Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203080285
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In 1986, Frank Levering and Wanda Urbanska waved good-bye to Los Angeles and moved themselves to Carroll County.
Their friends thought they were crazy. What would a couple of Harvard graduates find to do out there in Appalachia?
What Levering and Urbanska hoped to do was take over the Levering family orchard and thereby find happiness. For, despite successful writing careers, these two "thirty-somethings" felt consumed by unrewarding work. "Simple Living" chronicles the first five years of their search for a simpler, more meaningful life.
These authors aren't back-to-the-earth, live-in-harmony-with-little-animals ideologues. They're clear-eyed, modern realists. One of their first goals has been to retire their orchard's debt. Nor are they judgmental ascetics. For them "simple living" has involved second-hand furniture, recycling bins and a used car; but also chemical fertilizers, computer terminals and a dishwasher. The boundaries around "simple" must be set, they insist, individually.
So, drawing on Urbanska's considerable experience as a journalist, they've interviewed other "simple-lifers" all over the country about their simple lives. They've patched the interviews together with their own experiences.
Unfortunately, the resulting book is neither a report on a cultural phenomenon (there's no phenomenon to report - unless you count "recession chic"), nor a completely personal memoir. In fact, not until the last chapters, when the authors finally address fully the Quakerism and family ties that lie at the heart of their decision, does "Simple Living" move with any force.
Through most of the book I chafed at the inconclusive juxtaposition of personal anecdote and interview, at the authors' underlying assumption that economic choices such as their own are equally open to all, at the awkward "Frank . . . Wanda . . . we" voice they've constructed for their dual authorship and, most especially, at the whiffs of carpetbagger that kept floating through their text - phrases such as "backwater culture of Appalachia" and such notions as "No longer could we let ourselves off the hook about recycling . . . by rationalizing that . . . these progressive ideas hadn't found their way here."
Oh, well. What's well-known common sense here in Virginia's backwater may, indeed, surprise and delight folks back in LA. And the book's illustrations are lovely.
Monty S. Leitch has a memoir-essay due in the Fall '92 issue of Shenandoah.
by CNB