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Books: October 25, 1995
A Family's UnravelingAn attempted suicide leads to a brother's investigation of his countercultural pastTHE AGE OF CONSENT Geoffrey Wolff '60 Alfred A. Knopf, $22 GEOFFREY WOLFF, best known for The Duke of Deception (Vintage Books, 1990), a memoir about his con-artist father, has written a disturbing new novel about trust betrayed and the rub between dreams and reality. The Age of Consent centers on the Jenks family, who fled the rat race of New York City in the late 1960s for a utopian, countercultural community called Blackberry Mountain, in the Adirondacks. But under the strain of the pull between idealism and realism, the Jenkses "come unraveled like a cheap quilt." The book opens with a cataclysmic event (which occurs after the family has lived in the community for more than 10 years): On Independence Day in front of friends and family, Maisie, the smart, tough 15-year-old daughter of Jinx and Ann Jenks, deliberately peels off her black swimsuit and plunges headfirst from a boulder into a shallow swimming hole 40 feet below. Among the spectators to this near-fatal swan dive is her horrified and adoring 13-year-old brother, Teddy. Through his sister's protracted recovery, he tries to make sense not only of her calculated act but also of "what happened to his family. He wants to understand." All inquiries about the Jenkses and Blackberry Mountain lead back to Doc Halliday, the community's charismatic founder and "guru." Teddy's investigation lasts about 10 years. He pursues his research doggedly and the complex relationship between Doc and members of the Jenks family. Wolff's tone is faintly elegiac but sober. Although the story includes several topics hot on the talk-show circuits-incest and child abuse-The Age of Consent is not an attempt to capitalize on tabloid subjects. Instead, it is a dignified and thought-provoking examination of the maturation process of two gratifyingly complex children in an extraordinary period of recent history. -Heller McAlpin '77 Heller McAlpin is a novelist and critic who lives in New York City.
Finding Work in CyberspaceFINDING A JOB ON THE INTERNETAlfred '72 and Emily Glossbrenner McGraw-Hill, $16.95 paper MAKING MONEY ON THE INTERNET Alfred '72 and Emily Glossbrenner McGraw-Hill, $19.95 paper ALFRED and Emily Glossbrenner's books on the Internet read like American Automobile Association tour guides. Finding a Job on the Internet and Making Money on the Internet combine useful travel tips, buying guides, and maps to the global computer network, along with some unsubtle plugs for a variety of commercial and noncommercial products. Both computer neophytes and expert surfers will find the two guides useful. Educating them about the Internet is probably the most useful contribution these two books make to readers' search for jobs and customers. About half of each book describes the whats, hows, wheres, and whys of computer connectivity. The authors define basic technical terms, give advice on equipment and software, and offer their opinions on what matters and what doesn't. Sidebars to the main text offer specific tips: where to look for job listings, how to post a résumé, who to call for Internet access, and how to send E-mail to customers automatically. Those looking only for a map that will lead them straight to jobs or customers should probably pass on Finding a Job and Making Money. But since no such road maps yet exist for the Internet, these two books may be the next best thing. -Paul Hagar '91
A Modern-Day Huckleberry FinnRULE OF THE BONERussell Banks (humanities and creative writing professor) HarperCollins, $22 BOY, would Senator Bob Dole be upset by Russell Banks's latest novel, his 12th in an oeuvre that focuses largely on America's dispossessed. Oh, what has become of today's youth? And where are the parents who are supposed to care? Banks's narrator, 14-year-old Chappie, a.k.a. Bone, who has already been compared to Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield by other critics, sports a mohawk haircut, a tattoo, and a nose-ring, smokes dope, and listens to heavy metal, grunge, and gangsta rap. Sexually abused by his stepfather since he was seven, but unable to make his mother understand, he gets thrown out of his immobilized mobile home in Au Sable, New York, when he pilfers his grandmother's antique coin collection to finance his taste for weed. He becomes "just another homeless northcountry mall rat dodging the cops and copping a J now and then and spare-changing my way from day to day," until his adventures lead him through several eye-opening experiences. Banks has captured the voice of his tough, sensible, sage, and often funny narrator with near-perfect pitch. It's a complex moral universe Bone is trying to work out, and he draws fine distinctions between dealing and stealing, and between pilfering from straights and from thieves. Banks's Rule of the Bone is wicked sad and startling, but also wicked funny, touching, and-Dole, please take note-even somewhat hopeful. -Heller McAlpin '77
Books ReceivedA WINTER IN THE SUNBill Robinson '39 Sheridan House, $17.95 paper CHAOS THEORY IN PSYCHOLOGY Albert R. Gilgen '52 and Frederick David Abraham, eds. Praeger Publishers, $75 cloth, $29.95 paper ROY'S RULES: GUIDELINES FOR SOLID BUSINESS SUCCESS AND A GREAT LIFE Herb Henderson '52 and Roy Jacobson Business Focus Press, P.O. Box 822, Dubois, WY 82513. $14.95 paper COMPUTER GRAPHICS FOR DESIGN, FROM ALGORITHMS TO AUTOCAD® Daniel B. Olfe '57 Prentice Hall / Simon & Schuster, $52 ARCHITECTS OF AFFLUENCE: THE TSUTSUMI FAMILY AND THE SEIBU-SAISON ENTERPRISES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY JAPAN Thomas R. H. Havens '61 Harvard University Press, $45 ROMANCING THE GRAIL: GENRE, SCIENCE, AND QUEST IN WOLFRAM'S PARZIVAL Arthur B. Groos, Jr. '64 Cornell University Press, $37.50 EZRA POUND & SENATOR BRONSON CUTTING: A POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE, 1930-1935 E. P. Walkiewicz and Hugh Witemeyer *66, eds. University of New Mexico Press, $50 BREAKTHROUGH LEADERSHIP: ACHIEVING ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT THROUGH HOSHIN PLANNING Mara Minerva Melum '73 and Casey Collett Orders to American Hospital Association Services, P.O. Box 92683, Chicago, IL 60675-2683. $69 paper |