Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103060035
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Everyone interested in the decoration and design of the Art Deco period will find something interesting in this book. It combines a literate and informative text with nicely reproduced samples of some of the representative paintings the movement produced - not only in England and the United States, as it turns out, but in France, Russia, Italy and elsewhere. The influence first seen in applied art, from which Art Deco drew its name, spread to serious painting, and the result was a school of art little grouped and studied as a movement in itself. Here is a fine introduction. - PAXTON DAVIS
Age of Iron. By J.M. Coetzee. Random House. $18.95.
Coetzee is no gentle writer. He remains steadfast to the harsh truths of his subject. In this short book he effectively presents the South African struggle in the guise of an old woman dying of cancer.
The action is direct but the underpinnings are complex; the story is allegorical to the extent that it serves as a textbook of apartheid. More important than its symbolism is its depth of emotion; it is a cry of conscience, a raging against "the men who created these times," a call for heroism, a plea for caring.
Coetzee's images confront us with discomforting realities. With writing as potent as a police concussion grenade, he heralds the age of iron when strong-hearted black youth rise to face the challenges of the country, and compassionate whites endure pain to keep their souls alive. - MARY ANN JOHNSON
The Spirit of the Blue Light. By Marianna Mayer. MacMillan. $15.95.
Marianna Mayer shares another fairy tale with children in "The Spirit of the Blue Light." The classic theme that a pure heart and true love will win over injustice is carried out by Michael, the youth who finds the blue light deep inside the White Mountain. Fairy-tale lovers will delight in the way Michael wins his princess and learns the true identity of the Spirit. As sure as little girls still believe in magic and still dream of a prince who will rescue them, they will enjoy this retelling of an old German story.
- SARA ZEEK
The Yellow Gardenia. By Anthony Mancini. Donald I. Fine. $18.95.
Mancini combines reams of old newsroom jokes with a remarkably clever style to tell a story about hoodlums and newspaper people in the 1920s of New York.
One reporter parries the old charge that reporters are not really writers with a line from Joe Liebling, who said he "wrote faster than anyone who wrote better and better than anyone who wrote faster."
An old reporter pokes at the pretension of a beginner who asks how to spell "erstwhile": "F-o-r-m-e-r," the veteran says. His motto is, "Avoid cliches like the plague." The veteran is John Joseph Callahan. In covering organized crime he becomes almost as much of a crook as the objects of his reporting. "Maybe I corrupt myself," he says, "but I try not to do it to others. And I don't corrupt our institutions." Callahan, like the politicians and lawyers he scoffs at, fools himself on the last part of that. His end is disaster but because he holds on to a few ideals along the way, it is also ironic, in the best sense of the word - tragic as well as funny. - TOM SHAFFER
by CNB