Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991 TAG: 9102270037
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A brief announcement, rather than a full-length review, will have to suffice for the third volume of this series, as it did for the first two books.
Editor Irv Broughton is familiar to many local readers through his magazine, The Mill Mountain Review and his many connections to Hollins College. Many of the authors he interviews are friends. The local angle is even stronger in this book than it was in the first two. Fred Chappell, Richard Dillard, Henry Taylor and Lee Smith are among Broughton's subjects. They talk about their work, their lives, their ambitions and the people and books and films that have influenced them.
Judging strictly by the interviews with people I know, these were comfortable conversations. The interviewer was not looking for controversy or conflict. He lets the writers speak for themselves and, where it's appropriate, he lets them read or quote from their own works. In short, he doesn't try to change these voices. - MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
The Fourth K. By Mario Puzo. Random House. $22.
Maybe people read Puzo's novels because they keep hoping to find another one like "The Godfather." I can't think of any other reason.
They won't, in any case, be encouraged by this conglomeration of Kennedys, terrorists, Arab monarchs, muddled professors and calculating American politicians. Puzo should probably get some sort of prize, though, for cramming in more hackneyed attempts at entertainment per page than anything since "Laugh-In." Not that there is anything funny or even uplifting here. Puzo's people are figures from "Bat Man" posters more than characters. He tries for solemnity by putting Michael Kennedy, a fictional nephew of the late president, in the White House, but this Kennedy is cruel, cold and uninteresting, and he is surrounded by timidity, temerity and cupidity that make the terrorists look pure.
The only good guy in the book seems to be the pope, but he is murdered on Page 51, so even his appearance may be deceiving. - TOM SHAFFER
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. By William Styron. Random House.
$15.95.
On Nov. 27, 1990, this newspaper ran a feature on Prozac, a new anti-depressant medication that has been both praised as a wonder drug and damned as an executioner. The article was calm, rational and well-balanced. The author gave hearing to those who had been saved and to those whose plight had worsened.
It was a fine, well-crafted feature, but what stood out from the page was not the author's workmanlike prose. He wisely included three quotations from Styron's memoir and these were the highlights of the article.
Styron is celebrated in American letters as the author of "Lie Down in Darkness," "Sophie's Choice" and other works. Five years ago, after forswearing alcohol, an old friend and writing companion, and burdened by dissatisfaction with his writing, Styron slipped gradually into a depression that brought him to the brink of suicide. Now restored to life and writing with his accustomed vigor, he takes his readers back on that same trip.
"To most of us who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression," he writes. Not so for Styron. He does not lack for words and he has found full expression here. His short account is music, not a paean but a dirge, worthy to memorials of human anguish. This book should be required reading for anyone who has suffered through a friend's or loved one's doubt and darkness. - SIDNEY BARRITT
Breaking the Mind Barrier. By Todd Siler. Simon and Schuster. $24.95.
This is a difficult book to review. I consider myself well- read and of at least average intelligence. I read the jacket notes from Harvard and MIT academicians praising "Breaking the Mind Barrier." I studied at one of those institutions myself. Still, I don't understand why I can't make head or tail of this book.
Todd Siler is trying to formulate a unified theory of how the mind relates to the universe around it. I can't follow his reasoning. How the academicians at Harvard and MIT can follow the reasoning escapes me, but then they are academicians at Harvard and MIT. A unified view of the mind/universe interface may be useful, but this book does not give me the road map. I must admit I couldn't understand the special theory of relativity as described by Albert Einstein, either. The blindness may be mine. - LARRY SHIELD
by CNB