 123 mother-son, God vs. piano confrontation and her complete rejection C01 124 of a deity who couldn't protect her family against Hitler.

C01 125 Cohen doesn't follow up on this theme, however, nor on the C01 126 rabbi's failure to recognize that his daughter has taken on the C01 127 social conscience side of his calling. Instead, what we get mostly C01 128 is a study in generic middle-class adolescent angst, packaged as a C01 129 swiftly flowing musical that rarely comes to rest on a dramatic C01 130 moment or a distinct melody.

C01 131 Few of the songs - not even a mildly sardonic hymn to C01 132 Manischewitz - have anything like a definable personality. Most of C01 133 Cohen's tunes fall into that gray netherland between recitative and C01 134 actual melody, easily adaptable to whatever mood the composer C01 135 wishes to indicate: a heavier hand on the keys for emotional C01 136 turmoil; a slide into falsetto for added poignancy. The music is C01 137 professional, painless and forgettable, capably performed by Dan C01 138 Casper on keyboards and Bryan Lanser on percussion.

C01 139 Director Barbara Valente gives the show a sharp-looking C01 140 production on a wondrously versatile set (by Joe Ragey) of C01 141 cylindrical blocks and slide projections, all framed between C01 142 Torah-like scrolls. Led by an engaging Phillips, who pushes the C01 143 cute side of Ben just a bit, the cast works hard, but often isn't C01 144 up to the demands of the store.

C01 145 NEITHER Gill nor Babin, though they handle their acting chores C01 146 well enough, quite manages to bring off their major confrontation C01 147 in 'What Good Is Prayer?' The chorus fails sadly in 'It's a Dirty C01 148 Job,' Ben's vision of the congregation as a Damon Runyonesque gang C01 149 (Ben's Broadway-style fantasy life is another theme that falls by C01 150 the way-side). Fink, bursting with teen attitude, and Koss, C01 151 in the underwritten role of Ellie, shine in their musical moments C01 152 together.

C01 153 But at this point, 'God's Hands' isn't exactly a mitzvah.

C01 154 C01 155 'Mad Dog' Ellroy sounds off

C01 156 By Cynthia Robins

C01 157 OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

C01 158 JAMES ELLROY'S latest book, 'White Jazz' (Knopf, $22, 349 C01 159 pages), makes previous detective fiction, including his own, read C01 160 like Dr. Seuss. Pared down to the verbal equivalent of C01 161 Gillespie-Kenton rebop, Ellroy's prose scans nervous, jittery, C01 162 polyphonic and blood-soaked. A fugue for tinhorns, hookers, C01 163 extortionists, dopers, window peepers, porno kings, crooked cops, C01 164 vicious Feds, millionaires, mobsters, murderers and molesters.

C01 165 For a man whose fiction treads a very thin line between C01 166 violence and art, James Ellroy is deceptively charming - used to C01 167 performing, spinning out catchy quotes and off-handedly C01 168 telling his life story. But if life and art forge some kind of C01 169 fidgety truce on his pages, you can bet that somewhere under the C01 170 engaging, clownish exterior, Ellroy's more profligate, dangerous C01 171 instincts lie in wait.

C01 172 Right now, it's time to feed the beast - the author who answers C01 173 not only to James Ellroy (not Jim, not Jimmy, certainly not C01 174 Mr. Ellroy) but also 'Dog,' short for 'Mad Dog.' If you're C01 175 especially nice, he'll even bark for you.

C01 176 Enjoying his fame

C01 177 Mr. Mad Dog's day started at an indecently early hour - 5:30 C01 178 a.m. - in Houston. As he folds his long legs into a booth at C01 179 Postrio, he peruses the menu, ordering up a charcuterie plate. C01 180 "You share it with me," he says. "You eat C01 181 the stuff with liver. I hate liver."

C01 182 Ellroy is enjoying every bit of new fame and burgeoning bank C01 183 account, ordering two entrees at this very expensive restaurant and C01 184 then flourishing a $20 tip on top of the gratuity left by his book C01 185 escort. He talks fast, eats with his fingers, slurps mineral water C01 186 out of his interviewer's glass and complains about his thinning C01 187 salt-and-pepper hair.

C01 188 A rangy, lanky guy given to teensy round glasses ("they C01 189 match my beady little eyes," he jokes), Ellroy bears a C01 190 passing resemblance to Adolf Hitler and nurtures a passion for C01 191 cashmere sweaters. He says that when he first started writing, long C01 192 "before I started marrying women," when he had C01 193 $22,000 in the bank and a $600-a-month flop, he treated himself to C01 194 a $1,300, zillion-ply cashmere. The navy one he's got tied around C01 195 his neck over a faded red and white Hawaiian shirt is as soft as a C01 196 kitten.

C01 197 Twelve years ago, when Ellroy, a self-confessed druggie, C01 198 alcoholic, thief, went on the wagon and wrote his first book - C01 199 'Brown's Requiem,' an elegiac stroll into Los Angeles' seedy C01 200 underbelly of itinerant golf caddies, crooked cops, Mexican whores C01 201 and white powder traffickers - all the elements of his well-hewn C01 202 prose style were there: the offbeat hero not afraid to soil his C01 203 hands or use his gun; a rogue's gallery of characters who, morally C01 204 corrupt or not, are always riveting; a plot that zigs when you C01 205 expect it to zag.

C01 206 But Ellroy was wordier then. His sentence structure parsed. He C01 207 didn't believe in italics or words in all caps. In the last five C01 208 years, since he began what he calls his 'Los Angeles Quartet,' four C01 209 books about the crime-garnished margins of L.A. circa 1958, he's C01 210 dropped verbiage and parts of speech like a clumsy waiter with a C01 211 tray full of dirty dishes.

C01 212 That's not to say that Ellroy's next step is a comic book C01 213 interspersed with Batman-style sound effects, but 'White Jazz,' for C01 214 all its lean-mean-rat-a-tat-machine cadences, was tough to finish. C01 215 It took 21 months.

C01 216 "The story was all there when I started," he C01 217 says. He began with a complicated 164-page outline that led to five C01 218 separate rewrites. Beginning the book in a more traditional first C01 219 person, Ellroy says it "felt a little flaccid to me, so I C01 220 went back and cut, cut, cut, subtracting words, adding words, C01 221 taking out again." Basically, he laughs, "it is C01 222 bebop - it's this racist cop getting into black jazz." C01 223 Only it's an invented syntax, as artful and riveting as the C01 224 dialogue in a David Mamet play, that reads just like the title - C01 225 jazz. C01 226 C02 1 <#FROWN:C02\>Romance of War in Old Asia

C02 2 THE GREAT GAME

C02 3 The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

C02 4 By Peter Hopkirk

C02 5 Kodansha; $30; 565 pages

C02 6 REVIEWED BY ANDREW LEONARD

C02 7 The events in Peter Hopkirk's new history, 'The Great Game,' C02 8 sound like front-page headlines from the past decade:

C02 9 Angry mobs fueled by religious passion take over a foreign C02 10 embassy in a Middle Eastern nation bordering the Persian Gulf. C02 11 Meanwhile, a Western army bogs down in the mountain fastnesses of C02 12 Afghanistan, and thousands of young soldiers die. To the north, C02 13 wily Muslim leaders, heirs to the tradition of Genghis Khan and C02 14 Tamerlane, play one superpower against another.

C02 15 But Hopkirk, a onetime foreign correspondent for the London C02 16 Times, has turned the clock back 100 years, to a time when the C02 17 insatiably expanding empires of Russia and England were gobbling up C02 18 Central Asia, seeking strategic advantages in their global struggle C02 19 for commercial and military domination.

C02 20 The British feared that Russia would not stop until it invaded C02 21 India, the jewel of the British Empire. The Russians were obsessed C02 22 with protecting their borders, psychologically scarred, suggests C02 23 Hopkirk, by a disastrous Mongol invasion centuries earlier. The C02 24 meeting ground, where Russian military outposts came closest to C02 25 British India, was Afghanistan.

C02 26 'The Great Game' is old-fashioned history written with C02 27 engrossing flair. Hopkirk tells the story of this massive C02 28 confrontation between the 19th century superpowers through the C02 29 personal stories of the various British and Russian explorers, C02 30 spies and diplomats who mapped out the uncharted mountains and C02 31 deserts of Central Asia. The British wanted information on the C02 32 passes where Russian troops could come storming across the C02 33 mountains. The Russians sought to convince the khans of the C02 34 kingdoms to their south - Bokhara, Khiva and Khokand - that it was C02 35 in their best interest to accede to Russian demands. On rare C02 36 occasions, the two sides met, with sometimes gallant results.

C02 37 "'We will shoot at each other in the morning,' one C02 38 Russian told [British explorer Captain Frederick] Burnaby, handing C02 39 him a glass of vodka, 'and drink together when there is a C02 40 truce.'"

C02 41 The place names are exotic - Bokhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and C02 42 Kashgar. Russian and British-er alike engage C02 43 in thrilling feats of derring-do, dressed as Buddhist pilgrims C02 44 infiltrating cities never before seen by Western eyes, or riding C02 45 700 miles over the most inhospitable terrain on Earth to relay news C02 46 on the latest Russian or English advance, or simply dying alone, C02 47 the victims of unspeakable treachery in remote mountain valleys.

C02 48 Hopkirk tells the story well, playing up the romance and C02 49 glamour while never losing sight of the overarching historical C02 50 picture. Of particular relevance to current-day events is the role C02 51 of Afghanistan and the history of the Central Asian Muslim C02 52 khanates.

C02 53 Afghanistan, with its fabled Bolan and Khyber passes, notes C02 54 Hopkirk, was the traditional staging ground for the many successful C02 55 invasions of India during the past 3,000 years. But when the C02 56 British tried to place their own puppet on the throne, they ended C02 57 up losing a 16,000-man army almost to the last soul. The fierce C02 58 Afghan tribesmen were practically unbeatable, something the Soviet C02 59 Union also learned after its own foray into Afghan politics.

C02 60 And Central Asia? A look back at the 19th century proves that C02 61 the domination of this vast area by Russia had nothing to do with C02 62 Marxist ideology. The overriding imperative, demonstrates Hopkirk, C02 63 was a strategic concern for the protection of the heartland. C02 64 Communism may have collapsed today, but Russian interests remain C02 65 the same.

C02 66 England may no longer be a player in the "Great C02 67 Game," argues Hopkirk, but in these post-Cold War days, C02 68 America and Russia will be certain to seek their advantage, through C02 69 diplomacy, intrigue and perhaps even military force, in the new C02 70 republics of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Nadzhikistan and many C02 71 others.

C02 72 "If this narrative tells us nothing else," C02 73 writes Hopkirk, "it is that little has changed in the last C02 74 hundred years." It is a point well taken.

C02 75 C02 76 A Vietnam War Nurse Tells Her Story

C02 77 AMERICAN DAUGHTER GONE TO WAR

C02 78 On the Front Lines With an Army Nurse in Vietnam

C02 79 By Winnie Smith

C02 80 William Morrow; 352 pages; $22

C02 81 BY ALIX MADRIGAL

C02 82 When nurse Winnie Smith joined the Army in 1963, she had never C02 83 heard of Vietnam.

C02 84 "I was 19," the San Francisco writer said on a C02 85 recent visit to The Chronicle. "I grew up with very C02 86 romantic notions about war, and I wanted to travel. My hope was to C02 87 go to Korea so I could wear fatigues and run around in a C02 88 jeep." Smith was so naive that, although a nurse, she C02 89 didn't know what a condom was.

C02 90 By 1966 she was in the thick of it - Long Binh, Vietnam, where C02 91 "time passes quickly but the day drags on forever," C02 92 as she writes in 'American Daughter Gone to War.' Hard work, C02 93 exhaustion and tragedy were "facts of life," and C02 94 soldiers were "put aside to die because of lack of space or C02 95 staff even to try and save them."

C02 96 A heart-wrenching account of Smith's wartime experiences, the C02 97 book tells of her odyssey from being an idealistic young nurse who C02 98 feared the war would end before she got there to becoming a C02 99 battle-hardened veteran.

C02 100 An important book, it is also a painful one, with its graphic C02 101 scenes of young bodies torn apart: Removing a dirty bandage from C02 102 the head of a wounded soldier, Smith lifted his wounded eye right C02 103 out of its socket; another soldier wrapped his intestines around C02 104 his neck before throwing himself off a building.

C02 105 Harder still is the psychic mutilation Smith describes. Early C02 106 on, she had visions of helping the "most innocent victims C02 107 of war, the children." Later, she prayed the Vietnamese C02 108 children would leave her alone. Although she dimly realized that C02 109 bombing Vietnamese villages and shooting their children was a C02 110 peculiar way to "save" them, she was so outraged at the C02 111 suffering of American soldiers that she came to hate the C02 112 "gooks." Once, unable to stand the sight of them, she C02 113 refused to let a Vietnamese couple visit their dying 4-year old C02 114 son.

C02 115 Though sickened by the My Lai massacre, Smith feels that she C02 116 understood it. "Inside, I scream at those who condemn the C02 117 lieutenant in charge at My Lai," she writes. "I'd C02 118 like them to get off their self-righteous asses and learn C02 119 about war first hand ... .To watch a couple of buddies get blown to C02 120 pieces and then see how long they can hang on to their high C02 121 and mighty ideals."

C02 122 'American Daughter Gone to War' is also the harrowing story of C02 123 what happened to Smith when she got back to the "world" - C02 124 cigarets and alcohol, emotional isolation, lethargy and depression, C02 125 all from memories she didn't know she was suppressing.

C02 126 It was difficult for Smith to talk about her war experiences, C02 127 "especially because I moved to San Francisco, where there C02 128 was a lot of anti-war sentiment." But she couldn't talk to C02 129 her patriotic family, either. "They only wanted to hear the C02 130 funny stories," Smith remembers. Her mother's chatty, C02 131 chirpy letters form an ironic counterpoint to Smith's story: C02 132 "Well, Winnie," she wrote, "with the way C02 133 things are going I really think it would be a pleasure to stay in C02 134 Vietnam for a while to get away from the world's problems C02 135 ..."

C02 136 The book began as therapy for Smith, a way to exorcise the grim C02 137 and bloody visions she later learned to identify as C02 138 flash-backs, a common symptom of post-traumatic stress C02 139 disorder. "I discover writing helps me regain control of my C02 140 mind," she writes. "The reels won't stop, but I can C02 141 slow them enough to record portions, and once they're put to paper, C02 142 they fade back into the past, change from experience to C02 143 memory."

C02 144 Until the flashbacks and tears began in 1983, 16 years after C02 145 her return from Vietnam, Smith says, she was so out of touch with C02 146 her feelings, she didn't realize the war had left a scar.

C02 147 She remembers working in the recovery room at San Francisco C02 148 General Hospital when she saw an article in The Chronicle on groups C02 149 for women veterans. "When I read it I almost C02 150 cried," she says. "But I pushed the feelings down C02 151 and just put the whole thing out of my mind."

C02 152 Soon after Smith procured a vial of potassium chloride with C02 153 which she intended to end her life, a cousin sent her a copy of C02 154 Lynda Van Devanter's account of her time as an Army nurse in C02 155 Vietnam, 'Home Before Morning.'

C02 156 "The first page does not impress me," she C02 157 writes. "Twelve years later she's blaming Vietnam for not C02 158 being able to sleep at night. What nonsense, I think." But C02 159 the book brought it all back; soon the flash-backs started, C02 160 and the tears, and Smith remembered the article about women C02 161 veterans, with the number of the Concord Veterans Assistance C02 162 Center. The call marked the beginning of Smith's recovery.

C02 163 "I'm hoping that when vets and their families read C02 164 this," she says, "they'll see the value of getting C02 165 out of the pattern of suppressing the pain and find a way to heal. C02 166 Whatever it takes."

C02 167 C02 168 Caribbean Family Saga

C02 169 TREE OF LIFE

C02 170 By Maryse Cond<*_>e-acute<*/>, translated by Victoria Reiter C02 171 Ballantine; 371 pages; $18

C02 172 REVIEWED BY TERESA MOORE

C02 173 'Tree of Life,' a newly translated novel by West Indian author C02 174 Maryse Cond<*_>e-acute<*/>, is a rococo pageant that stretches from C02 175 Guadeloupe to Panama to San Francisco to Paris to London to New C02 176 York to Jamaica to Haiti and back. A family saga that moves from C02 177 the early days of this century to the 1970s, 'Tree of Life' follows C02 178 the fortunes and misfortunes of the descendants of a dreamy peasant C02 179 who vaults from the cane field into the bourgeoisie.

C02 180 Cond<*_>e-acute<*/>, author of the acclaimed family sagas C02 181 'Segu' and 'The Children of Segu' is a native of Guadeloupe and has C02 182 taught Caribbean literature at several American colleges, including C02 183 the University of California at Berkeley.

C02 184 Reading this book is like stuffing oneself on a delicious, C02 185 well-cooked meal and feeling oddly ill-nourished and hungry C02 186 again before the plates are cleared. So much happens so fast to so C02 187 many in 'Tree of Life' that at times the book is hard to follow. C02 188 Matters are further complicated by a rich, almost poetic writing C02 189 style that seems at odds with such a busy narrative.

C02 190 Everything that happens in 'Tree of Life' seems bigger, C02 191 brighter and faster than anything that has ever happened before. C02 192 This is the novel as Broadway extravaganza - lots of flashy effects C02 193 and whirling about in gothic/exotic locales, strong choruses and a C02 194 huge cast of head-strong lovers, wild men and wicked women, C02 195 wise crones and hapless buffoons.

C02 196 Albert Louis, the patriarch of the far-flung clan, loses just C02 197 about everyone he has ever loved to early death. During different C02 198 fits of mourning, Albert is an ascetic, a drunk or a hermit. C02 199 Nicknamed "Soubarou" or "Wild Man," Albert C02 200 spends so much time in the throes of grief that one is relieved C02 201 when the self-absorbed old man finally dies his own death.

C02 202 One might think the deaths of several characters would simplify C02 203 the novel, but in 'Tree of Life,' death is simply another country, C02 204 like France or America. Many of the dead, more vindictive and C02 205 vigilant than ever they were in life, return to meddle in the lives C02 206 of the living.

C02 207 Cond<*_>e-acute<*/> employs the style of legend and fairy tale C02 208 to limn these figures: "Jacob was born far away from the C02 209 Boyer-de-l'Etang plantation, in a forest in Massachusetts, three C02 210 years after Albert's head had slipped down between C02 211 Th<*_>e-acute<*/>odora's tortured thighs while she prayed to God: C02 212 'Let it be a boy! A boy!'" The result is like a highly C02 213 imaginative and detailed woodcut - within the tilt of a head or the C02 214 design on a skirt, one might get an outline of a people, but such C02 215 one-dimensional forms give few clues to an individual soul. C02 216 Cond<*_>e-acute<*/> uses punctuation to heighten her linguistic C02 217 arabesques: If all the exclamation points in 'Tree of Life' were C02 218 deleted, the novel would probably be a full two pages shorter.

C02 219 The novel's narrator further contributes to the book's C02 220 maddening opacity. The story is told by young Claude C02 221 Ela<*_>i-circ<*/>se Louis, the illegitimate daughter of C02 222 Th<*_>e-acute<*/>cla, a spoiled, dissolute beauty who flees the C02 223 comfort of the family compound in Guadeloupe for a series of lovers C02 224 in Paris, London, Manhattan and Jamaica.

C02 225 C02 226 C03 1 <#FROWN:C03\>POP REVIEW

C03 2 MTV Show: Where's the Bite?

C03 3 By CHRIS WILLMAN

C03 4 SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

C03 5 Even in the realm of pop-culture vulgarity, as the MTV Video C03 6 Music Awards demonstrates, this is the era of down-sized C03 7 expectations.

C03 8 Remember that special MTV moment just a few years back when, in C03 9 the middle of 'Vogue,' an unidentified male dancer heartily C03 10 squeezed Madonna's corseted bust on cue for all the cable-equipped C03 11 world to see?

C03 12 The closest thing to that 'high-light' in Wednesday's C03 13 telecast came when Howard Stern, costumed in his bare-derriered C03 14 'Fartman' persona, pointed to his saggy behind and ordered Luke C03 15 Perry to "touch it for power." This prompted the TV C03 16 hunk to gamely give the radio personality a good bun-rubbing.

C03 17 In this recessionary age, even bad taste isn't what it used to C03 18 be.

C03 19 Not that everything about the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards C03 20 didn't shout bigger. The telecast lasted more than three C03 21 ear-boggling hours, and was broadcast live from UCLA's Pauley C03 22 Pavilion, which offers twice the seating capacity of the show's C03 23 previous home, the Universal Amphitheatre. Thirteen major pop acts C03 24 performed, all but two of them on the premises, all but one C03 25 live.

C03 26 Despite this exponential growth, this year's show may be the C03 27 first in MTV history without a single genuinely, memorably C03 28 provocative moment - the best (or worst) attempts of Stern and a C03 29 few other shock therapists notwithstanding.

C03 30 And from a live audience point of view, the move from Universal C03 31 to Pauley proved a big - emphasis on big - mistake, with the C03 32 arena's massive size decidedly dampening rather than heightening C03 33 the intended excitement. Unlike previous MTV blowouts, TV really C03 34 was the place to watch this one.

C03 35 Musically, the telecast was rich with star talent, albeit only C03 36 one female act - En Vogue - showing that Wednesday, at least, the M C03 37 in MTV stood for 'men.'

C03 38 At the climax of a diverting, if not adventurous show, Elton C03 39 John showed up to share adjoining pianos with Axl Rose on Guns N' C03 40 Roses' 'November Rain,' after having earlier performed his own 'The C03 41 One.' Also on hand for this big finale was a 40-piece orchestra, C03 42 although making out its contributions over the roar of GNR proved C03 43 an impossibility for anyone at Pauley.

C03 44 Bringing along their own posse of onstage partyers, the Red Hot C03 45 Chili Peppers directly followed Pearl Jam in what was announced as C03 46 a "battle of the bands," both of the groups C03 47 agreeably turning up the musical tension level for one of the few C03 48 palpable times in the proceedings.

C03 49 And in a show historically dominated by high-energy barn-burner C03 50 production numbers, Eric Clapton's quiet, tender 'Tears in Heaven,' C03 51 written as a response to the death of his young son, was a clear C03 52 favorite. In the midst of so much failed tastelessness, his C03 53 inherent touch of class and his ballad's bittersweet emotion C03 54 carried perhaps even more import than they might have in less C03 55 frivolous company.

C03 56 But as frivolity goes, another highlight was host Dana Carvey - C03 57 as Garth of 'Wayne's World' - sitting in on drums with U2, via C03 58 satellite, performing 'Even Better Than the Real Thing' from C03 59 Detroit. Garth also joined in some rock 'n' roll repartee with C03 60 Bono. "I don't mean to bug ya!" said the young C03 61 Auroran, mocking one of Bono's better-known recorded quips.

C03 62 Carvey's overall reception as master of ceremonies was mixed. C03 63 In moments, his impressions and characters from 'Saturday Night C03 64 Live' - Bush, Perot, Church Lady, et al. - brought down the house; C03 65 at other times, he was dying and seemed to know it. But erratic as C03 66 Carvey was, nearly everyone on hand seemed to agree he was a far C03 67 preferable choice to prior host Arsenio Hall, whose benign C03 68 cheer-leading had always seemed out of character for the C03 69 show's intended rock 'n' roll attitude.

C03 70 Not surprisingly, Nirvana went furthest in providing the show a C03 71 sense of tension, some of it off-stage. Originally the band C03 72 was scheduled to open the telecast with 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' C03 73 but, reportedly, when they began doing a new song called 'Rape Me' C03 74 at rehearsals instead, nervous producers bumped their segment to C03 75 the middle of the show.

C03 76 Nirvana ended up performing the less incendiary 'Lithium,' C03 77 complete with the by-now entirely predictable set-smashing finale. C03 78 Having tossed himself into the drum set, singer Kurt Cobain C03 79 proceeded to drool, perhaps showing off a new trick borrowed from C03 80 his infant daughter.

C03 81 (Other rockers felt compelled to mock Cobain's antics, on and C03 82 off stage, most notably Elton John, who capped his ballad by C03 83 picking up his piano cushion and dropping it to the floor.)

C03 84 With Nirvana bumped from the opening slot, first-song honors C03 85 unfortunately instead went to the Black Crowes, with a standard C03 86 run-through of 'Remedy' that provided anything but the kind of C03 87 provocation MTV usually depends on to kick off its annual C03 88 showcase.

C03 89 Even less impressive was the second live act, Bobby Brown, C03 90 whose usually supple singing voice was inexplicably a hoarse C03 91 rapper's shout during most of 'Humpin' Around,' and whose dancers C03 92 looked like a mini-version of the Hammer aerobics troupe. Endearing C03 93 himself to few, Brown superfluously concluded his appearance by C03 94 winning the annual race to be the first star to smugly brandish the C03 95 F-word on the live telecast.

C03 96 (Sammy Hagar came in second in that contest, prompting Carvey C03 97 to announce: "For those of you at home, he just said C03 98 clucking - 'We clucking appreciate it.'")

C03 99 Brown's elder statesman and rival, Michael Jackson, didn't fare C03 100 much better. Whereas once a Jackson appearance of any sort would C03 101 have produced some sort of anticipation, a taped performance of C03 102 'Black or White' in London seemed almost like an C03 103 after-thought.

C03 104 Jackson's presence was felt elsewhere, as well, albeit in less C03 105 flattering ways: Axl Rose took a minor stab at him in accepting the C03 106 so-called Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award on behalf of C03 107 Guns N' Roses. And in the weirdest proxy acceptance speech since C03 108 Marlon Brando sent an American Indian to the podium to turn down an C03 109 Oscar, Nirvana sent a Jackson impersonator up to accept the first C03 110 of the band's two awards, with the impostor announcing that he was C03 111 changing his self-anointed title from King of Pop to "King C03 112 of Grunge-Rock."

C03 113 When the band later did deign to personally accept another C03 114 award, Cobain - apparently alluding to stories of drug use by C03 115 he<&|>sic! and his wife - looked straight into the camera and C03 116 warned against "believing everything you read."

C03 117 All this mayhem might have seemed more entertaining to the C03 118 12,000 attendees, and the performances more galvanizing, had the C03 119 show not been plopped down in uncomfortable Pauley Pavilion, a C03 120 venue only a Bruin could love. The sole measurable benefit of the C03 121 big hall: a safe distance from Howard Stern's flatulence, verbal C03 122 and otherwise.

C03 123 C03 124 BOOK REVIEW

C03 125 Terrorist Women: Muddled Thought of Maternal Ideals

C03 126 By CONSTANCE CASEY

C03 127 SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

C03 128 We women don't make up more than 10% of the world's judges and C03 129 law enforcement officers but, by God, close to half of the C03 130 terrorists are women. It's hard to imagine which feminist group C03 131 would point with pride to this female representation among the C03 132 grenade-throwers, hijackers, car-bombers and knee-cappers of the C03 133 world.

C03 134 The first book to deal exclusively with women terrorists, C03 135 'Shoot the Women First' may not precisely praise this group, but C03 136 its author, British journalist Eileen MacDonald, at least seeks to C03 137 understand it.

C03 138 MacDonald wanted to find out what these 20-some violently C03 139 political women had in common and to answer the question, Are women C03 140 more dangerous than men? ("Shoot the women first" C03 141 is reputedly an order given to Germany's anti-terrorist squad.)

C03 142 MacDonald is all over the map - Palestine, Northern Ireland, C03 143 Spain, Italy, Germany - diligent in tracking down women to C03 144 interview. She gives us complicated women and tells the violent C03 145 things they've done - blowing up planes, assassinating bank C03 146 presidents, setting off bombs in shopping malls, ambushing bus C03 147 loads of soldiers - but doesn't supply a unifying thread or C03 148 convincing conclusions.

C03 149 The author's own story might have worked as an organizing C03 150 principle. She put herself in danger by talking to these women, C03 151 some of whom suspected she was a police agent. We wonder what set C03 152 her on the trail.

C03 153 "I had always been interested in how women succeeded in C03 154 what were considered to be male-dominated environments," C03 155 she explains, and the reader gets a little nervous about what the C03 156 author believes constitutes success.

C03 157 It's odd that MacDonald's book lacks tension. Part of the blame C03 158 rests with the fact that many of the people she interviewed were, C03 159 so to speak, retired. Those currently active are in the Palestine C03 160 Intifada, the Irish Republican Army and the Basque movement. These C03 161 women stand out in the story because they are fighting, as they see C03 162 it, a civil war to erase long-standing injustice.

C03 163 Kim Hyon Hui, a North Korean woman who was responsible for 115 C03 164 deaths when she set a bomb on a South Korean airliner, couldn't be C03 165 any sort of feminist heroine. This beautiful and delicate woman, C03 166 raised singing "Hack to Death the Capitalist Dogs," C03 167 was just following orders. Aiming to please her North Korean C03 168 bosses, she got off when Korean Air Lines flight 858 made stop, C03 169 having planted a ticking bomb inside a radio in the overhead C03 170 compartment.

C03 171 The West German and Italian women seem to MacDonald to have C03 172 muddled motives, primarily anger at authority. She finds the most C03 173 interesting group closest to home. The women of the Irish C03 174 Republican Army don't much like what they're doing, but can't C03 175 imagine not doing it. "No one hates this war more than C03 176 us," says one. "It is our country, and we hate the C03 177 bloody war."

C03 178 MacDonald's theory that the women terrorists hold maternal C03 179 feelings for the cause is pretty hard to swallow. Khaled, who now C03 180 works in a refugee camp near Damascus, remembers watching a little C03 181 girl playing in the airport lounge before they boarded: the girl C03 182 with her toys, Khaled with her grenades and gun. It worried her C03 183 that the girl might die. "Then," she says, "I C03 184 remembered all the countless thousands of Palestinian children in C03 185 the refugee camps. They were depending on me to tell the world C03 186 about them."

C03 187 It's a big stretch from that to MacDonald's conclusion: C03 188 "One can begin to see why a woman fighter should be more C03 189 feared than a man: she views her cause as a surrogate child ... C03 190 ." MacDonald turns out to be guilty of the same C03 191 anti-feminist thinking she criticizes: the stereotype that a woman C03 192 doesn't get angry on behalf of a cause; she has to be the mother C03 193 bear protecting her cub.

C03 194 In fact, MacDonald's interviews show that women can find C03 195 ecstasy in being immersed in a cause. Their attachments to fellow C03 196 cadre members are intense, and the drama of their lives is C03 197 heightened by the possibility of being captured, tortured or even C03 198 killed.

C03 199 In her conclusion, MacDonald makes a rushed, halfhearted C03 200 attempt to link the women to a common past. A few lost one parent C03 201 when they were young, she finds, but the majority were C03 202 "disturbingly normal." She quotes the head of C03 203 Germany's anti-terrorist squad, who states with weird pride, C03 204 "German women are more liberated and more C03 205 self-aware than Italian and French women ... ."

C03 206 Then she writes, equally bizarrely, "German women have C03 207 thrown off the shackles of the traditional woman in society and C03 208 have realized that there is no reason why they should not be C03 209 violent." Are we supposed to get up and cheer, "Go, C03 210 fight, win, German terrorist women"?

C03 211 Instead of drawing her own conclusions, MacDonald keeps going C03 212 back to one German anti-terrorist who definitely believes that the C03 213 female of the species is deadlier than the male. Really? With a C03 214 grenade in your hand, a package with a bomb under your arm, and a C03 215 gun tucked in your belt, does it really matter whether you are C03 216 female or male?

C03 217 C03 218 MOVIE REVIEW

C03 219 'Bridge': Buddy Story With a Drug Twist

C03 220 By MICHAEL WILMINGTON

C03 221 SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

C03 222 Semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movies have some built-in C03 223 traps and Mike Binder's 'Crossing the Bridge' (city-wide) C03 224 tumbles right into them. In this rock 'n' roll '70s reverie about a C03 225 trio of high school buddies bumbling a drug-smuggling adventure, C03 226 Binder mines his own memories, sometimes movingly or humorously, C03 227 sometimes opportunistically. But, just as in his script for 1990's C03 228 'Coup de Ville,' he tends to pump them up, restage his past in C03 229 action movie or teen-sex comedy terms.

C03 230 C03 231 C04 1 <#FROWN:C04\>Kim Hunter tackles Dickinson

C04 2 Belle of Amherst at Theatre Club of Palm Beaches

C04 3 By CHRISTINE DOLEN

C04 4 Herald Theater Critic

C04 5 Julie Harris, among the greatest American actresses to grace a C04 6 stage, played an integral part in developing what came to be one of C04 7 the strongest of the one-person shows: William Luce's The C04 8 Belle of Amherst. Her incandescent portrayal of 19th Century C04 9 poet Emily Dickinson won Harris the 1977 Tony Award as best C04 10 actress, and on long tours she shared her vibrant vision of the C04 11 famously reclusive, innovative, romantic literary figure.

C04 12 Though created for and identified with Harris, The Belle C04 13 of Amherst offers actresses of a certain age - Dickinson is 53 C04 14 at the time of the play - the all-too-rare opportunity to entertain C04 15 and enlighten an audience, and solo yet. So it is easy to C04 16 understand the ongoing appeal of the piece, both to performers and C04 17 audiences.

C04 18 Another strong actress, Kim Hunter, has put The Belle of C04 19 Amherst into her repertoire, and she's tackling it again at C04 20 the Theatre Club of the Palm Beaches. Hunter, who was on the C04 21 receiving end of Marlon Brando's bellowed "Stella!" in C04 22 A Streetcar Named Desire (and who won an Oscar for that C04 23 performance), moves adeptly through the taxing two-hour show. But C04 24 is it a perfect hand-in-glove, actress-in-role fit, as it was for C04 25 Harris? Not really.

C04 26 The playwright, drawing on Dickinson's poems and letters and C04 27 the writings about her, presents an engaging woman who was almost C04 28 self-consciously "eccentric" - a woman who, as a teenager, C04 29 speculated that she might soon become the belle of her hometown of C04 30 Amherst, Mass., though fate and choice turned her into a C04 31 "half-cracked" spinster who habitually dressed in C04 32 virginal white.

C04 33 Talking with her "visitors," as she calls the audience, C04 34 she confides the facts and emotional content of her life, C04 35 discussing the "austere" father who never kissed her good C04 36 night, the brother she adored, the married Presbyterian minister C04 37 who made her lonely heart soar, the Atlantic Monthly editor who was C04 38 both mentor and crushing critic to her.

C04 39 Interwoven, of course, are passages of Dickinson's glorious C04 40 poetry, touching on her recurrent themes of death, nature, C04 41 unrequited love and immortality.

C04 42 "I dream about father every night, always a different C04 43 dream," she says after speaking of Squire Dickinson's C04 44 death. "His heart was pure and terrible."

C04 45 Or, absorbing her mentor's refusal to publish her poems, she C04 46 asserts, "My business is to sing. What difference does it C04 47 make if no one listens?" C04 48 And, naturally, "Hope is the thing with feathers that C04 49 perches in the soul."

C04 50 Hunter, moving comfortably over Allen D. Cornell's evocative C04 51 set with its carefully arranged antiques, takes us on Dickinson's C04 52 journey from hopeful youth to underappreciated artist. Her long C04 53 fingers comb through the gossamer light as she emphasizes a point C04 54 or exudes excitement.

C04 55 The performance is solid, professional. What it lacks, though, C04 56 is a kind of inhabiting passion, a deep communication of the C04 57 contradictory soul that was Emily Dickinson. One of the poet's C04 58 comments about a friend and fellow writer could just as well C04 59 describe Hunter's work in The Belle of Amherst: C04 60 "She has the facts, but not the C04 61 phosphorescence."

C04 62 C04 63 Weight-loss obsessions explored in often-sad Famine C04 64 Within

C04 65 By RENE RODRIGUEZ

C04 66 Herald Staff Writer

C04 67 Diets. Open the newspaper or turn on the TV, and you're bound C04 68 to come across a story or ad dealing with yet another fast way to C04 69 lose weight. According to The Famine Within, an C04 70 often-fascinating documentary by Canadian-based filmmaker Katherine C04 71 Gilday, one out of every two American women is on a diet at any C04 72 given time.

C04 73 Through interviews with psychologists, models and their agents, C04 74 writers, doctors and normal everyday women, Gilday has taken a look C04 75 at a part of American culture that has grown into a billion-dollar C04 76 industry. What she has produced is an enlightening, often-sad film C04 77 about why some women spend their entire lives battling their own C04 78 bodies.

C04 79 The documentary is divided into three segments: The first C04 80 focuses on the fashion-model industry and its "ideal" woman C04 81 - 5 feet, 11 inches, 115 pounds, measurements 35-25-35 (even agents C04 82 admit that this ideal is very hard to find). Since the 1960s, the C04 83 film tells us, the gap between the "average" American woman C04 84 and this "ideal" has ballooned. What's worse, Gilday notes, C04 85 today's fashion models have become role models for younger women, C04 86 and even little girls, who will do their best to reach that C04 87 unrealistic ideal.

C04 88 Next comes a look at anorexia nervosa, the eating disorder that C04 89 causes mostly young women to starve themselves. "I'd rather C04 90 be dead than fat," one anorexic woman says nervously into C04 91 the camera. The final section deals with bulimia, another eating C04 92 disorder in which the sufferer gorges and then forces herself to C04 93 vomit. The interviews here are among the film's most painful.

C04 94 At its best, The Famine Within explores the American C04 95 female psyche and why women often go to extreme lengths to achieve C04 96 the popular image of beauty. In modern society, Gilday states, C04 97 obesity is a moral, not physical, trait; being fat is often C04 98 associated with being lazy, dirty or stupid, a connection of which C04 99 we're often only subconsciously aware.

C04 100 The film covers a lot of ground and is full of revealing, C04 101 sometimes startling bits of information: One California study, for C04 102 example, found that 80 percent of fourth-grade girls have already C04 103 been on their first diet.

C04 104 But Gilday tends to overuse the 'talking head' shots, and the C04 105 material she uses to connect her interviews - shots of models on a C04 106 runway, women on a beach - aren't always very interesting. And C04 107 toward the film's end, some of the subjects repeat what has already C04 108 been said.

C04 109 Still, The Famine Within is a stimulating look at a C04 110 widespread American phenomenon. After seeing it, you'll never think C04 111 of miracle diets or lose-weight-quick schemes in the same way.

C04 112 C04 113 RECORD REVIEWS

C04 114 King King brings the real blues to life

C04 115 <*_>black-square<*/>The Red Devils, King C04 116 King, Def American

C04 117 MICHAEL CORCORAN

C04 118 Dallas Morning News

C04 119 With shovels of dirt thrown down by creative laziness, horn C04 120 charts, yuppies and something called the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the C04 121 blues are dead. Or so I thought until greeted with this C04 122 scintillating debut. Not since Muddy Waters' mid-'70s band C04 123 (featuring Jerry Portnoy, Guitar Jr., Pinetop Perkins and others) C04 124 has a blues group had such a good sense about what is so thrilling C04 125 about real blues. That these five guys are young, white Los C04 126 Angelenos doesn't detract from their powerful performance. The Red C04 127 Devils do for the blues what Dwight Yoakam did for country six C04 128 years ago.

C04 129 The franchise here is singer-harmonica player Lester Butler. C04 130 Besides blowing a cool, dusty harp, he's a singer who reaches down, C04 131 deep down, to pull out beads of emotion. Though most of the songs C04 132 are covers of artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, C04 133 Junior Wells and Muddy Waters, Butler is no mere imitator. He C04 134 sounds like he's earned the right to play the blues.

C04 135 Chalk up another big victory for producer Rick Rubin in his C04 136 quest to return grit, sweat and street to modern music. Even though C04 137 this record starts to drag a little halfway until the ending - C04 138 which almost becomes a relief because of too much compulsory C04 139 riffing - for several glorious minutes, the Red Devils revive the C04 140 blues.

C04 141 C04 142 English Chamber Orchestra, World Anthems, C04 143 RCA-Victor

C04 144 TOM MAURSTAD

C04 145 Dallas Morning News

C04 146 I know what you're thinking: What would anyone want with an C04 147 album of 30 national anthems? It IS true that the scenario in which C04 148 one would want to cue up, say, Norway's national anthem C04 149 (Ja, vi elsker dette lander) is an elusive one. C04 150 Which makes it tempting to view this timely collection as one of C04 151 the more absurd examples of the marketing bonanza that has C04 152 overtaken the Olympic experience, now more a selling spree than a C04 153 sporting event.

C04 154 Then again, an album gathering national anthems is at least an C04 155 interesting product. After enduring that procession of crassness, C04 156 the songs-videos making up Barcelona Gold (the official C04 157 collection of Olympic-inspired songs by contemporary pop artists), C04 158 the Lithuanian anthem sounds pretty good. In fact, listening to 30 C04 159 national anthems strung together makes for instructive C04 160 listening.

C04 161 Because I recognized only a handful of these anthems, I was C04 162 able to play the game in which I tried to name that country. C04 163 Consequently, I discovered how discrete the relationship between a C04 164 country and its anthem can be (with so many featuring a regally C04 165 blaring brace of horns, I kept guessing Austria). Another quickly C04 166 evident pattern is how so many anthems are military processionals, C04 167 calls-to-arms marches (such as Egypt's Hail, Gallant C04 168 Troops). It makes you think about how seemingly intractable is C04 169 the rooting of national identity in war-making. Or maybe I've just C04 170 been watching too much CNN lately.

C04 171 It remains unclear why this collection was limited to these C04 172 countries. Maybe this is something like a greatest-hits package - C04 173 the world's Top 30 anthems. Not to sound an unpatriotic note, but C04 174 in that context, The Star-Spangled Banner doesn't fare C04 175 very well. I prefer the more forthright self-celebration of C04 176 Hungary's anthem, God Bless the Hungarians, or Ethiopia's C04 177 30-second trumpet exercise with the post-modern title, C04 178 Instrumental. I can't wait for the extended dance mix.

C04 179 C04 180 Al Jarreau, Heaven and Earth, Reprise

C04 181 JONATHAN EIG

C04 182 Dallas Morning News

C04 183 Al Jarreau has been moving steadily away from jazz since the C04 184 Moonlighting theme, and with this album his journey is C04 185 nearly complete. The man with the mellow voice pulls out all the C04 186 stops in search of the broadest possible audience, but he ends up C04 187 trying too hard. Instead of a plush, soulful album that showcases C04 188 his silky voice, Jarreau goes pop crazy. The 10 songs take on the C04 189 atmosphere of a musical circus - albeit a mellow one - as clammy C04 190 synthesizers, electric drum machines and sappy background vocals C04 191 compete for attention. Each song seems produced by committee and C04 192 performed by a small army. Jarreau's greatest strenghth, his C04 193 improvisational doodlings, suddenly sound rehearsed.

C04 194 Blue Angel begins with a sharp, funky groove that C04 195 quickly becomes mired in a bog of heavy-handed instrumentation. C04 196 Even on the straightforward ballad Heaven and Earth, C04 197 synthesizers mimic the singer's every syllable, mocking the album's C04 198 only asset. Instead of inducing romance, this sugary goop leaves C04 199 the listener feeling sticky. Superfine Love is not C04 200 content to open with a pretty horn solo or a simple whistle, so it C04 201 uses both. Still, it's the best song on the album because it C04 202 maintains a relatively gentle swing for Jarreau to work out on.

C04 203 If there is a nod to jazz here, it's Jarreau's stringy C04 204 arrangement of Miles Davis' Blue in Green. But the pop C04 205 singer can't leave it alone. After a few choruses of pleasant if C04 206 uninspiring swing, he flicks the echo switch on his microphone, C04 207 cues the electric bass and punches up an even less inspiring C04 208 hyperactive rhythm.

C04 209 If record buyers reward this effort, expect Jarreau to drop C04 210 even the pretense of jazz on future efforts.

C04 211 C04 212 ANN WHITE THEATER PRESENTS WALLS DON'T TALK

C04 213 By GEORGE CAPEWELL

C04 214 Special to The Herald

C04 215 Jody Hart's The Walls Don't Talk to Me Anymore - winner of the C04 216 eighth annual Ann White Theatre New Playwright Competition - C04 217 aspires to be a morality play for the '90s, and it partly succeeds. C04 218 But much of its message is diffused through old-fashioned C04 219 overextension.

C04 220 Selected from among more than 500 manuscripts submitted, the C04 221 play is about a small group of teenagers who ingratiate themselves C04 222 with an 84-year-old man, then go about methodically stealing his C04 223 most prized possessions.

C04 224 Everett (Charles Mace) and Harry (Gust Miller), two very C04 225 different men, have shared the same park bench for the last five C04 226 years. Harry spends his time feeding pigeons and expounding his own C04 227 special brand of cynicism; Everett, a former English teacher, has C04 228 lived a rather protected life, occupied for the most part by C04 229 intellectual pursuits. (Sounds an awful lot like Herb Gardner's I'm C04 230 Not Rappaport.) One day, two gruff teenage girls, Gina (Carol Ann C04 231 Ready) and Patsy (Lori Sherman), engage the older men in C04 232 conversation. Everett befriends the girls and after a second C04 233 meeting, invites them to his condominium. Everett's nephew, Martin C04 234 (Jeff Stevenson), wants him to sell the condo, and although C04 235 Martin's intentions are not totally amoral, Everett is well aware C04 236 that his only living relative covets his small estate.

C04 237 C05 1 <#FROWN:C05\>MAGAZINES/BY DEIRDRE DONAHUE

C05 2 Revamped 'Bazaar' a picture of elegance

C05 3 We all have our blind spots. And, indeed, some of us cherish C05 4 them as though they were distinctive leopard spots revealing C05 5 character. Quite simply, this reader doesn't entirely understand C05 6 the purpose of fashion magazines and their ceaseless chronicling of C05 7 changing hemlines, color schemes and fresh new faces and forms. C05 8 Frankly, it always seems a bit sad that by the time most women have C05 9 the money to devote to fashion, they no longer possess the C05 10 waistlines nor the firm young flesh so necessary for haute C05 11 couture. Sometimes those Women's Wear Daily society C05 12 page icons end up resembling E.T. in their designer frocks.

C05 13 These caveats aside, the newly redesigned, much-anticipated, C05 14 thoroughly gossiped about Harper's Bazaar displays in its C05 15 September issue a calm, elegant new design and absolutely lush C05 16 photos by Patrick Demarchelier. His work displays a posed C05 17 perfection that seems to celebrate the pre-'60s, less C05 18 hysterical world of fashion photography. Indeed, his work is so C05 19 spectacular, it makes the other photo spreads in this issue look a C05 20 touch drab by contrast. Compared to the sometimes frantic C05 21 Vogue, the new Harper's Bazaar unveils a distinct C05 22 simplicity, although the typeface is so tiny as to strain the C05 23 eyeballs.

C05 24 The articles explore topics ranging from the fate of ritzy C05 25 department stores to Detroit-born designer Anna Sui to issues of C05 26 women's health and multiculturalism in the schools.

C05 27 But hey, the Hearst organization hired editor Liz Tilberis to C05 28 go designer heel to heel with the stylish Anna Wintour at C05 29 Vogue and those lesser lights at Elle and Mirabella, C05 30 over the nebulous direction of style. You know, all that elan, C05 31 fluffy stuff women are so conflicted about: i.e., can a female C05 32 neurosurgeon look at a series of pages devoted to how designers C05 33 treat the neck, the wrist, the waist this season and not have her C05 34 IQ drop several points? Or is this just reverse sexist snobbery on C05 35 the part of the blusher-shunning feminists? After all, no one C05 36 claims that Car&Driver requires serious mental lifting on C05 37 the part of all those male readers who happily inhale the C05 38 Lamborghini dream. They never fear that wives and girlfriends will C05 39 consider them rivetheads on the basis of their heavy-metal C05 40 manuals.

C05 41 And in the end, both fashion and car magazines are both in the C05 42 fantasy business of youth, beauty, adornment and the magical dream C05 43 of never saying die.

C05 44 C05 45 BOOK REVIEW

C05 46 Leonard's agreeable but diluted 'Rum Punch'

C05 47 Rum Punch

C05 48 By Elmore Leonard

C05 49 Delacorte Press

C05 50 297 pp., $21.

C05 51 By Peter S. Prichard

C05 52 USA TODAY

C05 53 Rum Punch is not Elmore Leonard's best work.

C05 54 Oh, the sharp dialogue is there. Leonard's ear for the cadence C05 55 of street talk is as keen as ever. And the lowlifes are their usual C05 56 despicable selves. The Principal Villain, gun-runner and killer C05 57 Ordell Robbie, thinks he's as slick and untouchable as John Gotti C05 58 thought he was.

C05 59 But Rum Punch is, well, not dull, but maybe C05 60 thin is the best word. Not quite the novel you would expect C05 61 from the man critics call "America's finest crime fiction C05 62 writer."

C05 63 I would argue with that. I think James Lee Burke, with his New C05 64 Orleans detective, Dave Robicheaux, is better. I think Tony C05 65 Hillerman, whose Navajo mysteries evoke the spirit of the C05 66 Southwest, constructs more compelling protagonists. Carl Hiaasen, C05 67 who does south Florida at its most outrageous, is funnier. Charles C05 68 Willeford, the Miami Herald reviewer who wrote several C05 69 good crime novels before he died, did bad guys as well or better C05 70 than Leonard.

C05 71 Even so, Rum Punch keeps you turning the pages. C05 72 Ordell Robbie steals guns, rips off guns from nutso neo-Nazis and C05 73 sells them to crazed Colombian drug dealers. Then he blows away C05 74 anyone who might snitch on him.

C05 75 Max Cherry sells bail bonds. He gets mixed up with Ordell and C05 76 Jackie Burke, the pretty airline attendant who smuggles Ordell's C05 77 money into the USA from his stash in the Bahamas. Then they get all C05 78 mixed up together, each trying to rip the other off, C05 79 <*_>a-grave<*/> la The Grifters. The big question is C05 80 whether Max Cherry will stay straight or go on the grift. C05 81 "You plan to rip me off," Ordell tells Max. C05 82 "(But) lost your nerve. Gonna have to stay a bail bondsman, C05 83 deal with the scum while you try to act respectable, huh? The rest C05 84 of your life."

C05 85 Trying to figure out whether Max will beat the lowlifes or join C05 86 them makes for decent entertainment in this mildly satisfying C05 87 summer book.

C05 88 C05 89 BOOK REVIEW

C05 90 Edwardian letters, intimate literature

C05 91 The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume I: The Private C05 92 Years. 1884-1914

C05 93 Edited by Nicholas Griffin

C05 94 Houghton Mifflin

C05 95 553 pp., $35

C05 96 Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold C05 97 Nicolson

C05 98 Edited by Nigel Nicolson

C05 99 Putnam, 452 pp., $29.95

C05 100 By Diane Cole

C05 101 Special for USA TODAY

C05 102 Read together, The Selected Letters of Bertrand C05 103 Russell and Vita and Harold provide the spiciest C05 104 picture of Edwardian England imaginable. Here are the ups and downs C05 105 of marriages among patrician Britons whose extramarital flings and C05 106 romantic flights would put even bohemians today to shame. Yet even C05 107 as their private foibles unfold, Russell in his letters and Harold C05 108 Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West in theirs also display the wit, C05 109 intellect and qualities of mind that not only made them attractive C05 110 to their contemporaries, but captivate us today.

C05 111 Famous as a philosopher, mathematician and political idealist, C05 112 Russell eventually won the Nobel Prize for literature, and these C05 113 letters demonstrate his abundant gifts not only as a thinker, but C05 114 as a stylist.

C05 115 Nicholas Griffin has edited this first of two projected volumes C05 116 of selected letters (Russell's total correspondence numbers 40,000 C05 117 to 50,000, Griffin estimates) with an emphasis on Russell's more C05 118 private dilemmas. In doing so, he has crafted an informative, C05 119 entertaining and often moving novelistic chronicle of Russel's C05 120 passage from the earnestness of young adulthood through the muddles C05 121 of early middle age.

C05 122 Born in 1872 to one of England's most famous political C05 123 families, Russell suffered the deaths of both his parents by the C05 124 time he was 4 and was brought up in relative seclusion by his C05 125 grandmother. She struggled to hold on to her favorite grandson, C05 126 even in adulthood, by setting up extraordinary emotional obstacles C05 127 to his marriage to Alys Pearsall Smith. But as his letters show, C05 128 not only was Russell equally tenacious - he and Alys wed in 1894 - C05 129 he seemed to thrive on emotional turmoil. As soon as the scene C05 130 seemed set for a comfortable married life, Russell slowly but C05 131 surely became disenchanted with Alys and devoted himself for some C05 132 years almost exclusively to his work. The result was some of the C05 133 most brilliant philosophical writing of the century, but inwardly C05 134 Russell felt he had become "a logic machine."

C05 135 Then, in 1911, he met Lady Ottoline Morrell, the famous society C05 136 hostess who became the love of his life - an emotionally tumultuous C05 137 courtship that spawned Russell's most passionate, despairing, C05 138 charming and agitated letters, sometimes all at once.

C05 139 Like Russell, the novelist Sackville-West and her C05 140 diplomat-writer husband Nicolson also seemed to compose a letter C05 141 for every mood. But how different their moods - and their loves - C05 142 were. Russell, famous logician though he was, is all romantic C05 143 intensity in his courtship of Alys and his wooing of Lady Ottoline. C05 144 By contrast, Nicolson and Sackville-West display a sense of C05 145 perspective (and, under the circumstances, a singularly strong C05 146 commitment to their on-going marriage) even when their C05 147 independent love affairs are at their most intimate.

C05 148 Vita and Harold married in 1913 and had two sons, the youngest C05 149 of whom, Nigel, wrote the well-known memoir of his parents' unusual C05 150 union, Portrait of a Marriage, to which this collection C05 151 of letters is an apt companion. Both books dramatize the mutual C05 152 devotion these partners shared throughout 50 years of marriage; C05 153 both books also make the reader wonder at how they managed to C05 154 balance that allegiance with the many homosexual and lesbian love C05 155 affairs each had and sometimes discussed with each other.

C05 156 To judge from these letters, part of the answer lies in simple C05 157 logistics. Nicolson preferred the city, where he kept a C05 158 pied-<*_>a-grave<*/>-terre, while Sackville-West kept C05 159 primarily to their country estate, where she wrote her books and C05 160 cultivated what became world-famous gardens. Nicolson's diplomatic C05 161 duties also took him abroad frequently, usually alone.

C05 162 With so much physical separation, each may have felt freer to C05 163 develop emotional ties outside their time together. Moreover, C05 164 writing these letters seemed to serve as a way of C05 165 re-assuring each other of the deeper ties of friendship, C05 166 loyalty and - yes - love that bound them.

C05 167 Thus their correspondence, like Russell's, provides sympathetic C05 168 insight into otherwise mystifying arrangements. Both collections C05 169 also make us privy to the storms and calms that only international C05 170 telephone operators could possibly know if these most literate of C05 171 letter writers lived today.

C05 172 C05 173 TV PREVIEW/MATT ROUSH

C05 174 Shining knights may not save 'Cross'

C05 175 NEW SERIES

C05 176 Covington Cross

C05 177 ABC, tonight, 10 ET/PT

C05 178 <*_>star<*/><*_>star<*/> (out of four)

C05 179 There's plenty of iron, but not near enough irony, in the C05 180 squishy swashbuckling of ABC's inexplicable Covington C05 181 Cross, the first and far from the best (or worst) new show of C05 182 the traditional fall TV season.

C05 183 ABC couldn't seem to wait to inflict this cheerful anachronism C05 184 on us, as if all too aware how tough a sell this C05 185 knaves-and-waifs-in-shining-armor saga would be. Tonight's pilot C05 186 repeats a week from Friday night, with new episodes not expected C05 187 until Sept. 19, when it moves to low-impact Saturday.

C05 188 Having already exhausted the teen Western in The Young C05 189 Riders, ABC now leapfrogs several centuries backward for this C05 190 lavishly produced but creaky Excalibur Jr.

C05 191 More like a medieval High Chaparral, the biggest C05 192 charge in this pilot - which I caught this weekend during previews C05 193 at a movie theater - comes after a rambunctious opening of C05 194 swordplay and havoc, interrupted when grumpy dad Sir Thomas Gray C05 195 (Nigel Terry) yells at his errant-knight sons: "How many C05 196 times have I told you: Not in the castle!"

C05 197 Cute. Cute. But something short of a hoot.

C05 198 As the convoluted plot gets under way, the tone shifts from C05 199 this sort of deadpan Full Castle sitcom spoofery (raunchy C05 200 table manners, rebel kids, what's a widower dad to do) to deadly C05 201 earnest melodrama with obviously villainous scheming neighbors. C05 202 They wear black.

C05 203 Is this a joke? Is it for (un)real? A bit of both, and not C05 204 enough of either.

C05 205 Two of Sir Thomas' boys are so interchangeable one will be sent C05 206 to the Crusades by the time episode 2 rolls around, replaced by yet C05 207 another brother. That leaves us with youngest bro Cedric, a C05 208 reluctant clerical student who wants to be knight. He's played by C05 209 punkish Glenn Quinn, best known as Roseanne's oldest C05 210 daughter's squeeze and who's not entirely at ease in a jerkin.

C05 211 Similarly out of place is Ione Skye (... Say C05 212 Anything) as proto-feminist daughter Eleanor. She prefers C05 213 archery to harp lessons, and says her lines with flat zoned-out C05 214 inflections that make her seem as if she'd beamed in from some C05 215 suburban mall Renaissance fair.

C05 216 Maybe this is what's meant by an "international" C05 217 cast.

C05 218 With a grating score that sounds like John Williams at his most C05 219 redundant, and plotting so familiar it ends in a duel fought in C05 220 slo-mo, Covington is just the first Cross ABC will have C05 221 to bear this fall.

C05 222 But, no doubt, not for long.

C05 223 C05 224 INSIDE TV

C05 225 Andrew gives momentum to The Weather Channel

C05 226 Long the lightning rod of material for stand-up comics, The C05 227 Weather Channel has been at the center of the Hurricane Andrew C05 228 story.

C05 229 "We've tweaked the programming to really feature the C05 230 hurricane," says Stu Ostro, the channel's senior C05 231 <}_><-|>meterologist<+|>meteorologist<}/>. "We've sent a C05 232 crew to the Miami area to file reports not only for us but for a C05 233 number of local stations."

C05 234 Local outlets that are affiliates of the news co-op Conus have C05 235 had live Weather Channel updates, which can only bolster the C05 236 channel's identity. "This is the political convention, the C05 237 World Series and the Super Bowl all rolled up into one," C05 238 Ostro says. "As early as (Sunday) morning, when the other C05 239 TV media were giving the storm little attention, we were already at C05 240 the update desk saying how dangerous it was. That lets people know C05 241 we are not a joke."

C05 242 C06 1 <#FROWN:C06\>Jackie Gleason's Dark Side Revealed in New C06 2 Bio

C06 3 The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason.

C06 4 By William Henry III. Doubleday, $21.95.

C06 5 Kay Gardella

C06 6 He had everything: talent, fame, money and power. Jackie C06 7 Gleason's public adored him. His 'Honeymooners' is spoken of as one C06 8 of the great classics of television's half--century.

C06 9 Yet, with it all, 'The Great One', as he called himself, had a C06 10 dark side. He was deeply sensitive, introspective, and suffered C06 11 fits of depression, loneliness and anger. If you were a Gleason C06 12 fan, then let Time magazine's culture critic William Henry III take C06 13 you along on a journey through the deepest recesses of this great C06 14 comic's life and times in his excellent biography, 'The Life and C06 15 Legend of Jackie Gleason.'

C06 16 This is not your typical celebrity book, but a real C06 17 journalist's-eye-view of Gleason, warts and all, a tome that C06 18 captures the man's flamboyance, generosity and showmanship, as well C06 19 as his many faults, insecurities and contradictions.

C06 20 It's the end result of 150 interviews with those who worked C06 21 closely with Gleason - including Art Carney, Joyce Randolph, Sheila C06 22 McRae, Audrey Meadows, his writers, friends and enemies. Although C06 23 Henry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, conceded in an interview C06 24 that he found "very few who disliked him."

C06 25 That even includes the great comic's head writer, Coleman C06 26 Jacoby, who, as Henry said, "had epic battles over credit C06 27 where serious money was involved. Still, he considered Gleason the C06 28 most talented and interesting man he ever worked for."

C06 29 The thoroughly researched, exquisitely written biography covers C06 30 Gleason's life from his poor boyhood in Brooklyn, where at an early C06 31 age his father deserted him and his mother, through his early C06 32 struggling years as an entertainer and his ultimate success on C06 33 television (he spent 18 years on CBS), films and on Broadway ('Take C06 34 Me Along'). Along the way there were three marriages. The book is C06 35 about a man who, despite his outgoing personality, remained an C06 36 enigma to many.

C06 37 "Who was Jackie Gleason?" writes Henry. C06 38 "To Art Carney, he was 'the greatest talent I ever worked C06 39 with,' but far more boss than friend, so distant that he would be C06 40 out of touch for years, until the next deal came along. To Joyce C06 41 Randolph, the original Trixie on 'The Honeymooners', Gleason was an C06 42 unknowable man, hidden behind psychic walls, touchy and C06 43 temperamental, whom she didn't even dream of inviting to her C06 44 wedding. But to Audrey Meadows (who played Alice Kramden), Gleason C06 45 was a man of boundless warmth and great restraint, a genius on C06 46 stage and almost a saint off it."

C06 47 What intrigued him about Gleason, the 42-year-old Henry said, C06 48 was that "the bigger and more extreme Gleason got, the more C06 49 real he became," when usually, "most actors, to C06 50 convey reality, pull everything in until they're almost C06 51 catatonic.

C06 52 "Borrowing George Abbott's old phrase, he was louder, faster C06 53 and funnier. He consumed more, did more, sinned more, repented C06 54 more, and simply plunged into life when most of us dip our toes C06 55 into it."

C06 56 If as the book suggests, Gleason was a moody and angry man at C06 57 times, he was also loyal and given to bursts of generosity.

C06 58 As Henry, quoting sources, said: "If you were his C06 59 secretary, you'd be it as long as you could get yourself into the C06 60 chair and answer the phone. And if you were his driver, you'd be it C06 61 until your license was revoked."

C06 62 For those who miss Gleason, and appreciated his talent, Henry's C06 63 book will be a revelation. The author, who writes that he felt like C06 64 the reporter in 'Citizen Kane', after all the searching and C06 65 digging, and exposing of his subject's darker side, said he still C06 66 admires the man. "There were aspects of him that were very C06 67 brave, and even noble, but I wouldn't have wanted to work for C06 68 him."

C06 69 C06 70 Cuba: A Journey. By Jacobo Timerman.

C06 71 Translated by Toby Talbot, Vintage paperback, $9

C06 72 Charles Solomon.

C06 73 Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman casts an unflinching eye C06 74 on the self-proclaimed 'workers' paradise' of Castro's Cuba in this C06 75 vivid journal.

C06 76 Instead of a Marxist Elysium, he finds a depressingly typical C06 77 dictatorship, whose ruler, 'El Commandante', C06 78 insists on being referred to by a string of titles as long as any C06 79 Holy Roman Emperor's.

C06 80 A former prisoner of conscience, Timerman has firsthand C06 81 knowledge of the ruses despots employ, and he immediatly notes the C06 82 glaring discrepancy between Castro's image as the caring, C06 83 all-knowing savior of his country and his alleged ignorance of the C06 84 mismanagement and corruption that have reduced the inhabitants of C06 85 this once-prosperous island to poverty.

C06 86 C06 87 C06 88 Kai Bird Introduces Readers to 'The Chairman'

C06 89 THE CHAIRMAN: JOHN J. MCCLOY, THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN C06 90 ESTABLISHMENT. By Kai Bird. Simon&Schuster, $30.

C06 91 Bill Barnhart

C06 92 Writer Kai Bird has produced a long, intensely researched C06 93 account of the man who was called the chairman of America's C06 94 establishment, yet who is unknown to most Americans.

C06 95 Despite humble beginnings in Philadelphia, lawyer John J. C06 96 McCloy became the essence of the behind-the-scenes operative, C06 97 advising and obeying presidents and tycoons from the 1930s until C06 98 his death in 1989.

C06 99 Walking in McCloy's footsteps, we tread an astounding amount of C06 100 American history and witness the development of an establishment C06 101 mind-set that brought us Iran-Contra on the one hand and a C06 102 diminished nuclear threat on the other. Along the way, we see C06 103 McCloy reshape one of America's leading banks, Chase Manhattan, as C06 104 well as the World Bank. He helped set the tone for relations C06 105 between the country's private-sector elite and its federal C06 106 government.

C06 107 McCloy, from his base in the Wall Street legal fraternity, was C06 108 a ubiquitous participant in world history, who shunned publicity C06 109 and never stood for electoral review by the American public. As C06 110 Bird tells it, he was not motivated by money but by a keen instinct C06 111 for problem-solving and a sense of duty. He never displayed power C06 112 or wealth ostentatiously and worked well into his 80s to support C06 113 his ailing wife.

C06 114 The peculiarities of McCloy's beliefs worked themselves into C06 115 the core of American policy, especially foreign policy, under the C06 116 last six presidents. Deeply involved in investigations of German C06 117 espionage during World War I, McCloy came to espouse a strong - C06 118 some would say radical - ends-justifies-the-means approach to C06 119 national security.

C06 120 The roots of Central Intelligence Agency excesses, and even the C06 121 Watergate burglary, can be traced to the McCloy mind set. He C06 122 aquiesced in the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent C06 123 during World War II and facilitated the release of Nazi war C06 124 criminals to improve U.S. relations with postwar Germany.

C06 125 On the other hand, he worked to integrate the U.S. Army. He was C06 126 a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament negotiations and pushed a C06 127 liberal view toward the sovereignty of such pivotal countries as C06 128 Egypt.

C06 129 Excellent historical writing draws on personal dilemmas to C06 130 illuminate events. In this regard, Bird has produced a monumental C06 131 achievement. At the risk of overstating McCloy's role, Bird C06 132 presents history through the decisions McCloy made in his C06 133 career.

C06 134 Excellent biography, on the other hand, requires more. And if C06 135 'The Chairman' can be faulted, it would be for not probing deeper C06 136 into McCloy. The beginning and end of the book explore McCloy's C06 137 personality and character. In between, we learn a lot of McCloy but C06 138 not enough about him. There is little discussion of his C06 139 relationship with his wife of 56 years, Ellen, or their children. C06 140 We don't hear enough about McCloy from those who knew him best C06 141 professionally and socially.

C06 142 Just as the monarchy seems to be unraveling in tabloid C06 143 headlines in Great Britain, America's gentlemanly East Coast C06 144 establishment - our approximation of royalty - has lost much of its C06 145 credibility and utility in an age of no-holds-barred public debate C06 146 and opened-collared billionaires like Microsoft's Bill Gates.

C06 147 The idea of an American elite imbued with a beneficent sense of C06 148 America's place in the world and able to "rise above C06 149 private interests" and "discern public C06 150 good," as Bird puts it, is looking a bit threadbare and C06 151 even dangerous. It's important to walk in John McCloy's footsteps, C06 152 but there don't seem to be many Wall Street lawyers willing or able C06 153 to fill his shoes.

C06 154 C06 155 C06 156 THE NEW ROADSIDE AMERICA.

C06 157 By Mike Wilkins, Ken Smith and Doug Kirby.

C06 158 Fireside paperback, $13.

C06 159 Charles Solomon

C06 160 Thomas Carlyle wrote that it was America's mission to vulgarize C06 161 the world, but this tongue-in-cheek guide to roadside tourist C06 162 attractions (with pictures!) suggests that vulgarity, like charity, C06 163 begins at home.

C06 164 The authors highlight such tacky landmarks as the largest tree C06 165 stump, in Kokomo, Ind. (57 feet in circumference); the 4 1/2-story C06 166 muskellunge (the world's largest fiberglass structure) at the C06 167 Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wis.; the Creation C06 168 Evidences Museum in Glen Rose, Texas; Riverside, Iowa, which bills C06 169 itself as 'The Future Birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk,' and the C06 170 $15 million, 45,000-square-foot 'World of Coca-Cola' pavilion in C06 171 Atlanta.

C06 172 Enterprising readers might copy particularly awful listings and C06 173 send them to the kids of people they dislike just before they C06 174 depart for a cross-country vacation.

C06 175 C06 176 Larry Powell

C06 177 Works on Crime And Punishment

C06 178 Crime and Punishment: The king of the crime writers, Elmore C06 179 Leonard, is back with 'Rum Punch' (Delacorte, $21), a C06 180 novel about a bail bondsman, a stewardess and a gun dealer.

C06 181 The stewardess and the bail bondsman concoct a scheme to fleece C06 182 the gun dealer, which is a dangerous way to get rich. Like most of C06 183 the earlier Leonard novels (he's written 31, with a high degree of C06 184 excellence), the twists in the story grow out of his characters' C06 185 nature. It's also a funny story, with some of the best dialogue C06 186 being written today.

C06 187 Jerry Oster, the author of 'Fixin' To Die' (Bantam, C06 188 20$), also has a knack for writing dialogue. That's one of the C06 189 attractions of his crime tale in which a thief named Elvis Polk C06 190 escapes from police custody and is pursued by New York detective C06 191 Joe Cullen. The detective appeared in earlier Oster novels. 'Fixin' C06 192 To Die' is also about police politics and the private devils that C06 193 betray police officers. Oster, former New York newspaper-man, has C06 194 the city's sights and sounds down pat.

C06 195 As Elmore Leonard knows Florida and Detroit, as Jerry Oster C06 196 knows New York City, so Edna Buchanan knows Miami. Buchanan is a C06 197 crime reporter who has been covering Miami violence and vice for 20 C06 198 years. Her book, 'Never Let Them See You Cry: More From Miami, C06 199 America's Hottest Beat' (Random House, 20$) is a second C06 200 collection of her crime pieces. She claims to have written about C06 201 3,000 murder cases in her career and is famous for her hard-boiled, C06 202 jived-up leads. If you're just discovering Buchanan, you should C06 203 also pick up her first true crime collection, 'The Corpse Had C06 204 a Familiar Face.'

C06 205 Buchanan also published a novel, 'Nobody Lives C06 206 Forever,' and has a second work of fiction coming from C06 207 Hyperion in the fall. 'Contents Under Pressure' is the C06 208 title.

C06 209 "Fiction is so much fun," Buchanan recently C06 210 said. "It's so liberating. As writers, we like everything C06 211 to be tidy. We like to wrap up the loose ends. There are murders C06 212 that go unsolved forever, missing people who are never found and C06 213 bodies that are never identified - no matter how hard you C06 214 try."

C06 215 Buchanan came to Miami on vacation from New Jersey in 1961 and C06 216 fell in love with the city. She has been married twice, to a C06 217 reporter and to a policeman, and she likes cats.

C06 218 Paragon House is publishing a remarkable series of reference C06 219 books about crime. Their author is Jay Robert Nash, who won an C06 220 Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his six-volume C06 221 Encyclopedia of World Crime. He has written many books about crime, C06 222 including the famous volumes on American desperadoes and lawmen C06 223 called 'Bloodletters and Badmen.'

C06 224 The first reference work in the Paragon series was 'World C06 225 Encyclopedia of Organized Crime.' The second, recently C06 226 published, is 'World Encyclopedia of 20th Century C06 227 Murder.' Scheduled in September is 'Encyclopedia of C06 228 Western Lawmen and Outlaws.' The hefty volumes, more than 600 C06 229 pages long and containing 300 illustrations as well as an extensive C06 230 bibliography, cost $49.95 each.

C06 231 Nash's guide to organized crime contains profiles of individual C06 232 gangsters, histories of crime families, and accounts of events such C06 233 as the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

C06 234 C07 1 <#FROWN:C07\>Belated Tribute to a Visionary

C07 2 By AUSTIN CLARKSON

C07 3 STEFAN WOLPE'S MUSIC has long been admired for its C07 4 uncompromising strength, vitality and adventurousness by C07 5 professional composers and performers, but like many other C07 6 <*_>e-acute<*/>migr<*_>e-acute<*/>s, Wolpe was never fully at home C07 7 or accepted in his adoptive countries. Still, he lived and taught C07 8 in New York from 1938 until his death in 1972, so it is with a firm C07 9 sense of timing that Parnassus, a New York ensemble led by Anthony C07 10 Korf, is marking the 90th anniversary of Wolpe's birth, which C07 11 occurred last Tuesday, with the release of an album of his C07 12 music.

C07 13 Although musicians in Germany, England and elsewhere are now C07 14 discovering Wolpe's music, the musicians in New York remain the C07 15 principal custodians of his legacy, and the Parnassus CD (Koch C07 16 International 7141) is a document that splendidly affirms and C07 17 carries forward that tradition. There is no better introduction in C07 18 the current CD catalogue to Wolpe's visionary contribution to C07 19 20th-century music.

C07 20 The eight pieces are well chosen. They range from 1929 to the C07 21 year before Wolpe's death in 1972, and show various sides of his C07 22 output yet emphasize masterworks of his last decade. Several of C07 23 them have been recorded before, but only two have thus far been C07 24 heard on CD.

C07 25 The earliest item was for a Berlin production of 'Hamlet' in C07 26 1929. The five-minute movement for flute, clarinet and cello C07 27 probably accompanied the dumb show in the play-within-a-play. A C07 28 remarkable vignette, it gives evidence of a richly polyphonic C07 29 imagination, fastidious workmanship and an early mastery of free C07 30 12-tone Expressionism.

C07 31 Wolpe's active service from 1929 to 1933 in the army of C07 32 antifascist artists alongside Hanns Eisler, Wladimir Vogel, Ernst C07 33 Hermann Meyer and others is recalled by the Three Songs of Bertolt C07 34 Brecht, composed for a Brecht tribute at the Hecksher Theater in C07 35 Manhattan in 1943. The melodies reflect the agitprop C07 36 'Kampflieder' (fighting songs) of the 30's - hard-driven, C07 37 modal, acrid, rejecting the allure of Tin Pan Alley - but the C07 38 richly textured and harmonized piano parts raise the songs to the C07 39 level of recital pieces. One hears in them the ethos that marks so C07 40 much of Wolpe's music: a revolutionary utopianism that reconciles a C07 41 deeply felt populism with profound faith in the value of the C07 42 individual imagination.

C07 43 <*_>black-square<*/>

C07 44 After Wolpe fled Berlin in 1933, he settled in Palestine from C07 45 1934 to 1938, teaching at the Palestine Conservatory in Jerusalem. C07 46 He wrote many solo songs and choral settings of biblical texts and C07 47 contemporary Hebrew poems. 'To the Dancemaster' by Chaim Nachmann C07 48 Bialik is typical of the poetry of revolt, whether by biblical C07 49 prophets or modern-day authors, that moved Wolpe to musical action: C07 50 "The wrath of our soul -/ our burning heart/ will now be C07 51 poured out/ in our raging dance./ And the dance will rise/ with C07 52 thunder and lightning/ to terrify the earth/ and stir up the C07 53 heavens."

C07 54 Wolpe was fascinated by the sounds of the Semitic languages, C07 55 Yemenite folk songs and classical Arabic oud players, but was C07 56 opposed to the practice of creating "a national Jewish C07 57 style along the lines of a chemical formula." For his C07 58 settings of Hebrew texts he created a ruggedly modernistic yet C07 59 tonal idiom richly infused with elements of Middle Eastern melos. C07 60 Joyce Castle, mezzo-soprano, and Edmund Niemann, pianist, are C07 61 superb partners in the Brecht and Bialik songs. And Alan Kay's C07 62 brilliant clarinet adds a wild klezmer quality to the Bialik. The C07 63 songs are recorded for the first time here, and Ms. Castle, with C07 64 her trenchant voice and lively, accurate enunciation, sets an C07 65 enviable standard for Wolpe lieder, in both German and Hebrew.

C07 66 The Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Piano, C07 67 composed in 1950 and revised in 1952, lies at the juncture of the C07 68 first and second phases of Wolpe's career in the United States. C07 69 During the 40's Wolpe worked out systems of atonal harmony and C07 70 spatial proportions that served as the bases for a series of works C07 71 he composed in the 50's, of which the first was the quartet.

C07 72 His music of this period has often been likened to the Abstract C07 73 Expressionism of his friends Guston, Kline, de Kooning and Rothko. C07 74 The forms are nonhierarchical, yet they maintain a charged flow. C07 75 The quartet contains music of expansive actions and intense C07 76 affects. Wolpe revealed that the work's first movement is a lament C07 77 for the suffering of the Chinese people during the Long March, and C07 78 the second is a street celebration of Mao Tse-tung's victory. After C07 79 the powerful drum patterns, mysterious piano sonorities and keening C07 80 of the trumpet and saxophone in the first movement, the second C07 81 opens with a boppy unison theme that reminds many listeners of C07 82 jazz.

C07 83 But as with Middle Eastern music, Wolpe here is exploiting the C07 84 affinity between his own language and that of jazz rather than C07 85 incorporating jazz structures as such. The jazz element is one C07 86 among a number of levels of language that Wolpe works with in this C07 87 piece to develop what he called "its craziness and C07 88 openness."

C07 89 <*_>black-square<*/>

C07 90 Conveying the movement's craziness and openness in performance C07 91 poses a mighty challenge. Of the four recorded performances to C07 92 date, the one that comes closest to Wolpe's tempo indication and to C07 93 the sense of delirious joy he sought to express is Arthur C07 94 Weisberg's 1974 version (Nonesuch 79222-2; CD). Mr. Korf's tempo C07 95 makes possible crystalline definition of the colors and C07 96 instrumental planes but fails to generate the requisite feelings C07 97 and gestures.

C07 98 During his last decade Wolpe was preoccupied with paring the C07 99 complexities of his earlier music to essentials. He focused C07 100 attention on creating sequences of intensely contrasted shapes and C07 101 gestures that achieved a balance between spontaneously intuited C07 102 images and logically ordered processes. In these late works, Wolpe C07 103 mixes various levels of language, from unique formulations to C07 104 echoes of tonal tunes, from jazzy riffs to rubbings of Beethoven C07 105 and Scriabin.

C07 106 Each of the four late works of the Parnassus CD (Piece in Two C07 107 Parts for Six Players, Piece for Two Instrumental Units, Solo Piece C07 108 for Trumpet, and Piece for Trumpet and Seven Instruments) needs to C07 109 be heard as a play of intense contrasts - gathering and scattering C07 110 actions, stable and mobile shapes and masses, symmetrical and C07 111 asymmetrical proportions, mixed and pure colors, wit and grimness, C07 112 grace and roughness.

C07 113 It is from the remarkably rapid interplay of so many strongly C07 114 opposing factors that Wolpe's music of the period acquires its C07 115 electrifying power and haunting beauty. In these late pieces the C07 116 alternation of gathering and scattering actions gains in intensity C07 117 until the final scattering seems almost to throw the piece off its C07 118 rails. It is often a moment of stark danger and disorder, which the C07 119 final gathering close just manages to contain.

C07 120 Wolpe's music pushes performers to the limits of their ability C07 121 and listeners to the utmost bounds of comprehension. The C07 122 juxtaposition of apparently irreconcilable elements challenges the C07 123 listener to rivet absolute attention until some unforeseeable C07 124 illumination appears as a kind of grace.

C07 125 Mr. Korf and his Parnassians perform Wolpe's late music with a C07 126 technical mastery of its labyrinthine intricacies and a lively C07 127 understanding of its lightning shifts of structure, mood and image C07 128 that bespeak many years of familiarity with it. They are worthy C07 129 heirs to a 30-year tradition of Wolpe performance in New York.

C07 130 C07 131 Gorecki: A Trendy Symphony and Beyond

C07 132 By JOHN ROCKWELL

C07 133 IT'S EASY TO BE CYNICAL ABOUT the recent flurry of mainstream C07 134 enthusiasm for the music of the Polish composer Henryk Gorecki. The C07 135 interest centers on a few pieces - the Symphony No. 3, in C07 136 particular - that are consonant and songful, far from any hint of C07 137 off-putting modernist abrasiveness. It is fueled by trendy artists C07 138 like the Kronos Quartet and a trendy record company, Elektra C07 139 Nonesuch. Mr. Gorecki's music is being promoted to the same young C07 140 audience that laps up Arvo Part, Sofia Gubaidulina and, horror of C07 141 horrors, the American Minimalists.

C07 142 But cynicism slights the quality of Mr. Gorecki's achievement. C07 143 Born in 1933, he studied in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and briefly C07 144 became the darling of the Polish avant-garde around 1960, with C07 145 huge, clashing exercises in orchestral sonority like 'Scontri' C07 146 ('Collisions').

C07 147 By the early 60's he began to find his true voice, which lost C07 148 him two important sources of patronage. His individualism put him C07 149 at odds with the Communist regime in Poland. And his increasing C07 150 absorption in folk music and religion lost him the sympathy of the C07 151 modernist establishment. He lives now in the polluted southern C07 152 Polish industrial city of Katowice, but spends much of his time in C07 153 the Tatra mountains on the Czechoslovak border, a home of C07 154 particularly wild and bracing forms of folk music.

C07 155 The Third Symphony (1976) dominates the Gorecki discography C07 156 primarily because of a recent Nonesuch CD (79282-2) that holds a C07 157 place on the classical top-10 sales chart. But of the six current C07 158 CD's that include music by the composer, three contain this C07 159 symphony.

C07 160 Subtitled 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,' it is a mournful C07 161 three-movement work lasting about 52 minutes. The movements are C07 162 almost uniformly slow: Lento, Lento e Largo and Lento. The texts, C07 163 sung by a soprano, were drawn from various sources suggesting C07 164 broken bonds between mother and child, from Mary and Christ to an C07 165 imploring Polish teen-ager who scratched a prayer to the Virgin C07 166 Mother on the wall of a Gestapo prison in 1944.

C07 167 The singing, though crucial, is set into long stretches of C07 168 purely instrumental texture. The first-movement lament is flanked C07 169 by the two halves of a huge canon for strings, building from near C07 170 inaudibility to surging, shining triumph, and then receding. C07 171 Elsewhere the music recalls not only the mystical Minimalists but C07 172 also Shostakovich's late, world-weary song-symphonies, C07 173 Wagner's 'Parsifal' and even the radiant simplicity of Copland's C07 174 'Appalachian Spring.'

C07 175 The Nonesuch recording, with David Zinman conducting the London C07 176 Sinfonietta, is a fine one. The soprano, Dawn Upshaw, sounds pure C07 177 and steady yet manages to dig soulfully into this primally Slavic C07 178 music. But buyers should also explore one of the competing C07 179 versions.

C07 180 The 1987 account on the Polish Olympia label (OCD 313; CD) C07 181 offers an even better orchestral performance, by Jerzy Katlewicz C07 182 and the Polish Radio National Symphony of Katowice. And Stefania C07 183 Woytowicz, the soprano most closely identified with this score, C07 184 makes up in experience and idiomatic fervor what she lacks in tonal C07 185 steadiness.

C07 186 Mr. Katlewicz plays the long opening movement a shade faster C07 187 than Mr. Zinman does, and his more natural, flowing, organic C07 188 account makes the score pulse with an emotional intensity that is C07 189 never sentimentally exaggerated. Unlike Nonesuch, Olympia offers C07 190 enticing bonuses: the 'Three Pieces in Olden Style' (1963) for C07 191 string orchestra, which will be welcomed by anyone who responds to C07 192 the symphony, and a short, sweet 'Amen' (1975) for unaccompanied C07 193 boys' choir.

C07 194 The final competitor in the Third Symphony (Koch Schwann Musica C07 195 Mundi 311 041; CD) places a poor third. Wlodzimierz Kamirski's C07 196 account of the work with the Berlin Radio Symphony and an even less C07 197 steady Miss Woytowicz sounds prosaic, and the final movement is C07 198 much quicker than in the other performances (12-plus minutes versus C07 199 17-plus).

C07 200 What is missing in the current Gorecki discography is C07 201 documentation of his more overtly modernist style of the late 50's C07 202 and early 60's. But ultimately, his gentler works will undoubtedly C07 203 come to seem part of a unified sensibility. He has always been a C07 204 composer of wild extremes. He has long shown a fascination, as in C07 205 the Third Symphony, for a formal elegance that doesn't preclude C07 206 intense emotion, and some of his recent music is far from calm and C07 207 meditative.

C07 208 There are two recordings of the 40-minute 'Lerchenmusik' ('Lark C07 209 Music'; 1984) for clarinet, cello and piano. The title, which C07 210 suggests Messiaen's aviary enthusiasms, also derives from C07 211 Lerchenborg Castle in Denmark, where the score was first performed. C07 212 It and the String Quartet No. 1 ('Already It Is Dusk'; 1988) C07 213 alternate furious eruptions with mystic quiescence in the best C07 214 Messiaen manner.

C07 215 The two pieces are paired on another Nonesuch CD (79257-2), C07 216 with Kronos playing the quartet and members of the London C07 217 Sinfonietta 'Lerchenmusik.' This release is clearly preferable to C07 218 the other 'Lerchenmusik,' performed by unnamed members of the C07 219 Camerata Vistula (Olympia OCD 343; CD). The London musicians, C07 220 especially the clarinetist Michael Collins, are full of personality C07 221 and passion; the Polish players sound sober and bland. C07 222 C08 1 <#FROWN:C08\>Vignettes pay homage to the icons of C08 2 Santeria

C08 3 ART REVIEW

C08 4 'Las Siete Potencias: Mestizaje and the Aesthetics of C08 5 Santeria'

C08 6 Chastain Gallery, 135 West Wieuca Road N.W.

C08 7 Through Sept. 2. 1-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.

C08 8 257-1747 or 257-1804.

C08 9 By Jerry Cullum

C08 10 Arturo Lindsay calls these shrines to the seven African powers C08 11 "secular art with a spiritual intent." Each shrine C08 12 is filled with objects associated with the New World religion of C08 13 Santeria (based on Yoruba worship from West Africa), but nothing C08 14 has been actually used in religious ceremonies.

C08 15 However, most viewers will find these pieces charged with C08 16 aesthetic and religious energy. Each installation consists of a C08 17 painting and wall sculpture, a "throne" (more resembling an C08 18 elegantly modern chair), statuary, candles and votive offerings C08 19 appropriate to the spirit, or orisha, being honored. (The throne C08 20 and offerings sit in a low boxlike enclosure in front of the C08 21 painting.) Mr. Lindsay's paintings are starkly abstracted C08 22 renditions suggesting the West African version of the orisha, while C08 23 the surrounding imagery often is appropriated from Catholicism.

C08 24 For example, Eshu-Elugg<*_>u-acute<*/>a is shown in the C08 25 paintings in his capacity as guardian of the cross-roads. C08 26 The religious statue in front of the throne is that of St. Anthony C08 27 of Padua, whose imagery reminded Santeria worshipers of C08 28 Eshu-Elegg<*_>u-acute<*/>a's<&|>sic!.

C08 29 Mr. Lindsay uses the traditional colors of the orishas to C08 30 superb effect - pure white for Obatala, vivid red for C08 31 Eshu-Elegg<*_>u-acute<*/>a<&|>sic! and Shango, yellow for C08 32 Osh<*_>u-acute<*/>n, green for Orula and Ogun, and blue for Yemaya. C08 33 The theme is carried out spectacularly in the Obatala shrine, in C08 34 which the whiteness is carried through from the white background of C08 35 the line-drawn painting to the cotton lining of the enclosure and C08 36 bowl of popcorn used as the offering. The various shades of blue in C08 37 Yemaya's water-associated imagery are equally striking.

C08 38 It should be pointed out again that these aren't traditional C08 39 shrines but artistic homages. Mr. Lindsay's paintings and thrones C08 40 are crisply modern (and extremely beautiful examples of a C08 41 semi-geometric style). The seashells and fragrant dried C08 42 flowers spread around Osh<*_>u-acute<*/>n's shrine, the iron C08 43 implements of Ogun or the moss at the feet of Orula are thoroughly C08 44 traditional. But the traditional materials are part of an C08 45 imaginative homage, not a traditional worship ceremony. Some C08 46 traditional symbols, such as Shango's double ax, appear in a C08 47 non-traditional form.

C08 48 This imaginative reinvention of Santeria symbolism has been a C08 49 significant part of recent Latino art in the United States. A C08 50 symposium on Santeria aesthetics in contemporary Latino art, C08 51 featuring an array of scholars, artist and intellectuals, will be C08 52 held Aug. 6 at Spelman College. Because of limited seating, C08 53 reservations are essential; call 223-7515.

C08 54 C08 55 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' has Valley Girl bite

C08 56 FILM REVIEW

C08 57 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'

C08 58 A comedy. Starring Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry. Directed by C08 59 Fran Rubel Kuzui. Rated PG-13 for language and violence.

C08 60 At metro theaters.

C08 61 By Eleanor Ringel

C08 62 FILM EDITOR

C08 63 "I can't believe I'm in a graveyard looking for C08 64 vampires on a school night!" complains the stake-wielding C08 65 heroine of the nimble new comedy 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'

C08 66 There are vampires on the loose in Southern California and, C08 67 according to a grizzled stranger (Donald Sutherland goofing on his C08 68 Deep Throat role in 'JFK'), the only one who can stop them is the C08 69 chosen Vampire Slayer - Buffy (Kristy Swanson), an airhead C08 70 cheer-leader.

C08 71 Buffy is not exactly what you'd call vampire-slaying material. C08 72 Her favorite pastime is mall-crawling. And all she wants to do with C08 73 her life is graduate from high school, go to Europe and marry C08 74 Christian Slater. Her transformation into the scourge of the living C08 75 dead is as unlikely as it is hilarious.

C08 76 Lighthearted and light on its feet, 'Buffy' is basically a C08 77 one-joke affair - Dracula's age-old nemesis, Dr. Van Helsing, C08 78 reimagined as a vacuous Valley Girl. But it's handled with airy C08 79 aplomb by everyone involved.

C08 80 Rutger Hauer plays the suave head of the undead. Paul Reubens C08 81 (the former Pee-wee Herman) is Mr. Hauer's right-hand C08 82 bloodsucker. Teen idol Luke Perry is a rebel-drifter allied with C08 83 Buffy in her battle against the forces of evil.

C08 84 Ms. Swanson ('Deadly Friend,' 'Mannequin Two') makes a killer C08 85 fearless vampire killer. She (and her doubles) can do back flips to C08 86 rival Catwoman's; she's even better at handling gymnastic exchanges C08 87 with her Heather Squad friends ("Puuhleese, that's so C08 88 five-minutes-ago" is a typical put-down).

C08 89 Maybe Buffy could guest-star on 'Wayne's World.' She's just C08 90 their type.

C08 91 C08 92 Just call it her 'Death' by vanity

C08 93 FILM REVIEW

C08 94 'Death Becomes Her'

C08 95 A comedy. Starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. C08 96 Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Rated PG-13 for possibly scary special C08 97 effects.

C08 98 At metro theaters

C08 99 By Eleanor Ringel

C08 100 FILM EDITOR

C08 101 The special-effects era in movies hasn't been especially nice C08 102 to actresses. After all, no one's paired Sissy Spacek and Whoopi C08 103 Goldberg in a blow-'em-up buddy flick or suggested Jessica Lange as C08 104 the new RoboCop.

C08 105 But that wrong has been riotously righted by Meryl Streep and C08 106 Goldie Hawn in 'Death Becomes Her,' a wicked sick-joke C08 107 comedy that blends the black wit of Billy Wilder with some of the C08 108 best effects money can buy. This movie takes our nation's Eternal C08 109 Youth obsession with anti-aging creams and cosmetic surgery to C08 110 surreal extremes.

C08 111 Madeline Ashton (Ms. Streep), a vain actress, and Helen Sharp C08 112 (Ms. Hawn), a vengeful author, are deadly rivals in the style of C08 113 the old '40s movies when men were men and women were Bette Davis C08 114 and Joan Crawford.

C08 115 In the film's hilarious late-'70s prologue, Madeline is C08 116 starring on Broadway in 'Songbird!' a musical version of 'Sweet C08 117 Bird of Youth.' Helen, her mousy childhood friend, brings her C08 118 fiance, superstar plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), C08 119 backstage. With the merest flutter of a false eyelash, Madeline C08 120 gets the good doctor in her thrall.

C08 121 Madeline and Ernest go to the altar. Helen goes to the fridge, C08 122 blows up to Roseanne-times-two size and lands in the loony bin.

C08 123 Cut to the present. The erst-while lovebirds are locked C08 124 in a mutually loathing marriage. She worries about her face C08 125 ("Wrinkle, wrinkle, little star"); he's so C08 126 permanently pickled that the only cosmetic job he can hold down is C08 127 at a funeral home. Helen, meanwhile, has been C08 128 <}_><-|>tranformed<+|>transformed<}/> into a ravishing redhead with C08 129 long Rita Hayworth tresses, a hard body to kill for and a best C08 130 seller called "Forever Young."

C08 131 Her secret? Well, it has something to do with a mysterious C08 132 beauty (Isabella Rosselini, slinking around like a '20s vamp) who C08 133 dispenses a certain magic elixir. An elixir that Madeline is about C08 134 to try out herself.

C08 135 Director Bob Zemeckis, who took us "Back to the C08 136 Future," turns his back on the future, with its sagging C08 137 breasts and spreading middles. Instead, he concentrates on our lust C08 138 for a cosmetically perfect here and now, with nipped tummies and C08 139 tucked buttocks. He takes a story at least as old as 'The Portrait C08 140 of Dorian Gray' and jazzes it up with some astounding C08 141 state-of-the-art effects ("The Morphing of Dorian C08 142 Gray?").

C08 143 More importantly, Mr. Zemeckis realizes that the best effects C08 144 are best served by the best actors available. The cartoon craziness C08 145 of his 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' was anchored by Bob Hoskins's C08 146 expertise; Ms. Streep and Ms. Hawn do the same for this film. Both C08 147 are terrific comedians - whether suffering eye-popping physical C08 148 mutations that would flummox Alice in Wonderland or spitting out C08 149 their spite-laced dialogue (at one point, Ms. Streep sounds eerily C08 150 like Elizabeth Taylor in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?').

C08 151 'Death Becomes Her' loses some steam in its last half-hour, C08 152 with Mr. Willis on the loose in Ms. Rosselini's Gothic castle, C08 153 running into such supposedly pretty-but-dead celebs as James Dean C08 154 and Jim Morrison. But it pulls itself together for one of the C08 155 sickest slapstick finales in memory.

C08 156 This is one strange movie. See it with one of your stranger C08 157 friends. Say, someone who loves to hear Joan Rivers dish about her C08 158 latest facelift.

C08 159 C08 160 Wonder will thrive among extinct species at Fernbank

C08 161 PREVIEW

C08 162 Fernbank Museum of Natural History

C08 163 Opens at noon Oct. 5. Regular hours: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. C08 164 Monday-Saturday; noon-6 p.m. Sunday. $5; $4 senior citizens and C08 165 ages 2-12; free under 2. 767 Clifton Road N.E. 378-0127.

C08 166 By Catherine Fox

C08 167 VISUAL ART CRITIC

C08 168 Atlanta is experiencing an unprecedented decade of cultural C08 169 expansion. Art and science museums, performing arts facilities and C08 170 libraries in the metro area have blossomed like azaleas, and there C08 171 are more to come. The Center for Atlanta History, the Auburn Avenue C08 172 Library for Research on African-American Culture and History, and C08 173 an expanded Michael C. Carlos Museum are being readied for 1993 C08 174 debuts.

C08 175 But there's a big unveiling to celebrate this fall: the C08 176 Fernbank Museum of Natural History. When the $43 million facility C08 177 opens Oct. 5, Atlanta will have the largest science museum south of C08 178 the Smithsonian. Fernbank will fill a vacuum in science education, C08 179 to be sure. But it will play a larger role in Atlanta's psyche as C08 180 well.

C08 181 Fernbank is certainly a plus in the civic pride department. C08 182 After all, can a city be world-class without a dinosaur or two? The C08 183 museum gives us our dinosaurs - including a cast of a stegosaurus C08 184 and the skeleton of a giant sloth, an 18-foot-tall Georgia native C08 185 recently dredged up from the Frederica River west of St. Simons C08 186 Island.

C08 187 But this museum is not merely following in the paw prints of C08 188 its predecessors.

C08 189 "Lots of museums are built to house C08 190 collections," director Kay Davis says. "We focus on C08 191 the public first. Atlanta doesn't have a place where basic research C08 192 can be translated for the public. This is a learning C08 193 facility."

C08 194 To that end, Fernbank will be the first museum of its kind, she C08 195 says, "to tell a story."

C08 196 The story is both specific and epic. The 12 galleries devoted C08 197 to 'A Walk Through Time in Georgia' present the history of the C08 198 Earth's evolution and its flora and fauna from the big bang to the C08 199 future. Walk-through dioramas and interactive exhibits pair the big C08 200 picture with Georgia's varied natural history.

C08 201 Fernbank will be "the first truly interactive science C08 202 museum," says Edwin Schlossberg, the New York exhibit C08 203 designer.

C08 204 The emphasis is on hands-on experience. Children learn through C08 205 play in two discovery rooms geared to different age groups. Adults C08 206 can research their own finds in a well-equipped lab set up C08 207 for that purpose. And watching a movie on the 50-by-72-foot IMAX C08 208 Theatre screen is, as anyone who has experienced one can tell you, C08 209 the next best thing to being there.

C08 210 Fernbank takes the integrated approach to learning a step C08 211 further in establishing connections to other disciplines. The C08 212 museum commissioned Atlanta composer James Oliverio to write a C08 213 choral work for chorus and chamber orchestra for its opening. It C08 214 will link art and science in upcoming exhibitions including C08 215 'Winterland,' a show of Norwegian paintings that will kick off C08 216 Atlanta's Cultural Olympiad. (The art show will be complemented by C08 217 a related science exhibit and programs.) The museum co-sponsored C08 218 'Mountain Gorilla,' its IMAX theater debut film, and plans to C08 219 sponsor others.

C08 220 In addition, the museum has recognized its civic C08 221 responsibilities as a city builder: Like other cultural C08 222 institutions here, its building offers a high level of design. C08 223 Whether or not one cottons to Boston architect Graham Gund's C08 224 postmodern vocabulary, at least the architecture and plan befit its C08 225 purpose, unlike, for example, so many of our new governmental C08 226 buildings, which look like average office buildings. Both the C08 227 approach from Clifton Road and the interior offer a sequence of C08 228 spatial experiences and an elevated tone.

C08 229 Fernbank is undoubtedly an important new 'attraction.' An item C08 230 to check off on the list of big-city amenities. Something that C08 231 encourages conventioneers to bring their spouses and spend more C08 232 money in Atlanta. Somewhere to take one's kids on a rainy day.

C08 233 But Fernbank offers more than diversion. If it does its job, it C08 234 will be a resource that helps us understand who we are and why we C08 235 are. Like all of our cultural institutions, it helps us come to C08 236 terms with a mystifyingly complex world.

C08 237 C08 238 Taking on the topical or the tried-and-true

C08 239 Diverse exhibits blur boundaries of culture, mediums

C08 240 By Catherine Fox

C08 241 VISUAL ARTS CRITIC

C08 242 In the art world, blurring boundaries is a mission, and it is a C08 243 theme or subtext for some of the more intriguing exhibitions C08 244 planned for Atlanta museums and galleries in the coming year.

C08 245 C09 1 <#FROWN:C09\>Beans of wrath - the rise, fall of Brazil's C09 2 cacao trade

C09 3 THE GOLDEN HARVEST

C09 4 By Jorge Amado; translated by Clifford E. Landers (Avon, C09 5 $12.50)

C09 6 By C.W. Smith

C09 7 That chunk of chocolate you love so much will never taste the C09 8 same after you've read The Golden Harvest, Mr. Jorge C09 9 Amado's novel about the Brazilian cacao industry.

C09 10 Though the novel, written in 1944, has only now been published C09 11 in English (translated by Clifford E. Landers), the story of the C09 12 cacao bean boom and bust during the 1930s in the Bahia region of C09 13 Brazil seems vibrantly fresh. It will also be familiar to any who C09 14 have seen oil, cotton, silver and real estate follow a similar rise C09 15 and fall in recent decades with attendant human misery.

C09 16 Because it was written in 1944, the novel is not afflicted by C09 17 the current fashion in fiction to explore the surface of a narrow C09 18 subject. The Golden Harvest is refreshingly maximalist; C09 19 it follows the intersecting paths of many lively characters over C09 20 the course of several years. They are peasants, drovers, poets, C09 21 lawyers, prostitutes, landowners or exporters; their fates and C09 22 fortunes are tied to the production and exportation of the cacao C09 23 bean, and the novel charts their ongoing lives in a manner that C09 24 recalls the scope and thematic intent of Dresier, Tolstoy, Norris C09 25 or Steinbeck.

C09 26 Working solidly in that older tradition of realism, Mr. Amado C09 27 sets the book among a conspiracy of exporters in Ilheus, Brazil, C09 28 who want to manipulate the price of cacao so that the growers on C09 29 nearby plantations will fall into their debt and have to sell their C09 30 lands to them. Because the Bahia region produced most of the C09 31 world's cacao beans, from which chocolate is made, the exporters C09 32 will then have almost complete control over the global market.

C09 33 As might be expected of a Latin American novelist, Mr. Amado C09 34 seems to use the fictionalized events to indict capitalism and a C09 35 vicious free-market economy. He dramatizes the plight of plantation C09 36 workers and their ceaseless, unrewarding toil in scenes reminiscent C09 37 of portraits of slaves and tenant farmers in the American cotton C09 38 fields. The exporters' conspiracy results in widespread hunger C09 39 among the peasants, and near the end of the book, the novel's C09 40 communist Joaquim, says "one day the land will belong to C09 41 everyone."

C09 42 But given the time and place of the novel's composition the C09 43 didacticism is remarkably low-keyed when compared, say, to The C09 44 Grapes of Wrath, and it's hard to tell whether Mr. Amado's C09 45 implied critique of capitalism is merely obligatory or was C09 46 restrained for aesthetic reasons. In any case, he doesn't allow the C09 47 need to take such a stand interfere with his ability to make the C09 48 characters sympathetic and fully human, no matter which side C09 49 they're on.

C09 50 Even the plot's mastermind, the exporter Carlos Zude, fails in C09 51 the end to achieve what he has always wanted more than money: the C09 52 love and fidelity of his young and beautiful wife, Julietta, who C09 53 carries on an affair throughout the book with a proletarian poet, C09 54 Sergio Moura.

C09 55 The story focuses as much on passion as on politics, which C09 56 should not surprise readers familiar with Mr. Amado's best-known C09 57 translated work, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. It's C09 58 here, in his interest in the characters' emotional lives, that Mr. C09 59 Amado changes The Golden Harvest from tract to C09 60 tragi-comedy.

C09 61 Despite the large cast, dozens of characters are etched clearly C09 62 because their individual quirks are described so vividly:

C09 63 Raimunda was ... querulous and angry, a woman of few C09 64 words who hated the parties and dances, with their harmonica and C09 65 guitar music, held now and again in the houses of workers and small C09 66 growers ... When she did go, she refused to dance, remaining off in C09 67 a corner and complaining that her shoes hurt her feet; she would C09 68 end up taking them off right there ..."

C09 69 But "Whether it was picking and splitting open the C09 70 cacao pods, dancing over them in the drying frames on sunny days, C09 71 removing the visgo or mucilaginous pulp from the trough, she could C09 72 do it all like the best worker on the plantations. And there she C09 73 felt happy, among the cacao trees, waking at dawn, going to bed at C09 74 dusk for the deep sleep of weariness."

C09 75 C09 76 Bacchic Inferno

C09 77 A macabre tale of six college students, horror and murder

C09 78 SECRET HISTORY

C09 79 By Donna Tartt (Knopf, $23)

C09 80 By Annemarie Marek

C09 81 In Greek mythology, two gods of opposing character war within C09 82 the human psyche - Apollo, the god of reason, and Dionysus, or C09 83 Bacchus, the god of the irrational, who embodies the power and C09 84 fertility of raw, unrelenting nature and its primordial forces. In C09 85 The Secret History, first-time novelist Donna Tartt C09 86 weaves a tale of horror and psychodrama with her macabre story of C09 87 six New England college students who, under the tutelage of their C09 88 professor of classics, explore the deepest, darkest realms of Greek C09 89 culture.

C09 90 The tale unfolds through the eyes of 28-year-old Richard Papen, C09 91 whose middle-class upbringing in the small suburb of Plano, Calif., C09 92 smacks of tract homes, fast food drive-throughs and supermarket C09 93 specials and contrasts sharply with that of his wealthy C09 94 class-mates. Richard happens upon Hampden College at age 19 C09 95 almost by accident and largely from financial need.

C09 96 It is here, at this rather elitist liberal arts college in the C09 97 remote village of Hampden, Vt., that Richard meets Julian Morrow, C09 98 the classics professor, and the five students who prove to be C09 99 fatally drawn together under the auspices of pursuing the higher C09 100 realms of thought and culture of the ancients - Henry Winter, tall C09 101 stoic multilinguist; Francis Abernathy, elegant, dapper, gay heir C09 102 to a Boston family fortune; Charles Macaulay, the alcoholic, and C09 103 Camilla Macaulay, twin sister to Charles, both orphans from C09 104 Virginia; and imposing, blond-haired, blue-eyed Edmund "Bunny" C09 105 Corcoran, son of a football star turned banker.

C09 106 Naively, Richard abandons his first-year curriculum when he C09 107 learns about Julian Morrow's small, select classical studies group, C09 108 for Richard lives a two-faced life, hiding the details of C09 109 his plain and embarrassingly uneventful middle-class childhood with C09 110 fictitious stories about his past in an effort to be accepted C09 111 within this inner sanctum of peers. What Richard has no way of C09 112 knowing is that this inner circle, with which he has nothing in C09 113 common except his knowledge of the Greek language, will pull him C09 114 into a dark and vicious vortex of deceit, lies, drugs and the C09 115 eventual murder of one of his own classmates, Bunny Corcoran.

C09 116 The story is divided into two distinct books, the first leading C09 117 up to the account of Bunny's death; the second, the murder and C09 118 aftermath. Much of Richard's relationship with his classmates is C09 119 superficial in nature. Initially, Richard knows little about the C09 120 Dionysian experiments - using various paraphernalia to send them C09 121 into uncontrollable frenzies - of Camilla, Charles, Francis and C09 122 Henry until Henry's probing. In fact, it is not until the second C09 123 half of the novel that Richard himself begins to understand his C09 124 naivete and the horror of the incidents that have occurred.

C09 125 Julian Morrow portrays the revered classics scholar whose C09 126 insights about the Greek and Roman cultures lead to the teen-agers' C09 127 clandestine Bacchic rites in the Vermont woods and the death of an C09 128 innocent Vermont farmer. But it is Henry Winter who orchestrates C09 129 the actual Dionysian rites and is the central figure who plots the C09 130 subsequent murder of Bunny.

C09 131 So methodical is Henry's plotting of Bunny's death and his C09 132 subsequent efforts to cover up any evidence from the police and FBI C09 133 that Henry assumes more and more the role of the psychopath, the C09 134 true killer who has lost any sense of what is real or right.

C09 135 One of the more fascinating aspects of The Secret C09 136 History is the series of Dante-like dreams scattered C09 137 throughout the second half of the novel. They plague Richard who, C09 138 like the rest of his classmates with the exception of Henry, is C09 139 haunted by Bunny's death and his hand in it, long after the C09 140 funeral.

C09 141 Still, if it were not for secondary characters like Judy C09 142 Poovey, the frosted-haired arty animal and cocaine addict from Los C09 143 Angeles who drives a red Corvette with personalized tags, and C09 144 Bunny's best friend, Cloke Rayburn, one of the biggest drug dealers C09 145 on campus, who believes he might have been responsible for Bunny's C09 146 death, this story might be too oppressive to tell.

C09 147 The Secret History is a large book, more than 500 C09 148 pages and heavily laden with Homeric references. Structurally, the C09 149 novel experiences rough transitions between important scenes and C09 150 moves somewhat awkwardly to its climax. The biggest disappointment C09 151 is Donna Tartt's failure to achieve the appropriate denouement that C09 152 this story-telling deserves.

C09 153 Nonetheless, The Secret History is bound to be a C09 154 best-seller and, most likely, will head for the silver screen, C09 155 too.

C09 156 C09 157 The midwifery of abortion rights

C09 158 A QUESTION OF CHOICE

C09 159 By Sarah Weddington (Gosset/Putnam)

C09 160 By Ann Vliet

C09 161 When Sarah Weddington argued Roe vs. Wade and won by C09 162 a margin of 7-to-2, she was 27 years old, it was 1973 and all over C09 163 the country forces for women's rights were on the rise. This June, C09 164 after a series of Supreme Court decisions allowing states more and C09 165 more regulation of abortion, Roe survived a complete reversal C09 166 by only one vote.

C09 167 In the meantime, an entire generation of women, whether or not C09 168 they sanction abortion, have reaped the indirect benefits of C09 169 Roe, taking for granted what their mothers could not: to be C09 170 able to finish their educations, to be hired instead of being C09 171 passed over for a man who "wouldn't get pregnant," C09 172 to work while pregnant, to establish their own credit, to make C09 173 their own plans as to careers, family and lifestyles.

C09 174 A Question of Choice, Ms. Weddington's history of C09 175 Roe from its beginnings at an Austin garage sale through its C09 176 19-year erosion, is a well-argued brief for pro-choice voters to C09 177 get back to the ballot booths and make their wishes known.

C09 178 The issue was and still is, as Ms. Weddington puts it, a C09 179 question of choice. As women in the '70s discovered that C09 180 "they could not truly determine their own destinies ... C09 181 until they could control the number and spacing of their C09 182 children," the abortion issue became symbolic of C09 183 "whether women would have decision-making power C09 184 over the issues that most affected their lives."

C09 185 Roe vs. Wade never asked the Court to advocate C09 186 abortion, but only to rule that "whether or not a C09 187 particular woman will continue to carry or will terminate a C09 188 pregnancy is a decision that should be made by that individual, C09 189 that she has that constitutional right." The 1973 court C09 190 concurred that, with a few rights reserved to the state, she C09 191 did.

C09 192 No matter which side of the issue you come down on, Ms. C09 193 Weddington's explanation of how she came to argue Roe is an C09 194 interesting and informative memoir. We learn in detail how Texas C09 195 women joined forces with Austin activists and evolved from C09 196 lobbyists to legal defenders; how previous Supreme Court decisions C09 197 paved the way for Roe; how the trimester formula (never C09 198 mentioned in the hearings) got into the Supreme Court decision as C09 199 dictum; how Presidents Reagan and Bush have shifted the balance of C09 200 the court by anti-abortion appointments.

C09 201 We also learn how Sarah Weddington herself evolved from a C09 202 "prim and proper" small-town preacher's daughter to C09 203 a champion of women's rights in the Supreme Court, the Texas C09 204 Legislature and the Carter White House.

C09 205 Although most of Ms. Weddington's arguments are remarkably free C09 206 of emotional language, her dander does rise over the smugness of C09 207 the vociferous minority imposing their values on the rights of C09 208 others.

C09 209 She makes a clear distinction between true pro-life, with C09 210 its commitment to quality child care, and merely pro-birth. C09 211 She also resents having to re-fight in the legislature and C09 212 executive branches decisions guaranteed by the Constitution. But C09 213 she warns that the only place to re-win disappearing rights C09 214 is at the polls, and outlines a plan of action.

C09 215 It goes without saying that A Question of Choice C09 216 should have a wide audience. For those over 40, it will be a C09 217 reminder of the dangers of a return to pre-1973, where most C09 218 decisions about women were made by men. For those who don't C09 219 remember women's previous entrapment by states with both C09 220 contraception and abortion laws, or the suffering or death many of C09 221 them faced attempting illegal abortions, it will demonstrate that, C09 222 in practice anyway, not all rights are inalienable.

C09 223 C10 1 <#FROWN:C10\>A Singer's Penchant For Enigma

C10 2 By PETER WATROUS

C10 3 David Byrne started his show at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan C10 4 on Wednesday night with a good idea. The stage, cleverly lit by C10 5 just one or two lights that gave a slightly industrial look, C10 6 offered up Mr. Byrne alone. Playing his acoustic guitar and C10 7 accompanying himself with occasional rhythms from a drum machine, C10 8 he performed a set of tunes that were beautifully spare. Taken from C10 9 all over, the songs - 'Cowboy Mambo (Hey Look at Me Now),' 'Nothing C10 10 but Flowers,' 'Road From Nowhere,' 'Girls on My Mind,' among others C10 11 - worked perfectly, with just Mr. Byrne's voice to scratch out the C10 12 melodies. His singing vocabulary, full of strangled cries, shouts, C10 13 a yodel or two and all sorts of textures, seemed stronger than C10 14 ever, ideal for the often enigmatic songs.

C10 15 As soon as his band appeared, however, Mr. Byrne's material C10 16 sank under the weight of bad arrangements and an overloud sound C10 17 system. And a lack of dynamic change - usually a sign that the C10 18 music's genesis is the recording studio and not the stage - C10 19 rendered the songs similar.

C10 20 This was a shame, because over the last decade Mr. Byrne, as a C10 21 member of the group the Talking Heads and on his own, has produced C10 22 some of the oddest music to have influenced pop culture, and it C10 23 deserved to be heard well. Though it's obviously rock, the music is C10 24 also full of ideas that seem completely antithetical to rock. Where C10 25 rock assumes the artist on-stage means what he's saying, C10 26 Mr. Byrne is clearly writing from the point of view of another C10 27 character or imbuing the material with so much irony as to render C10 28 it slippery. He treats rock, a deeply adolescent musical form, as a C10 29 vehicle for art world topics. And where grace, through rhythm and C10 30 virtuosity, is often popular music's province, Mr. Byrne has opted C10 31 instead to be clumsy, and to develop his own vocabulary of C10 32 gestures, musical and vocal and physical, that never tie into C10 33 rock's myth of power and ability.

C10 34 His personality clearly retains some appeal, at least in New C10 35 York, where this concert sold out. But, understandably, it hasn't C10 36 been doing well across the country. The logical college-age C10 37 audience for Mr. Byrne's music now has its own favorites, from the C10 38 slew of Seattle bands to hiphoppers, all more blunt than he is in C10 39 their intent and their politics. Mr. Byrne is now an oldies act, C10 40 defined by his ethos and his audience. In concert that audience, C10 41 mostly older than at an average rock show, seemed transfixed by Mr. C10 42 Byrne, who dresses like a mixture of an Elvis impersonator - C10 43 including long sideburns and slicked-back hair - and a C10 44 SoHoite<&|>sic!. On Wednesday, any movement, from his St. Vitus C10 45 dancing to the occasional rock posturing, brought on huge uproars C10 46 and a few standing ovations.

C10 47 On his new records, Mr. Byrne has found a balance between Latin C10 48 influences and his rock leanings. When heard live the songs, C10 49 enormously loud, lost their definition, leaving a large blur C10 50 instead of detail. Where his newer songs are loaded with strange, C10 51 idiosyncratic melodies and abrupt structural movements, in concert C10 52 the absence of articulation robbed the pieces of their C10 53 individuality. Mr. Byrne's weakness in the past has been his C10 54 coldness, and his lack of evident commitment to anything besides C10 55 artistic production. His inability to do anything more than hide C10 56 behind the personality has always limited the work and made it cute C10 57 at worst. A new piece like 'Something Ain't Right,' an angry C10 58 denunciation of God as a fraud, was lost in the blare. All that was C10 59 left was Mr. Byrne's character, which didn't do the song, or the C10 60 singer, justice.

C10 61 C10 62 C10 63 Woody Allen as Political Metaphor

C10 64 Middle America faces off with the bicoastals.

C10 65 By WALTER GOODMAN

C10 66 For the uncertain television voter in this season of the C10 67 family, the political choice was sharpened this week. The election C10 68 came down to a contest between the score or more Bushes and the C10 69 dozen or so Farrow-Previn-Allens who populated the tube during the C10 70 days of public embraces in Houston and domestic disruption in New C10 71 York City. Ms. Farrow's family was reportedly valued at $7 million. C10 72 The value of Mr. Bush's was the White House.

C10 73 At the sight of that screen of Bushes at the Astrodome on C10 74 Wednesday night, hard-nosed political commentators went gooey. C10 75 David Gergen, who usually maintains a sober mien on the C10 76 'MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,' could scarcely contain himself. It was a C10 77 very important moment, he kept saying, incredibly important. C10 78 Professional skepticism gave way to open-mouthed awe as the C10 79 grandmother of all First Ladies presided over the mother of all C10 80 photo opportunities. It was repeated Thursday with the Quayle C10 81 family and balloons.

C10 82 Meanwhile, television news and quasi-news shows were scrambling C10 83 to get an exclusive shot of the house in which Mia Farrow was C10 84 sequestered and rerunning clips of the famously reclusive Woody C10 85 Allen making a declaration of love in front of other people's C10 86 cameras. Marilyn Quayle countered with a prime-time confession in C10 87 Houston about how rewarding it has been to live with Dan Quayle all C10 88 these years.

C10 89 So for the television fan, the lines are drawn. It is the soap C10 90 opera of the bicoastals versus the soap opera of middle America, C10 91 the late-night jazz club (clarinet and saxophone) versus Sunday C10 92 morning in church, the separate dwellings versus the double bed.

C10 93 Television has helped make the campaign issues manageable: Has C10 94 Mrs. Quayle sacrificed more than Ms. Farrow? Has Maureen O'Sullivan C10 95 contributed as much as Barbara Bush? Was Hillary Clinton spotted in C10 96 line for 'Annie Hall' when she should have been watching 'Mary C10 97 Poppins' with Chelsea? The race may come down to a montage of the C10 98 multi-culturally with-it Farrow m<*_>e-acute<*/>nage opposed to a C10 99 Bush family Thanksgiving Day card inspired by Norman Rockwell.

C10 100 This is a contest made for Republicans. When Mr. Quayle picked C10 101 on Murphy Brown, her admirers pointed out that she was mere C10 102 fiction, as though that mattered. But Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow are C10 103 said to be real, although given the treatment of celebrities on C10 104 television and in the tabloids, one can never be sure. Either way, C10 105 for admirers of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan, television C10 106 personalities both, who thundered forth the us-against-them organ C10 107 peals that dominated the week in Houston, the Manhattan story is a C10 108 morality tale on the paths of godlessness.

C10 109 Has anybody ever seen Woody Allen in church or at a Fourth of C10 110 July parade or any of the other places where Mrs. Bush revealed she C10 111 spent her time during the best years of her life as a young wife C10 112 and mother in Texas? For Mr. Allen the very word Texas is a punch C10 113 line. (If Mr. Bush and Mr. Quayle plan to attempt more campaign C10 114 jokes like those in their acceptance speeches, they might study his C10 115 timing.)

C10 116 In the religious war conjured up by Mr. Buchanan, Woody Allen C10 117 is a general on the wrong side. Show business being what it is, can C10 118 anyone doubt that he consorts with homosexuals? And he has never C10 119 been a closet atheist. In more than one of his movies he has taken C10 120 delight in kicking around men of the cloth and milking the C10 121 amusement in scenes of real church-going Americans, whom he C10 122 plainly finds ridiculous, being confronted with a neurotic Jew from C10 123 New York. This man has been known to kid God, that C10 124 Underachiever<&|>sic!.

C10 125 When Republican sermonizers in Houston kept reminding their C10 126 audience that the Democrats had met in Madison Square Garden, which C10 127 happens to be in New York City, they may have thought they were C10 128 only connecting the opposition with crime, homelessness and dirt; C10 129 add now intimations of hanky-panky among those whom Dan Quayle C10 130 likes to call the elite, known for their liberal inclinations and C10 131 contributions to the other party.

C10 132 Here is the quintessential made-for-television debate. C10 133 The candidates may drone on about growth packages whose details few C10 134 will ever understand, but who can fail to understand the wholesome C10 135 images that were packaged on that stage in Houston? A big audience C10 136 without much patience for differences between this health plan and C10 137 that one can be counted on to pay attention to the minutiae of any C10 138 story involving romance or worse among actors.

C10 139 For the Democrats, the conjunction could hardly have been more C10 140 unfortunate. Their only hope now is that despite the predictable C10 141 recycling in Republican commercials, this week's images will be C10 142 shaken off by others as the campaign bounces along. For the time C10 143 being, Bill Clinton will probably avoid being photographed in the C10 144 company of stars, and Hillary and Chelsea may be seen whipping up a C10 145 batch of their mother-daughter cookies with Regis and Kathie C10 146 Lee.

C10 147 C10 148 C10 149 Psychodrama With a Desperate Grin

C10 150 By STEPHEN HOLDEN

C10 151 Sylvia DeSayles, Kay Stevens, Fay McKay, Carol Jarvis, Dorothy C10 152 Squires and Libby Morris are hardly names that, when dropped, C10 153 produce a universal nod of recognition. But in the performance C10 154 artist John Epperson's newest show, 'Lypsinka! Now it can be C10 155 Lip-Synched,' these nearly-forgotten singers are placed in a vocal C10 156 pantheon side by side with Ethel Merman, Connie Francis and June C10 157 Christy.

C10 158 'Lypsinka! Now it can be Lip-Synched,' which plays at the C10 159 Ballroom through Sept. 6, is the newest one-man show starring Mr. C10 160 Epperson as his drag alter-ego, Lypsinka. The hourlong performance C10 161 offers further proof, as if any were needed, that yesterday's pop C10 162 culture never really dies. And if it happens to involve a sequined C10 163 pop diva with a taste for loud costumes and brassy music, it will C10 164 probably sooner or later find its way into Mr. Epperson's museum of C10 165 pop trash.

C10 166 For those not already acquainted with the performer, his C10 167 increasingly famous character is a willowy red-headed C10 168 showgirl with popping clown eyes, penciled brows raised in C10 169 continual astonishment and a ferociously cheery smile. A composite C10 170 of Delores Gray, Carol Channing, Shirley Bassey and dozens of other C10 171 famous and forgotten divas of stage, screen, television and C10 172 nightclubs, the character never speaks.

C10 173 Instead Lypsinka mouths the words to these women's usually C10 174 obscure recordings from the 1940's, 50's and 60's while dramatizing C10 175 the lyrics in a meticulously choreographed body language of C10 176 shimmying arms and legs, swiveling hips and clawing fingers. His C10 177 physical vocabulary is as brilliantly precise a distillation of C10 178 traditional female stage mannerisms as the movements of a Japanese C10 179 Kabuki performer.

C10 180 Interwoven with the songs are snatches of movie dialogue that C10 181 offer the spoken equivalent of the music. As a ringing telephone C10 182 punctuates each bit, Lypsinka changes character every few seconds, C10 183 eventually becoming a hysterical, multi-phrenic personality. The C10 184 new show's more familiar excerpts include a fragment of a Gloria C10 185 Swanson monologue from 'Sunset Boulevard' and a scene from 'Valley C10 186 of the Dolls.'

C10 187 Mr. Epperson's lip-synching is not the only thing that sets him C10 188 apart from more conventional drag performers. 'Now It Can Be C10 189 Lip-Synched,' like his previous shows, holds together as a C10 190 high-tension comic psychodrama that offers a scathingly funny C10 191 critique of modern show business iconography and the role of C10 192 women.

C10 193 Behind Lypsinka's desperate grin is a woman on the verge of a C10 194 nervous breakdown. Periodically the lights around her suddenly C10 195 flicker and turn greenish, and she clutches at her face in a parody C10 196 of Joan Crawford in her 1960's ax-murder epic, 'Berserk.' All the C10 197 show's emotions, whether sung or acted, have a grotesque C10 198 larger-than-life quality. That's partly because of Mr. Epperson's C10 199 shrewd selection of material that emphasizes extremes of self-pity C10 200 (June Christy's 'Lonely Woman' and cheery, look-at-me grandiosity C10 201 ('I'm the Greatest Star,' sung by Mimi Hines, 'I've Gotta Be Me,' C10 202 by Miss Squires and 'I've Got Everything I Want' by Karen C10 203 Morrow).

C10 204 If 'Now It Can Be Lip-Synched' celebrates a glitzy kind of C10 205 stardom as an ultimate form of American glory, it portrays its C10 206 attainment as an empty desperate 'Valley of the Dolls' sort of C10 207 existence in which women, to succeed, have to be a little C10 208 monstrous.

C10 209 Mr. Epperson serves up his vision as pure unfettered comedy C10 210 executed with dazzling juxtapositions of songs and dialogue and C10 211 virtuosic high-drag clowning. The new show's funniest moment is C10 212 Lypsinka's increasingly slurred performance of 'The 12 Days of C10 213 Christmas' (sung by Fay McKay), in which the true-love's gifts have C10 214 been changed from turtle-doves and French hens into various C10 215 alcoholic beverages. C10 216 C11 1 <#FROWN:C11\>Which One Is Today's Woman?

C11 2 By Suzy Menkes

C11 3 International Herald Tribune

C11 4 MILAN - It was a fashion face-off between heavenly bodies and C11 5 earthly souls. On one side Gianni Versace's supermodels - heads and C11 6 bosoms high, necklines and hems swooping low - striding out in C11 7 dresses that slithered across the curves. In the other, Giorgio C11 8 Armani's women - eyes down, discreet steps forward - enveloped in C11 9 jackets over cumuli of fabric from neck to ankles.

C11 10 Who was the winner in this clash of wills, styles and C11 11 philosophy as Armani and Versace closed the Milan spring/summer C11 12 shows?

C11 13 Round one - for presentation - went to Versace for dramatic C11 14 lighting, superb staging with a kaleidoscopic backcloth of slides, C11 15 and a beautifully paced show - even if the content was just a C11 16 dazzling re-mix of few ideas.

C11 17 Round two - for imagination - to Armani, whose shadow play of C11 18 fabrics textured like dried grass, dark Indian prints, pale subtle C11 19 colors and quirky East-meets-West styles expressed a fashion C11 20 poetry.

C11 21 Both designers had distinct and delicious color palettes: C11 22 Versace's bright but not brash, with pure white, lilac or primrose, C11 23 and Proven<*_>c-cedille<*/>al-style prints that were a fresh C11 24 departure from his familiar style. Armani opened the show with C11 25 shades of his signature beige as subtly differentiated as beach C11 26 pebbles. His prints had gone native but with great subtlety, mixing C11 27 dark Indian paisleys with the palest Mogul patterns in blossom pink C11 28 and almond green.

C11 29 The two shows were so strong, yet so different, that the result C11 30 has to be declared a tie. You take the water or the wine; the veil C11 31 or the Wonder-Bra; or maybe both.

C11 32 "It's for the same woman in different moods - and C11 33 between Versace and Armani, Milan has ended on a high C11 34 note," said Ellin Saltzman, fashion director of Bergdorf C11 35 Goodman.

C11 36 "They are very different designers," said C11 37 Kalman Ruttenstein of Bloomingdale's. "The Armani woman is C11 38 subtle, quiet, understated. The Versace woman likes to be noted and C11 39 is fun in spirit."

C11 40 The two shows ran back to back with Versace first, causing Liz C11 41 Tilberis, editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, to change in her limo C11 42 from a studded black leather suit into a white Armani pantsuit. C11 43 Other off-runway entertainments included Versace's C11 44 seven-year-old niece Allegra demanding a front-row seat, and at the C11 45 Armani show, the film stars Claudia Cardinale and Ornella Muti C11 46 sitting bust to bust.

C11 47 Versace's show was spectacular - even though it was based on C11 48 just two silhouettes: bell-bottom pants updated from the 1970s by C11 49 making them cling in stretch fabric to the hips and swing out at C11 50 the calf; and simple mid-calf dresses with uplifting bodices, so C11 51 that bosoms balanced like two scoops of ice-cream. Variations on C11 52 the themes included frilled layers of pattern and silk shirts C11 53 knotted to reveal the ubiquitous bared midriff.

C11 54 IF you believe that life's a beach, Versace had great clothes, C11 55 from the opening white dresses - shown with long, loose, crimped C11 56 hair and bare feet - to the exuberant mixed-print layers of C11 57 gypsy skirts. The show had little you could wear for work - barely C11 58 a serious jacket or simple pantsuit - but it was a fine statement. C11 59 The show was a mite pretentious, as music switched from rock to C11 60 Panis Angelicus (from the Catholic Mass) and the slides showed C11 61 historic paintings, regional costumes, details of fabrics or scenes C11 62 of Versace's beloved Miami Beach.

C11 63 "Fashion is for joy and for fun. And I know how to play C11 64 with rock and with grand opera," announced an ebullient C11 65 Versace, receiving backstage accolades.

C11 66 Armani took his ovation in navy sweater and blue jeans in front C11 67 of models sitting in Tahitian dresses against a Gauguin backcloth. C11 68 Inspirations from far-flung places was the theme of the show, which C11 69 was quirkily beautiful, even spiritual, in its use of fabrics, C11 70 motifs and silhouettes from other cultures.

C11 71 The day clothes had not really changed: pantsuits in putty, C11 72 stone and beige; straight mannish jackets still with a square - too C11 73 square - shoulder line; the colors quiet as a whisper. The novelty C11 74 was in the layering of skirt or tunic over pajama or even harem C11 75 pants, which seemed too identifiably ethnic, especially when heads C11 76 too were covered.

C11 77 Armani has never really been at home with skirts and insisted C11 78 too much on these, yet the designer seemed to be suggesting C11 79 something profound: that women can be graceful and feminine, even C11 80 when completely covered up. It made a nice change from the silicone C11 81 implants bouncing through the Milan week.

C11 82 Armani's gentle message came over best in the beautiful evening C11 83 clothes - slim, straight dresses, maybe in lace, perhaps pleated, C11 84 or under a beaded vest, or in Balinese prints, or with crusts of C11 85 embroidery topping souffl<*_>e-acute<*/>-light fabrics. It was a C11 86 show with a soul.

C11 87 "Why not mix Eastern and Western dress - the world is C11 88 small, and we need to find a new femininity that is C11 89 modern," said Armani.

C11 90 Neither Versace's jet-stream escapism nor Armani's submissive C11 91 femininity seem the whole answer for modern women. But it was an C11 92 exhilarating end to a dull Milan fashion week that saved its C11 93 sweetest plums for the bitter end.

C11 94 "If Paris is first next time, Armani and Versace had C11 95 better follow on its heels, because we buyers aren't going to sit C11 96 around for a week in Milan waiting for the big guns to go C11 97 off," said Ruttenstein, referring to the changing calendar C11 98 of international fashion for next season. Those dates will be C11 99 announced on Oct.19.

C11 100 The fashion stories out of Milan were the fluid mid-calf dress, C11 101 a strong revival for knits, and a continuing focus on Beatles and C11 102 hippie inspirations, as well as on corsetry and transparency. Often C11 103 simple, luxurious clothes that are Italy's strength were concealed C11 104 under swags of love beads.

C11 105 "When we get to the showroom, most of the nonsense has C11 106 disappeared - the runway is entertainment," said Joan C11 107 Kaner, fashion director of Neiman-Marcus. Andrea Jung, the store's C11 108 executive vice president, said they had done "terrific C11 109 business" with Missoni, Dolce&Gabbana, Krizia and C11 110 Ferr<*_>e-acute<*/>.

C11 111 The fashion crowd now moves on to weekend showings in London, C11 112 which has to decide how to hold its place on the calendar.

C11 113 THE London fashion week, which opened Friday, contains 15 C11 114 runway shows, backed up by an exhibition, the London Designer Show, C11 115 at the Duke of York's barracks in the King's Road Chelsea.

C11 116 England remains a seedbed of ideas, many of which are only C11 117 absorbed into mainstream fashion after several seasons. For C11 118 example, the back-to-the-Beatles looks dominating the Milan shows C11 119 were first seen on London's streets and run-ways five years C11 120 ago, although few of the small London designers have been able to C11 121 make them into commercial money-spinners.

C11 122 The London season will close Monday with the British Fashion C11 123 Awards.

C11 124 C11 125 Derek Walcott: History's Nostalgia

C11 126 By James Atlas

C11 127 New York Times Service

C11 128 NEW YORK - In a time when poetry has reveled in its freedom, C11 129 deploying unmetered, unrhymed lines across the page, the formal C11 130 properties of Derek Walcott's work are instantly visible to the C11 131 eye.

C11 132 To open his 'Collected Poems' is to find oneself in the C11 133 presence of a writer for whom English poetry is no oppressive C11 134 burden, to be cast off like the colonial past of Walcott's native C11 135 St. Lucia, but a vibrant tradition, to be plundered and recast in C11 136 his own contemporary idiom.

C11 137 Couplets and quatrains unfurl with a stately regularity, C11 138 suffused with echoes of Shakespeare and Keats, T.S. Eliot and W.H. C11 139 Auden.

C11 140 "Art is History's nostalgia," Walcott writes in C11 141 'Omeros,' an epic-length modern 'Odyssey' composed in terza C11 142 rima.

C11 143 In his work, the voice of his English precursors resonates, C11 144 animated by his own people's voice, a rich Creole patois mimed in C11 145 'The Schooner Flight': "I go draw and knot every line as C11 146 tight/ as ropes in this rigging, in simple speech..."

C11 147 The son of a schoolteacher who died when Walcott was a year C11 148 old, the poet was raised in a bookish atmosphere. "Our C11 149 house had a wire-meshed library of great books," he C11 150 recalled in a memoir of his youth, "principally a uniform C11 151 edition of Dickens and Walter Scott and Sabatini."

C11 152 His teachers recited Swinburne by heart, inculcating in him the C11 153 notion that poetry was "living speech." A quatrain C11 154 spoken by one of his characters could serve as an ironic C11 155 autobiography:

C11 156 I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,

C11 157 I had a sound colonial education,

C11 158 I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,

C11 159 And either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation

C11 160 Clearly, Walcott is the latter - a nation polyglot in the C11 161 extreme. "With equal right," as Joseph Brodsky, his C11 162 friend and fellow Nobel laureate, has noted, "Walcott could C11 163 have said that he has in him Greek, Latin, Italian, German, C11 164 Spanish, Russian, French: because of Homer, Lucretius, Ovid, Dante, C11 165 Rilke, Machado, Lorca, Neruda, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak, C11 166 Baudelaire, Val<*_>e-acute<*/>ry, Apollinaire."

C11 167 In part, his genius is his versatility - his recourse to what C11 168 Brodsky calls "a genetic Babel." Yet however C11 169 international Walcott's style, his language is quintessentially C11 170 English.

C11 171 More than any poet of his generation, he has absorbed our C11 172 poetic canon - absorbed and internalized it. Walcott, says the C11 173 Irish poet Seamus Heany, "possesses English more deeply and C11 174 sonorously than most of the English themselves."

C11 175 At times, he can sound derivative. "We swore to make C11 176 drink/ and art our finishing school," he writes in the C11 177 cadence of Yeats; "A white church spire whistles into C11 178 space/ like a swordfish" borrows shamelessly from Robert C11 179 Lowell.

C11 180 In his earlier work, especially, Walcott's apprenticeship to C11 181 his English masters has a slavish feel to it; the elaborate, C11 182 knotted rhetoric is too high-pitched, inflated for rhetoric effect, C11 183 as in these willed and ponderous lines from 'The Fortunate C11 184 Traveler':

C11 185 The heart of darkness is not Africa

C11 186 The heart of darkness is the core of fire

C11 187 In the white center of the holocaust.

C11 188 But at his best - and there is little dross in Walcott's oeuvre C11 189 - he achieves a sustained eloquence, an exhilarating amplitude; C11 190 he's "a man immersed in words," the poet James C11 191 Dickey has written, "not afraid of them, but excited and C11 192 confirmed by what he can cause them to do."

C11 193 IN awarding Derek Walcott the Nobel Prize, the Swedish academy C11 194 singled out his "historical vision, the outcome of a C11 195 multicultural commitment." Multicultural in the demographic C11 196 and political sense: Walcott is black, his homeland a Caribbean C11 197 island remote from the dominant 'white' culture, he is a poet for C11 198 whom exile - both geographic and personal - has been the informing C11 199 fact of his life.

C11 200 But his work vindicates T.S. Eliot's account of the way in C11 201 which a poetic tradition evolves through the modification of works C11 202 of art "by the new (the really new) work of art among C11 203 them."

C11 204 In Derek Walcott, we can discern the history of what is most C11 205 enduring in our tradition, invigorated, as it has always been, by C11 206 the voice of our most recent immigrants. Invigorated and made C11 207 new.

C11 208 C11 209 Popular Culture

C11 210 A Festival With Some Strings Attached

C11 211 GLENN COLLINS

C11 212 WHEN 17 PUPPET companies take over the Joseph Papp Public C11 213 Theater starting Sept. 7, it could mark a giant step toward C11 214 increasing American awareness of puppetry as adult theater. Despite C11 215 its long tradition and popularity in much of the rest of the world, C11 216 this ancient art form has never been taken quite seriously enough C11 217 in the United States.

C11 218 Both Jim Henson and Joseph Papp had dreamed together of C11 219 providing a show-case for sophisticated puppetry. And though Mr. C11 220 Papp died last year, and Mr. Henson the year before, the idea C11 221 survives in the International Festival of Puppet Theater that will C11 222 feature eight foreign and nine American companies. This dizzyingly C11 223 comprehensive two-week gathering, through Sept. 20, is the first C11 224 public festival of adult puppet theater ever produced in New C11 225 York.

C11 226 Mr. Henson's hope, said his daughter Cheryl Henson, executive C11 227 producer of the festival, was that the event "would build C11 228 new audiences for puppetry." It is being presented by the C11 229 Jim Henson Foundation, with the New York Shakespeare Festival C11 230 acting as host.

C11 231 "My life was changed forever by the first Bread and C11 232 Puppet show I saw many years ago - I think it was in the basement C11 233 of the Washington Square Church," said JoAnne Akalaitis, C11 234 the Shakespeare Festival's executive director. "My life was C11 235 similarly changed when I first saw Jim Henson's C11 236 Muppets."

C11 237 Puppetry's roots can be traced to religious ceremonies in the C11 238 ninth century B.C. C11 239 C12 1 <#FROWN:C12\>The Persecution of Milken

C12 2 BY L. GORDON CROVITZ

C12 3 In the mid-1980s, a group from Drexel Burnham Lambert met with C12 4 the editorial-page staff of The Wall Street Journal. They C12 5 urged us to stop using the term junk bonds and instead to use the C12 6 less colorful formulation "high-yield bonds." In C12 7 either guise, these bonds brought capital to smaller firms and C12 8 fueled sometimes needed shake-ups of corporate suites by funding C12 9 takeovers, but the Drexel folks feared a political backlash.

C12 10 Ridiculous, some of us thought. How could a financial C12 11 instrument be moral or immoral, good or evil? A bond by any other C12 12 name would still be judged by its performance in the market. C12 13 Ironically, Michael Milken, who was busy in his Beverly Hills C12 14 office that day, would within a few years be undone by just such C12 15 naivete.

C12 16 Milken was prosecuted and sentenced as the symbol of a decade, C12 17 so it's not surprising that a cultural study yields the clearest C12 18 picture of him to date. Jesse Kornbluth's 'Highly Confident: The C12 19 Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken' (William Morrow, 384 pages, C12 20 $23) captures how an over-zealous prosecution helped transform the C12 21 go-go, greedy '80s into the no-go, vengeful '90s.

C12 22 The title refers to the letters Drexel once sent to investors C12 23 saying it was highly confident that a transaction would succeed. C12 24 Funds flowed to the start-up Turner Broadcastings and MCIs, which C12 25 created more than 18 million new jobs in a decade when the Fortune C12 26 500 lost workers.

C12 27 Mr. Kornbluth, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, recalls C12 28 how "The Bonfire of the Vanities" era on Wall C12 29 Street "was deeply offensive to those who regarded C12 30 themselves as cultural arbiters." It never mattered to them C12 31 that Milken actually lived a simple, if workaholic, life. C12 32 "To stop Milken is to stop takeovers fueled by junk C12 33 bonds," Mr. Kornbluth writes, and "to put most of C12 34 what is politely called New York's 'Nouvelle Society' in jail. It C12 35 is to make real the fondest dream of the American Establishment - C12 36 Congressman John Dingell, the Fortune 500, the Business Roundtable, C12 37 and some of Drexel's battered rivals. It is to roll back the C12 38 1980s."

C12 39 Mr. Kornbluth describes how inside trader Ivan Boesky conned C12 40 prosecutors into giving him a light punishment by claiming serious C12 41 crimes by Milken. "In all that time, with all their C12 42 subpoena power and RICO threats, they never got beyond Ivan Boesky C12 43 - and Boesky never pointed out pre-announcement trades that netted C12 44 Milken a quick $20 million, or foreign bank accounts, or bags of C12 45 cash, or code names in diaries," Mr. Kornbluth writes. C12 46 Milken was no inside trader, and junk bonds are no daisy chain.

C12 47 It didn't matter. Federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. C12 48 Kornbluth jabs, was "more ambitious than Madonna" C12 49 and "hit the ground talking." He twisted the RICO C12 50 statute into a rubber hose and held Milken's brother hostage to a C12 51 plea.

C12 52 Mr. Kornbluth spent 400 hours interviewing Milken. He did not C12 53 find a card-board cutout of greed, but a financial genius C12 54 who had to admit to his probation officer that "I had a C12 55 hard time not taking care of people." Even when it was C12 56 irrelevant to his business, even when it tumbled him into a gray C12 57 area of securities law.

C12 58 In a jail-house interview, Milken told Mr. Kornbluth that the C12 59 media were partly to blame. "All those years," he C12 60 said, "I thought the marketplace or the customer was the C12 61 final judge. I was wrong. In the short run, it's the media. And in C12 62 the media, nothing means anything unless it's negative." C12 63 Mr. Kornbluth found one-sided coverage based on leaks from C12 64 prosecutors and cites bond journalist James Grant's claim that the C12 65 Journal was "the useful idiot" of the prosecution. C12 66 Paul Steiger, managing editor of the Journal, responds that C12 67 "Journal policy precludes any discussion of sourcing, but C12 68 that statement is sheer nonsense."

C12 69 Milken didn't make things any easier for himself. As Mr. C12 70 Kornbluth also found, the private Milken "never wanted to C12 71 meet the press." When charges were published, they were C12 72 made against a void. Indeed, Milken only recently began speaking to C12 73 journalists on the record.

C12 74 Still, things have changed since Milken's plea. In January, the C12 75 Securities and Exchange Commission simply fined 98 brokerage firms C12 76 and banks for their Milkenlike technical reporting violations.

C12 77 Boesky testified in just one case, against arbitrager John C12 78 Mulheren. The federal appeals court in New York reversed the C12 79 conviction by saying that "no rational trier of C12 80 fact" could have bought Boesky's story. Trader Boyd C12 81 Jeffries, who testified against James Sherwin of GAF Corp., had his C12 82 Boesky-inspired conviction reversed by this appeals court, which C12 83 also overturned Giuliani /RICO convictions against securities firm C12 84 Princeton /Newport and Edwin Meese's friend Robert Wallach.

C12 85 Everyone, it seems, got his day in court - except those like C12 86 Milken, whose plea bargain meant his case never got to an appeals C12 87 court. At least Judge Kimba Wood recently reduced Milken's C12 88 longer-than-Boesky prison stay.

C12 89 For all of Mr. Kornbluth's cultural observations, the book is C12 90 not yet written that closely tracks Milken's persecution with the C12 91 credit crunch and recession. As for Milken's legacy, last year C12 92 funds made up of junk bonds earned 40%, and in the first half of C12 93 this year were ahead 12%. It's too late, but with those kind of C12 94 returns, let's call them high-yield bonds.

C12 95 C12 96 Intellectuals Under Pressure

C12 97 BY LEE LESCAZE

C12 98 China's intellectuals have suffered, agonized and worried C12 99 through more than 40 years of communism. Each time they have C12 100 gathered their courage and raised their heads, Beijing has lopped C12 101 them off. Given their cruel history, it isn't surprising that C12 102 China's intellectuals are a cautious, mostly unheroic group. Perry C12 103 Link lived among them during one of their years of living C12 104 optimistically (comparatively) - the year preceding the Beijing C12 105 protests and killings of May and June 1989. His engrossing 'Evening C12 106 Chats in Beijing' (Norton, 448 pages, $24.95) is his snapshot of C12 107 that time.

C12 108 Like many things Chinese, Mr. Link's book presents a paradox. C12 109 It highlights the futility of intellectuals' efforts to promote the C12 110 improvement of China, but also provides abundant evidence of the C12 111 bottled-up potential that will lift China from its doldrums once C12 112 the old system is smashed or withers away.

C12 113 Most of all, 'Evening Chats in Beijing' makes a reader hope C12 114 that the day comes soon when the Chinese enjoy individual freedom C12 115 and this book therefore seems an absurd and unreal relic, a report C12 116 from a vanished Kafka kingdom.

C12 117 Albert Camus described an intellectual as "someone C12 118 whose mind watches itself." In totalitarian China, the C12 119 state apparatus joins in the watching, putting intellectuals under C12 120 enormous pressure. As Mr. Link, who teaches Chinese literature at C12 121 Princeton University, shows, this prressure is partly self-induced, C12 122 thanks to Chinese intellectuals' inbred caution and their C12 123 historical sympathy for the state.

C12 124 They have been too willing for their own good to be what Stalin C12 125 called "screws" in the state structure. What's more, they C12 126 too often share the regime's fear of chaos. They may hate the C12 127 Communist Party, but they are scared of the void that might open if C12 128 it were to disappear.

C12 129 National pride helps blind them. Intellectuals are proud of C12 130 being Chinese and cannot imagine China as anything but a nation of C12 131 special importance in the world - despite their treatment at C12 132 Chinese government hands.

C12 133 Mr. Link admires these hollow men more than most readers will. C12 134 One of the bravest, Liu Binyan, who now lives in exile, once C12 135 described the typical intellectual as the human equivalent of a C12 136 town hit by a neutron bomb. "In the end he looks normal, C12 137 can still see and analyze, and can pronounce regular sentences. He C12 138 can fit in, and function, but is devastated inside."

C12 139 The pressure on intellectuals is so intense that it seems to C12 140 affect their health. According to one Chinese survey reported by C12 141 Mr. Link, they die at an average age of 58.5, some 10 years before C12 142 the population at large.

C12 143 Mr. Link's great affection for the intellectuals doesn't C12 144 prevent him from seeing their limitations. Few have the courage of C12 145 physicist Fang Lizhi, who is a friend of Mr. Link, or of journalist C12 146 Dai Qing. Most are remarkably willing to let someone else take the C12 147 risks of challenging the state on even small matters. While many C12 148 feel that their struggle needs martyrs, they think someone else C12 149 should volunteer for the role.

C12 150 This might be labeled despicable, but not by Mr. Link. He keeps C12 151 his criticisms gentle, and self-deprecatingly includes himself C12 152 among those spectators at the China drama who sometimes fail to C12 153 perceive the moral ambiguities in their role. He does, however, C12 154 seem moved close to anger by the Chinese student, wearing an Adidas C12 155 jogging outfit and Walkman, whom he met on the campus of the C12 156 University of Virginia. The student felt personally let down that C12 157 Mr. Fang had sought to save himself by taking refuge in the U.S. C12 158 Embassy in Beijing at the time of the 1989 killings. He should have C12 159 sought martyrdom, the student said. "When he went into the C12 160 embassy, he was not the Fang Lizhi I was rooting for."

C12 161 With fans like that, Mr. Fang hardly needs enemies.

C12 162 The major problem with Mr. Link's book, as with most journalism C12 163 from China, is the author's need to protect the identity of his C12 164 sources. It is hard to bring people to life on the page when their C12 165 real names cannot be used and their life stories are necessarily C12 166 somewhat veiled. The result, of course, is too many phrases like C12 167 "many say" and "others think."

C12 168 Still, the depth and breadth of Mr. Link's contacts and reading C12 169 in Chinese enable him to keep his pages livelier than most accounts C12 170 from Beijing.

C12 171 And, he tells an important story. The Chinese state C12 172 increasingly resembles the swordsman in the old joke. C12 173 "Missed!" he declares. "Just try shaking your C12 174 head," his rival responds.

C12 175 In the south and on the coast, an economic boom is under way C12 176 and the central government's authority grows weaker daily. Cities C12 177 that have missed out so far are desperate to latch onto the C12 178 bandwagon. In Beijing, the gerontocracy hangs on. The Communist C12 179 leadership re-prints Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai C12 180 dash-board ornaments in an attempt to draw strength from C12 181 the party's glory days.

C12 182 Mr. Link takes his title from Deng Tuo, a brave man who dared C12 183 to criticize Mao's policies in a similarly titled book. As always C12 184 with China's intellectuals, bravery has dubious consequences. Mr. C12 185 Deng was hounded to commit suicide in 1966 and his criticism is now C12 186 seen as one of the wounds that inspired Mao to launch his mad C12 187 Cultural Revolution - a disaster for intellectuals and a nightmare C12 188 for all China.

C12 189 C12 190 Film: He's Afraid to Take the Plunge

C12 191 BY JULIE SALAMON

C12 192 'Honeymoon in Vegas' is being pitched as a C12 193 "straightforward" Andrew Bergman movie. That must refer to C12 194 the fact that it has an obvious beginning and end. But the middle C12 195 is delightfully Bergmanesque - which in the case of Andrew, not C12 196 Ingmar, means odd and very funny.

C12 197 Mr. Bergman, a writer and director, may be best known for C12 198 "The Freshman," the Mafia spoof in which Marlon C12 199 Brando does a wicked imitation of himself as Don Corleone. This C12 200 time the pop culture icon providing the running gag is Elvis. Maybe C12 201 it's too obvious, using Elvis and his music as the tacky, C12 202 sentimental emblem of a romantic comedy set in Las Vegas. But Mr. C12 203 Bergman approaches Elvis the way he approaches everything: like no C12 204 one else.

C12 205 This shaggy dog story begins with a nasty mother (Anne C12 206 Bancroft) on a hospital bed, extracting from her son (Nicolas Cage) C12 207 a deathbed promise that he'll never marry. She departs this earth C12 208 with a gleeful grin, leaving behind a man who can't say yes. But C12 209 he's been dating Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker), an adorable C12 210 schoolteacher, for years. He decides the only way he can marry her C12 211 is to take her to Las Vegas and get it over with fast.

C12 212 One thing leads to another, and it will all make you laugh a C12 213 lot: There's the hotshot gambler (James Caan) still mourning his C12 214 wife, who suntanned herself to an early grave. He sees her face in C12 215 Betsy's. There's a Hawaiian odyssey that includes the hilarious C12 216 sight of Peter Boyle playing an island chief who loves Broadway C12 217 musicals, especially 'South Pacific.'

C12 218 C12 219 C13 1 <#FROWN:C13\>Ozzy Osbourne graces fans with buckets of C13 2 water, hits

C13 3 By Brenda Herrmann

C13 4 Come and worship at the temple of the mighty Ozzy.

C13 5 That could have been the theme of Ozzy Osbourne's Sunday night C13 6 show at The World Music Theatre because that's what everyone C13 7 did.

C13 8 In many ways Ozzy's outdoor act was similar to the one he C13 9 brought to the Aragon Ballroom last November, basically a C13 10 greatest-hits package enthusiastically dished out by Oz, guitarist C13 11 Zakk Wylde, bassist Mike Inez and drummer Randy Castillo.

C13 12 Opening with 'Paranoid,' Ozzy was looking and sounding good C13 13 and, as usual, had drenched himself - and much of the crowd - with C13 14 bucket after bucket of water before the first four songs were C13 15 finished.

C13 16 From 'Paranoid,' it was into the new, a quintessential metal C13 17 anthem called 'I Don't Want to Change the World,' then back to the C13 18 old: 'Mr. Crowley,' 'I Don't Know' and again, the new, 'Road to C13 19 Nowhere,' creating a constant shuffle of old favorites and the C13 20 strongest material from last year's 'No More Tears' album.

C13 21 Those close to the stage didn't need the video screens Ozzy had C13 22 packed - watching Ozzy, with his wide, robotic eyes and tiny steps, C13 23 was mesmerizing enough.

C13 24 When he left the stage, however, any momentum died quickly. C13 25 Wylde's dull, self-indulgent solos were barely tolerable and, the C13 26 band just didn't seem to get it together, leaving only Oz to carry C13 27 the act.

C13 28 And he did, right out into the audience, urging the crowd to C13 29 stampede forward for 'Good-bye to Romance.' In the end, C13 30 security gave up trying to stop the fans - two guys even managed to C13 31 get onstage with Oz - and, here, with everyone packed in about five C13 32 to a seat, was when the show peaked, with everyone singing the C13 33 ballad and swaying along.

C13 34 Special guests Faster Pussycat were better than expected, C13 35 taking the crowd over almost from the beginning. They were C13 36 beautiful to look at - all five with matching jet-black hair and C13 37 glammy costumes - but it was the way they campaigned for the C13 38 audience's attention that won everyone over. If singer Taime Down C13 39 was on the left, guitarists Brent Muscat and Greg Steele were C13 40 manning the right, always keeping the stage alive.

C13 41 Opening act Ugly Kid Joe wasn't so likeable. The cocky novelty C13 42 band seemed to expect worship but did nothing to deserve it.

C13 43 C13 44 Grant Park season ends on a Latin American note

C13 45 By Ted Shen

C13 46 With a few exceptions, serious music by Latin American C13 47 composers is relegated to the fringe of the mainstream repertoire C13 48 both here and in Europe. Yet, as the Grant Park Festival season C13 49 closer last Saturday night proved, it's high time to redress the C13 50 neglect.

C13 51 All five works on the survey program, conducted by Mexican-born C13 52 Enrique Diemecke, are noteworthy, if only for their varying success C13 53 in reconciling indigenous folk strains with European styles. The C13 54 Grand Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1915), by the self-taught C13 55 Brazilian nationalist Villa-Lobos, is surprisingly steeped in the C13 56 swooning gestures of late 19th Century romanticism. Loosely knit, C13 57 roughhewn, and strongly Schumannesque, this concerto proffers a C13 58 number of flashy passages for the soloist. Celloist Carter Brey, C13 59 energetically backed up by the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, C13 60 handled them with assurance and verve.

C13 61 'Barren Land,' a 1949 tone poem by Mexican modernist Jose Pablo C13 62 Moncayo, is baldly Ravelian in its long-breathed plangent lyricism C13 63 except for an interlude of sashaying Mexican dance. The orchestra's C13 64 performance had a voluptuous feel. In contrast, Ginestera's Dances C13 65 from his 1943 Ballet, 'Estancia,' are outgoing and ebullient - sort C13 66 of 'Rodeo' on the pampas. The orchestra played them with an C13 67 immodest amount of gusto.

C13 68 Silvestre Revueltas' 'Redes' (Nets), a concert suite of his C13 69 1935 score for an agitprop movie about the travails of Mexican C13 70 fishermen, is decidedly 20th Century in its outlook. At times C13 71 atonal, this folksy and picturesque music is also boldly dramatic. C13 72 As performed by the Grant Parkers, its poignant moments did not C13 73 have quite the same intensity as the festive ones.

C13 74 The evening's most original work belonged to Carlos Chavez, the C13 75 dean of Mexican music. His one-movement 'Sinfonia India', C13 76 commissioned by CBS in 1936, deftly incorporates Mexican Indian C13 77 tribal melodies. Piquant rhythms, exotic modalities and a battalion C13 78 of unusual percussion instruments contribute to the highly C13 79 distinctive character of this music.

C13 80 C13 81 Woodstock festival offers gems of a teenage Mozart

C13 82 By Ted Shen

C13 83 The Woodstock Mozart Festival, given every August in the town's C13 84 landmark opera house, is capable of surprises. Organized by the C13 85 Juilliard- and European-trained maestro Charles Zachary C13 86 Bornstein, it can put on a terrific show especially when it delves C13 87 into the Mozartean arcana.

C13 88 Featured in last weekend's season finale were a pair of choral C13 89 works from the composer's teen years. Seldom-performed and known C13 90 mostly to cognoscenti, both show a budding genius gleefully at C13 91 work, experimenting with musical layout and injecting earthly drama C13 92 into liturgical materials. The 'Orphanage' Mass, in fact, qualifies C13 93 as a minor masterpiece.

C13 94 Mozart was barely 13 when he finished this commission (K. 139) C13 95 in 1768 for an orphanage church in Vienna. Already a sophisticated C13 96 craftsman and gifted melodist, he turned the cantata-mass C13 97 into a daring showcase of imaginative, sometimes floridly operatic C13 98 touches. Unusual for the time was the inclusion of doleful C13 99 trombones and hammering trumpets that imitate the sound of nails C13 100 being driven into Christ on the cross. Loosely guided by the C13 101 dictates of the nascent classical style - though not forsaking C13 102 Baroque polyphony altogether - this grand-scaled work traverses C13 103 through moods that alternate between the somber and the C13 104 ecstatic.

C13 105 The performance by the festival's resident orchestra and the C13 106 James Chorale Friday night - in collaboration for the first time - C13 107 was sensitive yet bracing and exciting. It conveyed the music's C13 108 essential warmth and devoutness. The intimate setting and the small C13 109 orchestral and choral forces also added a feel of authenticity. C13 110 Bornstein, an intense-looking conductor with a Stokowskian hauteur, C13 111 coaxed graceful playing from the strings. The quartet of soloists - C13 112 all chorale veterans - sang cleanly and at times rapturously. They C13 113 were, in order of impressiveness, tenor John Concepcion, soprano C13 114 Joan Strom, alto Krista Depenthal, bass Matthew Greenberg. The C13 115 chorus, prepared by James Rogner, paid careful attention to C13 116 phrasing.

C13 117 The other piece was the 'Litaniae Lauretanae,' written when C13 118 Mozart was 17 and feeling stifled in provincial Salzburg. No doubt C13 119 churned out quickly for a church service, this litany nonetheless C13 120 is high-quality music, eloquent and lively. The performance was C13 121 shapely and even affecting, highlighted by ardent soprano and tenor C13 122 singing.

C13 123 C13 124 Formula overdose

C13 125 2 Fox sitcoms faithfully follow the recipes

C13 126 By Rick Kogan

C13 127 TV critic

C13 128 Two new shows, formulaic in extremis, hit Fox's C13 129 Thursday night lineup with barely a chance - though one is pretty C13 130 good - of denting the ratings. First up is 'Martin' (7:30 p.m., C13 131 Fox-Ch. 32), a showcase for the talents of Martin Lawrence, a C13 132 highly energetic comic whom some may recall from his work in the C13 133 'House Party' films or from HBO's 'Def Comedy Jam' series.

C13 134 If you remember his work in the latter venture, you might not C13 135 be able to imagine him toning down his scatological sensibilities C13 136 to a level acceptable to the censors in prime time.

C13 137 But he has and, in so doing, has been robbed of some of what C13 138 makes him an original and aggressively contemporary comic. But he's C13 139 still winning, as the host of a talk radio show at the fictional C13 140 WZUP in Detroit. (Amazingly, another comedy based at another C13 141 fictional Detroit radio station, NBC's 'Rhythm & Blues,' will go C13 142 head to head with 'Martin' later this season.)

C13 143 He's a bully - insulting, misogynistic - behind the mike but C13 144 rather more demure in the presence of his marketing executive C13 145 girlfriend Gina (Tisha Campbell), who has the ability to turn him C13 146 into a pussycat.

C13 147 The show - for all of its topical references to such matters as C13 148 Sister Souljah - owes much to the sensitivities of 'Seinfeld' but C13 149 also to such gruff-guy-with-a-heart-of-mush pioneers as 'The C13 150 Honeymooners.'

C13 151 The two stars make a lively pair of romantic sparring partners, C13 152 and many of the supporting cast members are snappy in look and C13 153 dialogue. Most of them - and this might be forgiven in a premiere - C13 154 are shrill with their lines, as if performing in a club rather than C13 155 in front of cameras.

C13 156 But perhaps the oddest thing about this sitcom is that C13 157 Lawrence, in one of the most unusual bits of casting in television C13 158 history, also plays the parts of his own mother and of his C13 159 rambunctious next-door neighbor.

C13 160 On the surface, this might seem a novel twist, but in the C13 161 premiere it's merely weird in a show that otherwise has C13 162 entertaining possibilities.

C13 163 <*_>bullet<*/>'The Heights' (8 p.m., WFLD-Ch. 32) is the sort C13 164 of neighborhood that seems to exist only in movies and on C13 165 television: a lower-class area spruced up with loud graffiti and C13 166 filled with young people who look as if they've just stepped out of C13 167 a Gap ad.

C13 168 It is there that a group of these young people gather nightly C13 169 in some sort of loft space to play rock 'n' roll. They called their C13 170 band, in a dangerously accurate example of their creativity, the C13 171 Heights.

C13 172 Naturally, this series is from the youth-drenched pens of C13 173 producer Aaron Spelling's factory. And, the characters are a C13 174 handsome, lithe and pearly-toothed bunch.

C13 175 There's J.T. (Shawn Thompson), the band's long-maned lead C13 176 singer, who chases any skirt in his vicinity and works days as a C13 177 mechanic. There's Stan (Alex Desert), the dreadlocked bassist who C13 178 works days in his father's pool hall; Hope (Charlotte Ross), a C13 179 guitarist from more monied circumstances than the others (I think C13 180 she goes to law school); Dizzy (Ken Garito), the drummer who works C13 181 days as a plumber; Rita (Cheryl Pollak), a saxophonist who works C13 182 days as a truck dispatcher; Lenny (Zachary Throne), the drummer who C13 183 is obsessed, ridiculously, with taping street sounds to mix with C13 184 the music.

C13 185 A new person joins this band in the premiere. Alex (James C13 186 Walter) is something of a renaissance man; one of the busiest young C13 187 <}_><-|>man<+|>men<}/> on the tube, working, as best as I could C13 188 figure, about 37 hours a day as a waiter in a coffee house and as a C13 189 grocery clerk; and the shyest guy in prime time.

C13 190 He writes a poem to Rita and later not only sets it to song but C13 191 also grabs a guitar and proves himself a talented C13 192 singer-songwriter.

C13 193 The budding relationship between Alex and Rita is contrasted to C13 194 the longstanding one between Dizzy and Jodie (Tasia Valenza), a C13 195 nurse and the daughter of Dizzy's plumbing contractor boss. And C13 196 she's pregnant!

C13 197 Both storylines are told in simple (and simple-minded) form.

C13 198 Rita and Alex exchange longing looks; Dizzy and Jodie squabble C13 199 because he's afraid to commit to marriage.

C13 200 Social issues, too, are reduced to comic-book levels: a C13 201 schoolyard pal asks Stan why he's hanging with white people, to C13 202 which Stan angrily replies, "It's not a color thing. It's a C13 203 human being thing."

C13 204 And this show is meant to be a music thing. That's its highly C13 205 touted novelty hook - an original song each week given a music C13 206 video treatment. The problem with this is that in asking musicians C13 207 to act and actors to be musicians, one is likely to get a bunch of C13 208 mediocrities.

C13 209 I know it's tough to judge a band on one song, but the show's C13 210 initial original tune is a tired track called 'How Do You Talk to C13 211 an Angel?' It's not likely to make anyone forget 'Last Train to C13 212 Clarksville,' another original song from a similar and vastly more C13 213 entertaining TV show called 'The Monkees.'

C13 214 C13 215 2 mystery novels: 1 suspenseful, 1 insipid

C13 216 The Principal Cause of Death

C13 217 By Mark Richard Zubro

C13 218 St. Martin's, 182 pages, $17.95

C13 219 Death Benefits

C13 220 By Michael Kahn

C13 221 Button, 308 pages, $19

C13 222 Reviewed By Bill Mahin

C13 223 A writer and critic

C13 224 'The Principal Cause of Death' is the fourth volume in Mark C13 225 Zubro's series of 'Tom and Scott' mysteries. Here, Tom, a high C13 226 school teacher, is the chief suspect in the murder of the school's C13 227 principal.

C13 228 Bypassing the plodding police, he and his friend Scott begin C13 229 investigating Tom's fellow faculty members - and a nasty bunch of C13 230 incompetents, thieves, student-seducers and drunks they turn out to C13 231 be.

C13 232 In one scene - almost as unlikely as one in which they beat and C13 233 torture one of Tom's vilest students - the two uncover a cache of C13 234 drugs in the home of the delinquent's parents and then summon the C13 235 police, who, without benefit of a warrant, charge onto the C13 236 premises, make arrests and seize the drugs.

C13 237 C13 238 C14 1 <#FROWN:C14\>Recreating a forgotten showbiz past

C14 2 Alma

C14 3 By Gordon Burn

C14 4 Houghton Mifflin, 210 pages, $19.95

C14 5 Reviewed by Bill Maxwell

C14 6 A critic who writes for the Irish Times

C14 7 In 'Alma,' first-novelist Gordon Burn proves himself to be C14 8 among the best of the current re-inventors of the past. Recreating C14 9 a whole era in show business, one that has been almost forgotten C14 10 because it was wedged in between the end of World War II and the C14 11 arrival of the Beatles, Burn gives us a rich and hilarious C14 12 narrative and a sharp satire on the fatuity of fame, the amorality C14 13 of much of the modern imagemaker's glitz and the devastation that C14 14 celebrity can wreak on the private lives of individuals.

C14 15 'Alma' is the fictional autobiography of Alma Cogan, a British C14 16 pop singer of the '50s. In her time she was Queen of the London C14 17 Paladium<&|>sic! and much of the music circuit and could hold her C14 18 own against American 'invaders,' as they called people like Doris C14 19 Day, Lena Horne, Johnny Ray and Nat King Cole.

C14 20 In those days, television was still such a newfangled idea that C14 21 when the newsreader came on, mothers would warn their sprawling C14 22 daughters to pull down their skirts as he might be looking at them. C14 23 Nowadays, muses Alma, looking back on her life, when you cease to C14 24 appear on television, you are dead.

C14 25 Living alone with her pet dog, in a country cottage surrounded C14 26 by woods and silence, Alma finds it odd that she ever had to invent C14 27 strategies to ward off the clinging fans. Sitting on the London C14 28 Underground, she sees her 54-year-old face staring back at her from C14 29 the depth of a dirt-dappled window, looking a touch reptilian and C14 30 leathery perhaps, but still with "nothing uplifted, tucked C14 31 up, sliced off or surgically repositioned."

C14 32 Much of the thrill of the big time, Alma feels, came from C14 33 anticipation. Few evenings lived up to the taxi ride through the C14 34 London dusk that began them. The contrast between the blank, dim C14 35 gently vibrating interior and the lights and stark specificity C14 36 outside (plus a few drinks), never failed to produce the perfect C14 37 balance between excitement and boredom.

C14 38 Alma's appetite for the social whirl even surprised herself. C14 39 When she wasn't preparing for drinks, a first night, a private C14 40 view, a record launch, a supper, she was picking herself up from C14 41 the night before. The formula was sleep, ice cream and plenty of C14 42 thick brown tea.

C14 43 She loved chewing the fat with the hacks and stars of the day: C14 44 "Although I had been there and back myself and was aware of C14 45 the shallowness, the fatuity the whatever you want to call it, the C14 46 truth was that I got a kick out of the mingling with faces from the C14 47 shiny sheets and fresh out of the evening paper."

C14 48 But for all her pseudo-sophistication, Alma remained a sexual C14 49 innocent. As for drugs, when she came across some musicians soaking C14 50 gauze from inhalers for the hit of benezedrine<&|>sic! it gave them C14 51 and they told her it was a new kind of tea, she believed them.

C14 52 Much of her success was due to the tenacity of her Rumanian C14 53 Jewish immigrant parents, who conceived of her as an all-singing, C14 54 all-dancing showtime spectacular, the natural successor to Shirley C14 55 Temple. By the time she was 2 years of age, she was being coached C14 56 in voice and tap. Back home, after every lesson she had to stand C14 57 and give a demonstration while her father urged her on: C14 58 "Don't stop 'til I tell you. I want my shillings C14 59 worth."

C14 60 By the time she was 10 she could walk into a cinema and tell C14 61 which studio made the movie by just looking at the print - MGM's C14 62 lion, Paramount's snowcapped mountain, RKO's radio beacon and C14 63 Columbia's diaphanous Miss Liberty.

C14 64 Their modest home in London became a kind of Lincoln Tunnel, as C14 65 one American called it, where one met all the passing show traffic. C14 66 Everybody who was anybody in the world of entertainment and more C14 67 was there. And when they were all settled and sozzled, Alma's C14 68 mother would take out her banjo and give them her rendition of C14 69 'When It Is Night Time in Italy, It Is Wednesday Over Here' or 'If C14 70 I Had My Life To Live Over Again, I'd Live Over a Delicatessen.'

C14 71 Never invest in material goods, she told her daughter. The only C14 72 thing worth hoarding was jewelry, which, when everything else gets C14 73 taken away from you, you still have something left to sell. Little C14 74 wonder that Burn has Noel Coward noting in his diary: "Was C14 75 hectored in the usual scarifying fashion by that stout little woman C14 76 who is always at Alma Cogan's by and large charming parties in C14 77 Kensington, claiming to be her mother."

C14 78 But when the time came, as it must for all celebrities, and C14 79 Alma was no longer the star she had been, she had plenty of favors C14 80 to call in. Indeed she owed to a friend of a friend the house she C14 81 now occupied for most of the time.

C14 82 Perhaps the saddest episode in this story is when Alma goes off C14 83 to the Tate Gallery in search of a famous portrait done of her when C14 84 she was in her prime. Whatever else time may have wrought, she C14 85 feels, this will remain the same. Unknown to the attendants, who C14 86 have long forgotten even her name, she finds that her picture is no C14 87 longer on show and has been confined to the vaults. And when she C14 88 checks her name in the reference index, the card reads, C14 89 "Cogan-Alma. See H - has beens, whatever happened to. . C14 90 ."

C14 91 In a final twist of invention, which I leave to the reader to C14 92 discover, Burn links the name of Alma with the notorious Moors C14 93 child murderer Myra Hindley and her accomplice Ian Brady. Burn C14 94 doesn't spare us the incongruity and obscenity of the comparison. C14 95 To the modern publicity-conscious world they too were icons of C14 96 their time. After all they made the news, didn't they? And while C14 97 they may not have been persons, they certainly were C14 98 personalities.

C14 99 C14 100 C14 101 Civic Liberalism's debut

C14 102 Mickey Kaus calls for an end to welfare and a fair deal for all C14 103 who work

C14 104 The End of Equality

C14 105 By Mickey Kaus

C14 106 New Republic/Basic Books, 293 pages, $25

C14 107 Reviewed by George Scialabba

C14 108 Recipient of a citation for excellence in reviewing from the C14 109 National Book Critic's Circle

C14 110 William F. Buckley once remarked in exasperation that he would C14 111 not read another book about liberalism until his grandmother wrote C14 112 one. I don't know whether she has, but if not, Buckley really ought C14 113 to make an exception for 'The End of Equality' by Mickey Kaus. Many C14 114 details of Kaus' argument will arouse opposition or skepticism from C14 115 liberals, conservatives, or both. But in its overall vision and C14 116 thrust, it is an original, powerful book, capable of permanently C14 117 altering the terms of American political debate.

C14 118 It is obvious that economic inequality has increased in the C14 119 United States in the last 10 or 15 years. Most disputes about the C14 120 subject concern either how much or why. 'The End of Equality' asks C14 121 a different question: Why does it matter? It does matter, of C14 122 course, to Kaus as much as anyone; but not, either to him or (he C14 123 claims) most of the rest of us for the reasons often assumed.

C14 124 The equality most Americans value, says Kaus, is not equality C14 125 of income but civic equality: equal dignity and respect for all who C14 126 do their part - that is, work. People who accept their obligation C14 127 to society, who work, are entitled to self-esteem and material C14 128 security, at any rate in a prosperous democracy like ours. Equal C14 129 dignity and respect mean such people's right to at least adequate C14 130 medical care, legal help, education for their children and the C14 131 other necessities of a good life, and even to some of its C14 132 amenities: safe and pleasant public spaces, public transportation, C14 133 clean air.

C14 134 These things need not be distributed exactly equally, or even C14 135 distributed at all. But if some people can afford the best of all C14 136 these goods, while many others who are working or have worked hard C14 137 or are willing to work can barely afford a decent minimum of them C14 138 or cannot afford them at all - this violates most Americans' sense C14 139 of fairness.

C14 140 As Kaus points out, that sentiment does not amount to an C14 141 ideological opposition to capitalism nor even to a populist C14 142 antipathy toward the rich. If through luck, talent or exceptionally C14 143 hard work, someone strikes it rich and wants to buy a yacht, take C14 144 exotic vacations, retire at 40, most of us will gladly (or C14 145 grudgingly) tip our hat. But that well-off Americans should live on C14 146 safe streets while less affluent but equally hardworking Americans C14 147 are afraid to go out after dark; should be able to afford crowns C14 148 for their teeth or nursing care for their parents or stimulating C14 149 schools for their kids while a lot of equally hardworking people C14 150 can't: this doesn't sit right.

C14 151 In short, a democracy can allow rich and poor, but not C14 152 first-class citizens and second-class citizens. Such at least, Kaus C14 153 claims, is most contemporary Americans' understanding of democracy. C14 154 (He bases his argument on polling data as well as on a persuasive C14 155 reading of American political history.)

C14 156 I think Kaus is right. And he's right, too, to perceive not C14 157 merely the negative side of this, the widespread popular C14 158 disapproval of unfair hardship, but the positive side as well, the C14 159 civic and psychological healthiness of mixing the classes, of C14 160 having institutions where rich and poor stand in line together, go C14 161 to meetings together, sit and root together in the bleachers or the C14 162 grandstands. This is what endures, and deserves to endure, from the C14 163 culture of smalltown America.

C14 164 The vision of civic equality as earned dignity ought to guide C14 165 liberal strategy. Instead, according to Kaus, liberals have in C14 166 recent decades usually settled for straightforward income C14 167 redistribution: taxes and transfers. A variety of other C14 168 redistributive policies are currently on offer from Democrats: C14 169 worker re-training; 'flexible,' or technologically C14 170 de-centralized, production; protectionism; profit-sharing; C14 171 the promotion of unionization. Kaus takes on each of these schemes, C14 172 arguing that none of them can really do much to halt the recent C14 173 sharp increase in income inequality, which is rooted in the C14 174 transformation of the American economy away from mass production C14 175 and toward symbol-manipulation, away from unionized blue- C14 176 and white-collar workers and toward a meritocratic C14 177 managerial-professional elite.

C14 178 Instead of a futile and unpopular 'Money Liberalism,' Kaus C14 179 advocates what he calls "Civic Liberalism," which C14 180 would "use the public sphere to incubate and spread an C14 181 egalitarian culture" of common interests, sentiments and C14 182 experiences.

C14 183 There are half a dozen innovations or reforms, some of them C14 184 familiar, that could widen the sphere of social equality. For one: C14 185 a return to conscription, combined with a year of national service C14 186 for all who are not drafted. For another: campaign reform, public C14 187 financing and free radio and television time for candidates. C14 188 C14 189 C14 190 An American scholar's insider report on China

C14 191 Evening Chats in Beijing:

C14 192 Probing China's Predicament

C14 193 By Perry Link

C14 194 Norton, 448 pages, $24.95

C14 195 Reviewed by Harrison Salisbury

C14 196 A specialist in Soviet and Chinese affairs whose most recent C14 197 book is 'The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng'

C14 198 No one who experienced the tragedy of Tiananmen emerged C14 199 unscathed, certainly not Perry Link, an American scholar who was in C14 200 the forefront of it all. Although he insists that 'Evening Chats in C14 201 Beijing' is "not a Tiananmen book" it is, in fact, C14 202 the quintessential Tiananmen book, and that is why it is C14 203 important.

C14 204 A soft-spoken American specialist in Chinese literature, Link C14 205 portrays himself as an accidental player in the Tiananmen events. C14 206 If this is so, he was precisely the right man in the right place at C14 207 the right time. Link knew the language, had spent time in China C14 208 previously and for months had practically lived with the C14 209 intellectuals who were to take part in the affair, interviewing C14 210 them in depth about their attitudes toward the regime and its C14 211 problems.

C14 212 Long before Tiananmen, Link was in possession of clues that C14 213 suggested to him that a basic confrontation was at hand. And he C14 214 himself became a participant in Tiananmen through his friendship C14 215 with Fang Lizhi, the physicist and dissident who became something C14 216 of a folk hero during the tumultuous affair.

C14 217 C15 1 <#FROWN:C15\>Bella Vista: Fashion Statement from Food to C15 2 Decor

C15 3 By Pat Bruno

C15 4 Restaurant Critic

C15 5 Bella Vista had to be a labor of love for Dan and Linda Bacin. C15 6 The Bacins, who own the Bacino's Pizzeria chain, broke out of their C15 7 pizza-only concept a few years ago when they opened Bacino's C15 8 Pizzeria/Trattoria, a many-seats Italian restaurant in C15 9 Naperville.

C15 10 The instant success of that restaurant, which featured a broad C15 11 range of upscale Italian dishes, seems to have been the springboard C15 12 for the newly opened Bella Vista on West Belmont.

C15 13 Bella Vista is really something. The restaurant is housed in a C15 14 building that began as a bank in 1929, and got wracked, ravaged and C15 15 nearly ruined after the bank moved out. Some sharp-eyed developers C15 16 talked Bacin into opening a restaurant in the building. Then it C15 17 began: What started out as a labor of love became a love for labor. C15 18 It seems that with one thing or another, the process of turning C15 19 this old bank space into a restaurant went on and on. A number of C15 20 restaurants around town opened and closed in the time it took Bella C15 21 Vista to open.

C15 22 Restaurant as art

C15 23 The end result is spectacular. If you take a right turn just C15 24 inside the revolving door, you'll end up in the bar area, which is C15 25 separated from a small dining area by a wall of wines. In one C15 26 corner are two rustic, strikingly beautiful, copper-clad, C15 27 wood-burning ovens that are used for pizza and certain pasta C15 28 dishes.

C15 29 The main dining room, with its decorative beaux-arts motif, is C15 30 composed of a series of levels - five, it seems - that starts with C15 31 an inlaid marble floor and ends way up there, 30 feet or more, with C15 32 open balcony seating and small dining rooms that feature C15 33 hand-painted, fresco-like artworks with a Sistine Chapel feel. In C15 34 fact, the whole restaurant is one big piece of art; everywhere you C15 35 look there's some type of on-the-wall original art. It must have C15 36 cost a small fortune to decorate this restaurant.

C15 37 Is it all too much? In its intrinsic beauty, Bella Vista C15 38 becomes somewhat of an anomaly on this part of Belmont Avenue, C15 39 where, to put it politely, businesses that are a dime a dozen are C15 40 bought and sold for a nickel - over and over again. Then there is C15 41 the competitive situation. In the two square blocks around Bella C15 42 Vista, there are a lot of restaurants, and a lot of them are C15 43 Italian, and a lot of them - an awful lot - serve pizza.

C15 44 So Bella Vista, which means 'beautiful view' (the name has to C15 45 have come from what is seen inside the restaurant, because there C15 46 isn't much of a vista outside) has its work cut out. But Bacin is C15 47 known as a 'slugger' in the restaurant business; he's not afraid to C15 48 mix it up with the competition to get his share of the pasta and C15 49 pizza pie.

C15 50 Contemporary Italian

C15 51 Bella Vista serves, as the front of the menu points out, C15 52 "contemporary Italian cuisine." This is food that C15 53 doesn't tweak the old Italian mustache; it completely shaves it C15 54 off. Calamari gets grilled and served with beans, garlic and C15 55 tomatoes. A salad of endive, watercress, peppered pecans and C15 56 Gorgonzola makes quite a fashion statement, one that would make C15 57 iceberg lettuce freeze with envy.

C15 58 Pasta dishes are built with sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke C15 59 hearts, wild mushrooms, arugula, grilled vegetables and other C15 60 ingredients that create tiers of flavor. The lasagna was served in C15 61 an unabashedly urbane, multicolored, multilayered arrangement that C15 62 bore little resemblance to lasagna as we know it, other than C15 63 possibly the shape. And the only red sauce I could find on the menu C15 64 was called a "spicy sun-dried tomato C15 65 sauce."

C15 66 Pizzas swivel down the runway of fashion and carry the C15 67 'gourmet' label. They come topped with grilled or roasted C15 68 vegetables, smoked chicken and white beans, peppered shrimp and C15 69 goat cheese, roasted onions and smoked mozzarella.

C15 70 A similar pattern

C15 71 Entrees follow a similar pattern, boasting names that if they C15 72 weren't in Italian would defy provenance. Maiale allo C15 73 spiedo, for example, becomes spit-roasted loin of pork served C15 74 with garlic whipped potatoes, mixed peppers and buttered escarole. C15 75 Tonno con capellini is grilled tuna with roasted onions, C15 76 marinated tomatoes and angel-hair pasta. Every part of that dish C15 77 would be at home on the menu of a nouvelle cuisine restaurant or a C15 78 French restaurant.

C15 79 But how does the food stack up against the dazzling decor and C15 80 the tight but well-balanced menu (roughly six choices C15 81 listed under each course)? Sometimes it stacks neatly, and C15 82 sometimes it tumbles. An appetizer of grilled wild mushrooms C15 83 redolent with rosemary and lavished with shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano C15 84 cheese was delicious.

C15 85 But each of the three gourmet pizzas sampled left me only C15 86 partially satisfied. The toppings were great, but the crusts C15 87 weren't. Pizza baked in a woodburning oven should look and taste C15 88 like it came out of a woodburning oven; these didn't. The crust was C15 89 too thin, and it had no character, no marks from the wood fire, no C15 90 good chew. But some of the toppings could not have been better. C15 91 They included crisp and thin grilled asparagus, roasted onions and C15 92 marinated tomatoes; pesto, tomatoes, pine nuts and fresh C15 93 mozzarella-vegetables, and goat cheese. The combinations C15 94 were right on the flavor button and thoroughly enjoyable.

C15 95 A pasta dish of corkscrew-shaped pasta (cavatappi) in a C15 96 Parmesan-rich Alfredo sauce with swirls of fresh spinach and C15 97 pounded thin slices of breast of chicken was a delicious piece of C15 98 pasta work in every respect. But a spit-roasted herb chicken dish C15 99 was woefully short on flavor. The chicken was really bland, and the C15 100 promised herbs were too little and too tame. I could have made a C15 101 meal, however, on the delicious creamy wild mushroom polenta that C15 102 was buried under the chicken.

C15 103 At lunch, a grilled tuna sandwich was a delicious arrangement C15 104 in which the fillet of fresh tuna, perfectly cooked to a tasty C15 105 medium-rare, was laid between thin slices of grilled Italian bread C15 106 and flanked by slices of fresh tomato, thick rings of roasted red C15 107 onion and a powerfully good roasted red pepper mayonnaise. It was a C15 108 sandwich not only of substance but also good taste.

C15 109 Then there was the lasagna. This was a case where I would have C15 110 enjoyed an un-lasagna, in which a few layers of the pasta C15 111 were replaced by more of the delicious grilled vegetables. All this C15 112 lasagna needed to be outstanding was some rearranging.

C15 113 Desserts, et al.

C15 114 Desserts were the most consistent of all. A warm apple tart C15 115 with caramel and macadamia nuts was most pleasing. Another C15 116 delicious arrangement was the warm chocolate cake, a round, soft, C15 117 gooey-good cake ringed by small scoops of milk chocolate and white C15 118 chocolate gelato and raspberry sorbet.

C15 119 I hate to admit that tiramisu, which means "lift me up" but has C15 120 been letting me down, is boring me, but it is. I think it's time C15 121 someone started tinkering with the basic ingredients (ladyfingers C15 122 and mascarpone cheese being the most important) and came up with C15 123 something a little different (Bella Vista works a creme Anglaise C15 124 into the picture).

C15 125 The wine list, which features Italian and California wines, is C15 126 extensive and runs from cheap to expensive. Wines by the glass are C15 127 just plain expensive. And while I'm at it, I'd like to note that C15 128 $2.75 is too much money for espresso. Most of the fine dining C15 129 places in town charge less than that. And charging that much makes C15 130 it less likely that people will order it, so nobody wins.

C15 131 C15 132 Mitchell Our Best Writer?

C15 133 Up in the Old Hotel

C15 134 And other stories.

C15 135 By Joseph Mitchell.

C15 136 Pantheon. $25.

C15 137 By Stephen Becker

C15 138 Back in the 1940s and 1950s young writers used to swap stories C15 139 about established writers and sooner or later someone would say, C15 140 "Of course, Joe Mitchell is the best writer in C15 141 America," always the casual "Joe Mitchell," C15 142 as if one had seen him recently in New York or was in desultory C15 143 correspondence with him. None of us aspirants actually knew C15 144 Mitchell, but we delivered the verdict with awful authority. He was C15 145 (and remains) a legendary figure, publishing rarely. We kids may C15 146 very well have been right: He may indeed have been (and still be) C15 147 the best writer in America.

C15 148 Up in the Old Hotel is Mitchell's collected work, and C15 149 it comprises his four published volumes, McSorley's Wonderful C15 150 Saloon (a classic that should stand in every American home), C15 151 Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and C15 152 Joe Gould's Secret, plus several stories that have never C15 153 been reprinted. "Stories," yes, but they live on the border; they C15 154 are true stories and high art - reportage made so vivid, so real, C15 155 that it comes out like fiction of the highest order ("a C15 156 reporter only in the sense that Defoe was a reporter," C15 157 wrote one critic).

C15 158 His titles alone are a kind of literature. One story is called C15 159 "Hit on the Head with a Cow." Another is C15 160 "The Mohawks in High Steel," borrowed by Edmund C15 161 Wilson to lead off his own Apologies to the Iroquois, and C15 162 "The Same as Monkey Glands," and "The C15 163 Downfall of Fascism in Black Ankle County," and "I C15 164 Blame it All on Mamma." He can take a group of men or women C15 165 ('The Gypsy Women') and bring them to life like an old Dutch C15 166 painter; he can take a place, or a murky region ('The Bottom of the C15 167 Harbor,' 'Obituary of a Gin Mill,' or the Fulton Street Fish C15 168 Market), and ease us into it until we feel we have known it all our C15 169 lives.

C15 170 And how does he work his magic, this "obsessed reader C15 171 of Finnegans Wake"? In a prose so simple, so honest, so C15 172 monolithic that not a word is wasted or affected or vain. Mitchell C15 173 is to "current American writing" what fine whiskey C15 174 aged in contented oaken barrels is to soda pop. His accounts share C15 175 essential qualities with the Authorized Version of the Bible: the C15 176 prose is direct and solid and dignified, and as a result C15 177 stately, whatever his subject.

C15 178 Consider the cats at McSorley's: "He owned as many as C15 179 18 at once and they had the run of the saloon. He fed them on bull C15 180 livers put through a sausage grinder and they became enormous. When C15 181 it came time to feed them, he would leave the bar, no matter how C15 182 brisk business was, and bang on the bottom of a tin pan; the fat C15 183 cats would come loping up, like leopards, from all corners of the C15 184 saloon." Ever wonder what makes good writing? "Bang C15 185 Bottom Fat Cats Loping Like Leopards" - that's C15 186 rhythm, that's music, and Mitchell does it all the time. He may not C15 187 even know that he does it. He is so gifted a natural writer (and so C15 188 shaped, we must think, by the Authorized Version) that he cannot C15 189 write badly. He may be the only writer in America of whom that can C15 190 be said.

C15 191 Mitchell is in his early 80s now, and has lived the century's C15 192 history. He is a Carolina man, and while observing the Klan's C15 193 solemn foofaraw decades ago he "spent so many nights hiding C15 194 in the weed patch that I failed my final examinations in algebra, C15 195 the history of North Carolina, English composition, and French, and C15 196 was not promoted, which I did not mind, as I had already spent two C15 197 years in the ninth grade and felt at home there."

C15 198 Any gap in his formal education is irrelevant and obsolete. He C15 199 is perfectly at home whether telling Block Island stories or C15 200 quoting Joe Gould quoting William Blake. He will tell you what sea C15 201 urchins are and how to dress and eat them, not to mention C15 202 diamondback terrapins. Or true old-fashioned traditional New York C15 203 steak dinners, before they were corrupted by Manhattan cocktails C15 204 and modern manners. (His zest for food is contagious; after a C15 205 couple of these pieces we feel famished. He may have gone hungry as C15 206 a boy.) But he will also be brilliant about Calypso music or a C15 207 gifted child or the deaf club.

C15 208 Indeed, if you read these stories at random, one or two a C15 209 night, you soon realize that you are assembling a mosaic of C15 210 American life. C15 211 C16 1 <#FROWN:C16\>A Matter of Survival

C16 2 October, Eight O'Clock

C16 3 by Norman Manea,

C16 4 translated by Cornelia Golna, Anselm Hollo, Mara Soceanu Vamos, C16 5 Max Bleyleben, and Marguerite Dorian and Elliott B. Urdang.

C16 6 Grove Weidenfeld, 216 pp., $18.95

C16 7 Louis Begley

C16 8 Late one Friday: a little boy waits by the window in an C16 9 unnamed, desolate place. A phantom, "a shadow, withered and C16 10 gloomy," appears out of the "smoky C16 11 steppes." It is the boy's mother walking hurriedly, C16 12 stumbling, bent under a sack heavy with potatoes, beans, prunes, C16 13 and other scraps of food she earns knitting in houses of peasants C16 14 whose language she does not understand. The father's work - we are C16 15 not told what it is - pays only a quarter of a loaf of bread a day. C16 16 If it weren't for the mother - believing "that we would C16 17 survive if we held fast to anything that might save us" - C16 18 they would have "faded very rapidly, right at the C16 19 beginning." Only this time, in addition to the food which C16 20 she lays out as always on the floor in six piles, one for each day C16 21 of the week to come, she has brought in her sack something C16 22 miraculous. It is a sweater of many colors, like Joseph's coat, C16 23 knitted of yarn ends scavenged in those alien huts. The sweater is C16 24 bulky. Avidly, the boy imagines its warmth. The colors sparkle,

C16 25 as if the magician who would save us wanted to C16 26 demonstrate to us what he could do. The night enveloped us in C16 27 smoke, cold, and darkness; we heard nothing but explosions, C16 28 screams, the barks of the guards, crows, and frogs. We had long ago C16 29 forgotten such glitter.

C16 30 Who can this object be for? The mother, to keep her from C16 31 freezing as she trudges across the steppes? The boy? No, he thinks C16 32 it must be for the father, "he deserved it more than C16 33 anybody else, since he had lost all hope long ago." But in C16 34 fact the sweater is for Mara, the only occupant of the hut the boy C16 35 names. That is because "she had ended up among us by C16 36 mistake.... The little girl had nothing to do with the curse on us; C16 37 she was innocent.... Caught up in the catastrophe, mixed up with us C16 38 and taken away, she had been brought as far as this." So C16 39 they "loved her excessively," thinking that C16 40 "she must return alive at all costs."

C16 41 So begins 'The Sweater,' the first in the important and C16 42 beautiful collection of stories by Norman Manea entitled C16 43 October, Eight O'Clock. From the known facts of Mr. C16 44 Manea's life, one may infer that the nameless place is a C16 45 concentration camp, somewhere in Transnistria, a land across the C16 46 border which then divided Romania from Ukraine; the time is World C16 47 War II; and the little boy, his family, and the other prisoners in C16 48 the camp (other than "innocent" Mara, soon to die of C16 49 typhus) are Romanian Jews deported by the Nazis. But none of these C16 50 words - Romania, Nazi, German, Jew, the War, typhus - are used, C16 51 except that once some other boys call the narrator a C16 52 "kike."

C16 53 Years pass. One does not know how many. A later story is called C16 54 'The Partition.' The boy narrator - who had been one of those C16 55 children covered with scabies, "with oversized skulls... C16 56 compressed, stunted, as if an instrument of torture had shrunk them C16 57 all" - has survived. He is now a middle-aged man, perhaps a C16 58 trifle paunchy, reclusive, perpetually attired in shabby jeans and C16 59 turtleneck sweaters which, to his janitor, looks imported. He lives C16 60 in "an adolescent's mess in an old man's room." The C16 61 building is also old, well built, with large apartments for rich C16 62 people. But "they" - we take them to be the Communist C16 63 authorities - have divided it with "partitions thin as C16 64 cigarette paper, reallocated living space, redid C16 65 everything." The janitor watches his tenants' every C16 66 move:

C16 67 thick-set, punctual, hygienic. Hairy, swarthy. The eyes C16 68 of a makeshift expert. A conversationalist by profession.... Always C16 69 attentive, he notes, makes out, identifies your shopping bag, C16 70 packages, voice, clothes, who you're with. The rhythm of your C16 71 steps, any hesitation, the least trace of bad humor, everything is C16 72 recorded. Such an important building, such different people, in C16 73 short the community demands its own laws: to know everyone, ward C16 74 off conflict, to inform correctly, make judicious decisions, have C16 75 one's eye on everything.

C16 76 The nameless narrator watches and listens too. His neighbors

C16 77 wake up, hurry, leave, rush around like greyhounds; C16 78 flee from the rat race; their eyes empty, they scatter in the C16 79 streets toward shops, trams, the bus. Lines for cheese, medication, C16 80 flashlights, buttons, TV sets. A line here, another there: books, C16 81 light bulbs, pad-locks, shoes, eyeglasses, and so on until C16 82 nightfall. Twilight eases their exhaustion. Up the staircase of C16 83 standardized buildings, concrete boxes, the leftover hours pass C16 84 lazily: armchair, TV, gas heater, ironing, the nightly C16 85 sarcophagus.

C16 86 He leaves the city for a resort - an August beach crowded with C16 87 the recumbent bodies of the vacationing elite of the regime, the C16 88 paraphernalia of third world chic scattered around them, the sea C16 89 bringing in "offal, grease, pitchballs, foul-smelling C16 90 wrack, fruit rinds, rags, empty cans." As yet, he doesn't C16 91 know how to swim. One step too far into the surf, and he comes C16 92 close to drowning.

C16 93 An attenuated affair with a woman who has accompanied him comes C16 94 to an end. This is in a story called 'The Turning Point.' In a C16 95 later story, 'Seascape with Birds,' he returns to the same shore in C16 96 a different season. It seems to him that

C16 97 The staggering, exhausted bodies should have been C16 98 brought here, to the deserted edge of the sea, and stretched out on C16 99 the cold moist autumn sand....

C16 100 If only the trains carrying them reached here, the few C16 101 survivors could have descended the high, dusty cliff to the jagged C16 102 shore. It would have been better had they been forced to watch, for C16 103 hours on end, the fluid violet horizon, the silky tremor of spring. C16 104 Transfixed for days, weeks, an entire year, before the same C16 105 scenery. Had they experienced this feeling of pointlessness, C16 106 endlessness, they might not have chased after time so C16 107 greedily....

C16 108 The boy, the boy at least would have deserved the cold, moist C16 109 winds, the blaze of mirrors, summer. He should have been brought C16 110 here long ago, thought the man overcome by indolence and sleep. For C16 111 years on end, I would have known only the light and the happy sobs C16 112 of the water, I could have understood why nature means nothing to C16 113 me...

C16 114 Thrice and four times blessed were they who perished under the C16 115 walls of Troy. Between these dreadful parentheses - the sweater and C16 116 the beach - Mr. Manea evokes with powerful and yet delicate brush C16 117 strokes, as though in water colors, the nightmare of survival. In C16 118 'We Might Have Been Four,' one senses that the war has possibly C16 119 ended, but not the hunger. The family is still in a C16 120 "hostile village." They steal a chicken, kill it, C16 121 pluck its feathers, boil and fry it, gorge "under the spell C16 122 of the meat's fragrance almost to the point of oblivion." C16 123 It is just before dawn when they return through the forest: the C16 124 mother and father, the boy, and Finlanda, the boy's young cousin. C16 125 The girl wears a dress in which "she seemed to float, to be C16 126 beyond anyone's reach." She has made it of material the C16 127 father had offered to the mother and the mother refused: she had C16 128 grown too thin with the war, it would not have looked good on her. C16 129 Now the boy sees that

C16 130 the order in which we had come had broken down. C16 131 Finlanda had moved far off, ever more absent. Not too far behind C16 132 her, he [the father] too was moving off, as if caught in the leaves C16 133 and in the russet light of her flowing hair.

C16 134 I watched them leave everything behind. I wanted to shout after C16 135 them, I wanted to hate them, but I liked them, they always joked C16 136 with me...

C16 137 Whereas the mother, to whom they owe their survival, now C16 138 "had no patience, she was always sour, anxious." C16 139 The theme of betrayal - or is it the stirring of a scandalous C16 140 spring, an obscene reawakening of senses - returns in the story C16 141 called 'Proust's Tea.' The boy and the mother are in a railroad C16 142 waiting room monstrously packed with old people and children. The C16 143 repatriation trains have been segregated, so that men and young C16 144 women were dispatched somewhere separately. Although nurses in C16 145 white uniforms pass through the crowd, distributing tea and C16 146 biscuits, the rescued cannot understand that they have in fact been C16 147 saved. The mother

C16 148 couldn't stop thinking about what might be happening on C16 149 the train that never arrived. She couldn't have been allowed on C16 150 board, she knew all too well that she looked like an old woman, no C16 151 one would have believed that she was not yet thirty. But then she C16 152 would have had no reason to want to be on the train for men and C16 153 young women. Surely she too had seen how they had clung to each C16 154 other without shame - my father and my cousin - the moment they C16 155 left the lineup.

C16 156 Eventually, such things are passed over. "Normal C16 157 times" return. Families survive, "go everywhere C16 158 they were invited, as if to make up for lost time and to reassure C16 159 themselves that they had come back alive, that they could start C16 160 over again with renewed strength." Once again, they live in C16 161 middle-class apartments. They have maids; like in the old days, the C16 162 maid sleeps in the basement kitchen. At night, she may receive C16 163 visits of one soldier or another; one night this family's maid C16 164 receives instead the now adolescent narrator:

C16 165 Here are my feverish hands, the curls, the uncovered C16 166 wetness, open to all promises, summer green darkened in the curled C16 167 hair, phosphorescent with bacteria. I bite into the heart of her C16 168 shoulder.

C16 169 Young boys learn to answer questions such as "Did they C16 170 beat you?" Driven by their parents and relatives, or by C16 171 their own anguish, all at once they write poems, pass examinations, C16 172 excel in mathematics; they are awarded prizes at schools they had C16 173 never before attended. The narrator is such a boy. He "had C16 174 made up the lost classes; devoured textbooks, even those others C16 175 found dull; he swallowed everything; always hungry, concentrated, C16 176 impelled by his own thirst."

C16 177 But, at a certain moment, even that may not be enough. The C16 178 boy's identity must be defined - for grownups, the issue may not C16 179 arise, their identities had been formed and, however tattered, can C16 180 be reassumed. Such a moment is examined in 'The Instructor.' The C16 181 father and the mother arrange for the boy to be taught Hebrew in C16 182 preparation for his bar mitzvah. Mr. Manea does not name either the C16 183 language or the ceremony; the teacher - an old man dressed humbly C16 184 in black like a petty functionary or a shopkeeper - says to the C16 185 boy:

C16 186 You're about to turn thirteen, to become a man. That's C16 187 why I've been called. The ceremony is not complicated. The language C16 188 is old, beautiful. The greatest book of all was written in it. That C16 189 is why the language has survived to this day.

C16 190 It is as though the parents tried to attach the limb that has C16 191 been severed:

C16 192 suddenly he was seeing them from a great distance. They C16 193 seemed childish, ridiculous. They did not even believe in the C16 194 ceremony for which they were preparing him. It was just the need C16 195 for yet another sign that all was normal. Nothing else but the rush C16 196 to accumulate proof, to have relatives and neighbors and former C16 197 friends confirm that, yes, everything was in order that life had C16 198 reaccepted them, that it was just like before, that they were C16 199 the same as before.

C16 200 The narrator does not rebel for long. His parents hold a trump C16 201 card, the ability to control his movements. In addition to the C16 202 Torah, he is poring over the Communist Manifesto. What he C16 203 reads there, he believes and wants to believe. That is his road to C16 204 an identity and a "normal" new life. A selection is C16 205 about to be made for a great honor: attendance at a summer camp for C16 206 Soviet Pioneer Scouts, the elect among secular believers. C16 207 C17 1 <#FROWN:C17\>Santa Maria and Spaceships

C17 2 Philip Glass's Columbus opera sails into the Met

C17 3 KATRINE AMES

C17 4 During an early rehearsal of Philip Glass's 'The Voyage' at the C17 5 Metropolitan Opera in New York, one orchestra member asked C17 6 conductor Bruce Ferden how long the first act would run. C17 7 "Forty-five minutes," the meastro replied. C17 8 "Oh," said the musician. "So if we played it C17 9 without repeats it would last five?"

C17 10 Commissioned for the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus's C17 11 journey to the New World, 'The Voyage' sailed into the Met right on C17 12 schedule last week, exactly 500 years after the famous landing. C17 13 Unfortunately, it was also about a decade too late: minimalism C17 14 crested years ago. Though much of 'The Voyage' is lovely, C17 15 especially its lush orchestral passages, and though Glass is using C17 16 a wider harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary now, he's riding the same C17 17 old wave. Still, 'The Voyage' is a hit. All six performances are C17 18 sold out, in part because Glass has a legion of downtown followers. C17 19 And there is the faint but real possibility, particularly after the C17 20 success last season of John Corigliano's 'The Ghosts of C17 21 Versailles,' that some Met subscribers are willing to give new C17 22 operas a chance.

C17 23 Conservative operagoers will not suffer. 'The Voyage' is scored C17 24 for acoustic instruments- no computer clicks or electronic beeps C17 25 here. But there's too little that surprises: Glass's famous C17 26 arpeggios abound, and the chromaticism is pretty but predictable. C17 27 (Someone has already renamed the piece "Recycled C17 28 Glass.") It makes considerable demands on the performers, C17 29 and too few on the audience. The concept was the composer's: not to C17 30 tell the story of Columbus, who gets very little stage time, but to C17 31 explore the notion of exploration, of space, of time, of the mind. C17 32 It's an intriguing idea and a neat way to sidestep much of the C17 33 Columbus controversy. But, hampered by a muddled libretto by C17 34 playwright David Henry Hwang ('M. Butterfly'), an overblown C17 35 production and his own failure to shape character, Glass doesn't C17 36 pull it off.

C17 37 The opera begins with a touching prologue, as a scientist C17 38 (modeled on Stephen Hawking) hovers above the stage in a C17 39 wheelchair, ruminating: "The voyage lies where/The vision C17 40 lies." He summons up a planet-filled sky, and flies away. C17 41 After that, the vision falters: the action moves from the late ice C17 42 age, when four intergalactic travelers crash to earth in their C17 43 spaceship, to 1492, as a hallucinating Columbus nears land. The C17 44 last act, set in 2092, takes an abrupt tonal shift. Frantic and C17 45 hilarious, it features twin archeologists (imagine Hans and Franz C17 46 as Margaret Mead) who have unearthed crystals left behind by the C17 47 ice-age astronauts. Finally, in an epilogue, the dead Queen C17 48 Isabella tries to seduce the dying Columbus. Amid the mess are some C17 49 fine performances, particularly Patricia Schuman as the spaceship C17 50 Commander and Timothy Noble as Columbus. There are some great C17 51 moments, as when the Commander tangos with earthlings who wear bird C17 52 headdresses- like 'West Side Story' with feathers. But too often, C17 53 my mind took a little voyage of its own.

C17 54 C17 55 The Rise From Rice to Riches

C17 56 A 10-hour TV series tracks Asia's economic miracle

C17 57 JOSHUA HAMMER

C17 58 Five years in the making, 'The Pacific Century,' a 10-part C17 59 documentary now appearing on the public television net-work C17 60 PBS, is a history lesson that goes down easy. Produced by Alex C17 61 Gibney, a filmmaker whose critically acclaimed 'Battle for Eastern C17 62 Airlines' on PBS chronicled the rancorous 1989 machinists' strike, C17 63 this series covers a vastly larger chunk of time. Over 10 hours, it C17 64 traces East Asia's transition from dependence on America to C17 65 political and economic vibrancy, concentrating on Japan but also C17 66 touching on China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, the C17 67 Philippines and Vietnam. Inevitably, the series, which will appear C17 68 in a number of Asian and European countries in the coming months, C17 69 is flawed by tedious passages, omissions and eat-your-spinach C17 70 commentary from those inescapable talking heads. But for every dull C17 71 spot, it comes alive with newsreels and pop-culture C17 72 artifacts - from the appalling American 1910 film C17 73 "comedy," 'That Chink at Golden Gulch,' which shows C17 74 cowboys gleefully murdering a pigtailed coolie, to early Sony C17 75 promotional films.

C17 76 'The Pacific Century' is most riveting when it weaves Asia's C17 77 past with its present. One of the best episodes, 'The Two Coasts of C17 78 China,' places the xenophobia of today's Communists in the context C17 79 of China's ancient hostility toward the outside world. Gibney's C17 80 camera crew traveled to Mongolia and got scenes of native C17 81 filmmakers re-creating Genghis Khan's invasion of China, complete C17 82 with hundreds of soldier-extras riding horseback across the C17 83 steppes. To capture the era of the Opium War (when the British navy C17 84 overwhelmed the Chinese to protect its contraband trade), he serves C17 85 up details about "Miami Vice"-style smuggling C17 86 trips, Indian opium factories and entrepreneurs such as Warren C17 87 Delano, Franklin D. Roosevelt's grandfather. Framing the old C17 88 conflicts are modern images of capitalist Hong Kong - as C17 89 threatening to today's Communist regime as the British C17 90 "barbarians" were to the Manchus.

C17 91 Gibney does a terrific job exploring Japan's history, showing C17 92 how it grafted Western-style colonialism, culture and democracy to C17 93 its own society. Beginning with the rise of the Emperor Meiji, he C17 94 devotes four episodes to the country's 130-year evolution from a C17 95 nation of samurai to soldiers to salarymen. It's jolting to realize C17 96 that the Mitsubishi Corp. once ran Battleship Island, a C17 97 19th-century Alcatraz where coal miners lived packed into wretched C17 98 "octopus dens" and faced execution if they tried to escape. C17 99 Particularly touching are scenes from the occupation, in which C17 100 Japan aped all things American: a patronizing American newsreel C17 101 shows "a Jap jazz band for Joe and Mrs. Joe" and a C17 102 Japanese Elvis attempts to sing "(You Ain't Nothin' But a) C17 103 Hound Dog." But footage of strikes and anti-American riots C17 104 in 1960 explodes the common misconception that Japan's C17 105 transformation to economic superpower was smooth. In one moment C17 106 from 1960 captured on videotape, a right-wing assassin rushes C17 107 across a stage and thrusts a samurai sword into a socialist leader. C17 108 It's a chilling image of the violent, medieval forces still C17 109 seething in the Japanese psyche.

C17 110 Striking themes: Once it gets past Japan, however, C17 111 'The Pacific Century' loses focus. (Gibney's original plan was to C17 112 make a documentary just on Japan, but the Annenberg/CPB Project, C17 113 which chipped in $2.5 million of the $4.5 million budget, wanted C17 114 him to tackle the whole Pacific Rim.) South Korea's rapid C17 115 modernization and pro-democracy uprisings are vividly portrayed, C17 116 but his treatment of the Chinese Revolution is cursory and C17 117 disorganized, and much of the material on Taiwan and Singapore is C17 118 just plain dull. And while Peter Coyote's fine, understated C17 119 narration lends resonance, your eyes may glaze over when the C17 120 documentary falls back on a battery of droning academics.

C17 121 A documentary this sprawling is also bound to be flawed by C17 122 omissions. It doesn't touch Thailand's boom or Cambodia's tragedy, C17 123 skirts the Vietnam War and neglects Deng Xiaoping. A segment on the C17 124 Philippines begs for more scenes from Cory Aquino's 1986 revolution C17 125 that toppled Ferdinand Marcos; an episode about Indonesian leader C17 126 Sukarno (described by a comrade as "a combination of George C17 127 Washington and Clark Gable") inexplicably says nothing C17 128 about the thousands of leftists murdered in the 1965 military coup C17 129 - one of the darkest chapters of Asian history. And it could use C17 130 more about the underside of the Japanese miracle - the stock-market C17 131 scandals, the bursting of the real-estate bubble. But what's C17 132 striking are themes and, above all, images: a shabby crowd at a C17 133 Tokyo fashion show in 1960, poised between memories of abject C17 134 poverty and dreams of prosperity. And in a tacky video from the C17 135 People's Republic, a young woman sings: "Hurry up 1997/ C17 136 Then I can go to Hong Kong/ Come soon 1997/ I want to have a wild C17 137 time." Moments like that one poignantly capture the C17 138 yearnings of a region still new to affluence and democracy.

C17 139 C17 140 Playing with Paradox

C17 141 Director of the moment: Canada's Robert Lepage

C17 142 SCOTT SULLIVAN in Paris

C17 143 A plain white sheet: behind it, the spectral outline of C17 144 the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis rolls up its sleeve and ties off a C17 145 vein in its forearm. Looming stage left, a giant hypodermic syringe C17 146 aims itself at the inside of the jazzman-junkie's elbow, C17 147 strikes - and ejaculates a jet of liquid across the sheet. C17 148 Blackout.

C17 149 Few stage directors would dare mount such a scene. Fewer still C17 150 could bring it off. But for Robert Lepage, a 35-year-old French C17 151 Canadian who is captivating audiences across Europe, the Miles C17 152 Davis sketch is all in an evening's work. All his productions C17 153 abound in wit, surprises and unlikely combinations. When he stages C17 154 Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' he has the Capulets speak C17 155 English, the Montagues Canadian French. When he presents a murder C17 156 mystery situated in Quebec, the action takes place before the C17 157 Berlin wall. In Lepage's 'Coriolanus,' the playing area consists of C17 158 a 6-by-16-foot window; when the hero rises to address his C17 159 countrymen, his head vanishes from view. In several productions, C17 160 the hero flies overhead on wires.

C17 161 A few critics tax Lepage with superficiality. But the vast C17 162 majority see him as the brightest new star in the Western C17 163 theatrical firmament. Not since the early 1970s - when the American C17 164 renegade Bob Wilson first mesmerized European theatergoers with his C17 165 slow-motion stage magic - has a director made more waves. Already C17 166 this season Lepage has presented five plays at the prestigious C17 167 Autumn Festival in Paris. This week he is directing 'Needles and C17 168 Opium' at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Last summer he C17 169 created a dazzling 'Midsummer Night's Dream' at London's National C17 170 Theatre. He works in Frankfurt and Munich this winter, then returns C17 171 to his Th<*_>e-acute<*/><*_>a-circ<*/>tre Rep<*_>e-grave<*/>re in C17 172 Quebec. Already, European critics are classing Lepage with the C17 173 great theatrical innovators of the late 20th century: Wilson, Peter C17 174 Brook, Peter Stein and Patrice Ch<*_>e-acute<*/>reau.

C17 175 He is a somewhat unlikely candidate for such adulation. A C17 176 painstaking minimalist who uses small casts and deliberately C17 177 limited stage spaces, Lepage implicitly rejects the lavishness of C17 178 most postmodernist productions. More than that, he sees himself as C17 179 an intensely local phenomenon. He is a C17 180 Qu<*_>e-acute<*/>b<*_>e-acute<*/>cois patriot, wedded to the C17 181 archaic (sometimes even incomprehensible) French of the province. C17 182 But Lepage has turned his apparent limitations into C17 183 real-life assets. He crowds his tiny stages with C17 184 psychological and physical action. And he studs his texts with C17 185 brash cultural allusions - from Leonardo da Vinci to Jean-Paul C17 186 Sartre to the East German secret police - which he treats with the C17 187 infective enthusiasm of a provincial who has just come up to C17 188 town.

C17 189 "Modern theater people never stop talking about C17 190 communication," says Lepage. "They've forgotten C17 191 that the main point is communion." To knit his audiences C17 192 into theatrical congregations, he uses every trick in the book - C17 193 from cinematic subtitles to flashbacks to full frontal nudity - C17 194 plus some he has invented himself. "Audiences today have C17 195 learned everything from television," Lepage points out. C17 196 "Because of the TV and even the VCR, I can permit myself C17 197 all kinds of gimmicks that were off-limits ten years ago." C17 198 There is a certain slightly unfinished quality about some of C17 199 Lepage's work. But he defends even that quality on interesting C17 200 theoretical grounds. "If the images are too C17 201 perfect," he argues, "you forget you are at the C17 202 theater. You might as well be sitting at the movies with your C17 203 girlfriend."

C17 204 Nobody who attends a Lepage performance will confuse it with a C17 205 movie. "Polygraph," one of the plays he presented in Paris C17 206 this fall, follows (and pokes fun at) the conventions of the C17 207 B-movie thriller: the sinister detective in a snap-brim hat, the C17 208 unconventional femme fatale, the tense meetings on subway C17 209 platforms. But Lepage transforms this familiar material, chops it C17 210 up into quick, punchy episodes, sows his trail with false clues, C17 211 blends the central plot with themes from Shakespeare ('Hamlet,' C17 212 mostly). In the end, the raw material is transmuted into a C17 213 challenging puzzle about human guilt, responsibility and C17 214 punishment. The murderer is never identified.

C17 215 Lepage is a searcher, a ransacker of European culture, which, C17 216 he points out, his native Canada so acutely lacks. Two of his plays C17 217 - 'Vinci' and 'Needles and Opium' - are renderings of his own C17 218 experiences as a provincial on the Old Continent. He searches out C17 219 the hotel room where Jean-Paul Sartre once lived and wrote.

C17 220 C17 221