DTH Omnibus Page 11
Thursday October 26, 1989
BOOKS
Best Sellers
Fiction
1 . Clear and Present Danger
Tom Clancy
2. Pillars of the Earth
KenFollett
3. California Gold
John Jakes
4. Jimmy Stewart and His Poems
Jimmy Stewart
5. Oldest Living Confederate
Widow Tells All
Allan Gurganus
6. The Lost Years
J. M. Dillard
7. The Minotaur
Stephen Coonts
8. The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
Nonfiction
1. All I Really Need to Know I
Learned in Kindergarten
Robert Fulghum
2. Roseanne
Roseanne Ban
3. I Was On Fire When I Lay Down
On It
Robert Fulghum
4. Among Schoolchildren
Tracy Kidder
5. It's Always Something
Gilda Radner
6. A Brief History of Time
Stephen W. Hawking
7. I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to
Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise
Erma Bombeck
8. Confessions of an S.O.B.
AINeuharth
New York Times
The books we
review are
provided
courtesy of
the Bull's
Head
Bookshop,
located in the Student Stores
Laureate explores cultural decay
The Bellarosa
Connection
by Saul Bellow
Penguin Books
$6.95
ooooo
Ed Bonahue
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N:
ear the beginning of World
War II, Harry Fonstein es
caped the Nazi pogroms in
Poland and somehow reached Rome.
While working as an interpreter for
Mussolini's son-in-law, he was ar
rested and held for deportation by
the SS. His Italian jailer freed him
unexpectedly, however, and con
nected him with secret transporta
tion to America. Their code word
was "Billy Rose," or Bellarosa.
This much is given at the outset
of The Bellarosa Connection, a brief
yet substantial examination of cul
tural memory and American values.
The short book, Saul Bellow's sec
ond novella since More Die of Heart'
break (1987), exemplifies in mini
ature the writing style that has helped
Bellow become one of the finest
contemporary American novelists.
Bellow received the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1976.
Harry Fonstein did make it to
America, eventually marrying and
becoming a highly successful inven
tor and businessman. However, the
story of Fonstein's liberation and
immigration takes place before The
Bellarosa Connection begins. The pres
ent action of the novella lies with a
nameless narrator, who is himself the
child of immigrant Russian Jews and
the founder of the Mnemosyne In
stitute, a successful business for train
ing "executives, politicians and
members of the defense establish
ment" in the correct and efficient
use of memory.
"Memory is life" is the thought
that preoccupies this anonymous
character as he recalls all his past
dealings with the Fonsteins. In the
narrator's memories and meditations,
Bellow has found a way to layer his
tory on top of the present, allowing
the narrator (and the reader) to rec
ognize and reflect on important dif
ferences between two distinct worlds:
the older world of traditional Euro
pean Values, and the contemporary
world of the American upper-middle
class, in which traditional values seem
to be subject to erosion and decay.
Fonstein is part of the older world.
He is a serious-minded Middle Euro
pean refugee who, despite his finan
cial success in America, maintains
links with his past. "Fonstein, for all
his Jermyn Street boots and Itali
anate suits, was still the man who
had buried his mother in Venice"
during their flight from Poland. The
narrator, on the other hand, serves
as the epitome of "American pueril
ity .. . nothing in his head but froth."
The narrator has largely lost touch
with his heritage, marrying a Protes
tant woman "who knew everything
there was to know about 18th-century
furniture."
The contrasting values of these two
abstract worlds collide most obviously
in Bellow's characterization of Billy
Rose, the famous Jewish Broadway
producer whose secret organization
smuggled Fonstein out of Europe.
Rose, as Bellow constructs him,
"was as spattered as a Jackson Pol
lock painting, and among the main
trickles was his Jewishness . . . The
God of his fathers still mattered."
Despite his heritage, however, Rose
is supremely American, a fast-talking
entrepeneur of glitz. His most
revealing trait is that he has no de
sire to meet the persons he liberated,
and actually tries to avoid them.
When Fonstein's wife, Sorella,
manages to force a meeting between
herself and Rose, Rose attempts to
explain why he refuses to meet Fon
stein himself. "I have to keep down
the number of relationships and
contacts. What I did for you, take it
and welcome, but spare me the rela
tionship." To the degree that Fon
stein retains and Rose discards their
shared heritage, the two characters
exist as polar opposites. Rose says,
"Remember, forget what's the dif
ference to me? . . . this is one of a
trillion incidents in a life like mine.
Why should I recollect it?'
Significantly, Bellow portrays this
avoidance of contact, this inability
or hesitancy to let oneself be touched
by others, as a trait acquired by
Americans, "some kind of change in
the descendants of immigrants in this
country." He takes several opportu
nities to associate both Rose and the
narrator with things American, in
cluding George Washington's Fare
well Address and 20th century pop
culture. Bellow does not inquire what
it is about life in these United States
that causes one to forget the past,
and for some readers, the avoidance
of this question may be a shortcom
ing. Instead, he dwells on the changes
time works on geography and pain
fully observes the American meta
morphosis of values, noting that holy
days sacred to previous generations
have become hollow intentions:
"that's what the Passover phenome
non is now it never comes to
pass." Bellow points' out that Amer
ica has no holy cities, but engenders
' a different sort of shrine, "New York
for money, Washington for power or
Las Vegas attracting people by the
millions."
Although the narrator and almost
all of Bellarosa's characters are Jew
ish, Bellow's discussion of cultural
memory is fundamentally relevant to
all readers, especially those of immi
grant stock. The book also seems to
ask if reconciliation is possible. Are
the traditional values of immigrants
always subject to American moral
decay? "The Jews could survive eve
rything Europe threw at them. I mean
the lucky remnant. But now comes
the next test America. Can they
hold their ground, or will the U.S.A.
be too much for them?"
Restated, Bellow seems to ask if
ethnic traditions and values can sur
vive in American society without
being significantly diluted. In this
light, Fonstein assumes some kind of
heroic status as a figure who main
tains his cultural identity, who "could
assimilate now without converting.
You didn't have to choose between
Jehovah and Jesus."
Readers new to Bellow may occa
sionally experience frustration with
the Nobel laureate's prose. The Bel
larosa narrator, following in a tradi
tion of intellectual protagonists, take
an extremely analytical view of
human feelings and relationships; at
times the emotional content of the
work is buried under a mountain of
analysis.
Further, the meandering narrator
refuses to reveal past events chrono
logically; instead, he alternately jumps
ahead, giving us hints of what is to
come, and lags back in the past, fill
ing in details omitted earlier. Using
language that is rich in references to
history and literature, ranging from
Shakespeare quotations to modern
slang, Bellow gives a sense not only
of where American literature has
been, but also of where it momentar
ily rests, a combination entirely ap
propriate for his new work.
Cape Cod trio struggles through tourist season
Summer People
by Marge Piercy
Summit Books
$19.95
Mi
eshed in a triangle of love, secrets
and unconditional belonging, Willie,
. Susan and Dinah are the exciting main
characters in Marge Piercy's action-packed new
novel Summer People. Through a delightful
weaving of the annual summer visitors with
the lives of these three unique individuals,
Piercy creates a down-to-earth story spiked with
just a bit of fantasy.
The story explores the once-controversial
relationship among Susan, Willie and Dinah,
artists living together in a small Cape Cod
beach community. The three go through eve
rything together: love, heartbreak, loss, jeal
ousy, change and the summer people.
The three characters receive the seasonal
migration of summer visitors to their town
with three very different attitudes. Dinah re
sents their presence, and she feels that they in
trude on her otherwise constant world. Susan
can't wait for summer to come, so she can once
again mingle and mix with the high-class, high
rolling vacationers. Willie is somewhere in the
middle. He makes money from renovating their
summer homes, but he could do without the
people themselves.
The plot of the novel revolves around the
trio's interactions with the summer tourists
and the changes each experiences after the va
cationers leave.
As she flips back and forth between the
subject of each chapter, Piercy gives the reader
a concentrated glimpse into the mind and life
of Willie, Susan and Dinah. Chapters are told
from one of the three's point of views, offering
a frequent change in perspective and narra
tive. The only drawback is the never-ending de
scriptions. After Piercy elaborates on some
thing for an entire page, the reader finds him
self looking back, trying to remember just what
it was she was describing. Take, for example,
this quote: "Susan and Willie and Dinah were
like family, like aunts or uncles who could fix
what went wrong here, who knew what to do
when you had friends looking for a summer
rental or a baby-sitter or an au pair girl, when
you required the roof repaired or the pump
fixed" (Now exactly who did exactly what???).
Although Summer People fits the form of a
400-page Harlequin Romance, it is an inter
esting book. Piercy is successful in capturing
the struggles of real people as they strive to
reach personal satisfaction, happiness and
meaning in life. Susanne George
What the Ratings Mean
O lame
OO just O.K.
OOO workable
OOCO quite good
OOOOO excellent
s oi ca co e m
D E CD U EL E
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