Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309140329
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If you've ever fantasized about running away from conventional society to live the artist's life, you'd do well to first read "Bohemia." Author Herbert Gold, a longtime resident of such Bohemian enclaves as Greenwich Village, South Beach in Miami and San Francisco's North Beach, paints a dispiriting portrait of life in Bohemia. His book, a traveller's guide to artsy communities in America, Europe, Israel and elsewhere shows that Bohemians consist in the main of flaky seekers, lunatics and muddleheaded idealists.
Bohemia does, Gold says, offer a safe haven to artists seeking asylum from social obligations. But authentic writers, poets, painters, actors, photographers and musicians are rare in Bohemia. Most Bohemians are wannabees who posture as artists but produce nothing, wasting their lives in drug addiction and numberless affairs, and succumbing, eventually, to the futility of a community that has no values aside from eccentricity.
Gold's message is that life in Bohemia is an attempt to escape the human condition; and like all such attempts, it is doomed to failure. So if you want to paint, write or compose, you might as well do it at home.
- ROBERT RIVENBARK
THE HAMMER OF GOD. By Arthur C. Clarke. Bantam Books. $19.95.
An asteroid hurtling toward Earth that could send the human race the way of the dinosaurs would be enough of a story by itself for most authors - and has been for writers like Philip Wylie ("When Worlds Collide") to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven ("Lucifer's Hammer") and William Rotsler ("Shiva Descending").
It was plot enough for Arthur C. Clarke, too, when Clarke was commissioned to write a 400-word story for Time Magazine giving readers a snapshot of life in the next millennium. But Clarke has now expanded that into a novel, throwing off other ideas like sparks from a Fourth of July firecracker.
Examples: a new religion sweeping the world, Chrislam, with its roots in what Christian American soldiers learned about Islam and brought home with them from Desert Storm; the extension of life so that people remain active for a century or more; the colonization of Mars; Olympic competitions on the moon; memories that can not only be re-experienced on virtual-reality demand, but even improved by editing . . .
Such casual versatility is not new to anyone who has been reading Clarke in such books as "Childhood's End," "Sands of Mars," "2001: a Space Odyssey," or "Rendezvous with Rama," or who might know that he came up with the idea for the communications satellite decades before the real thing. His characters are not that deep; they are used mainly to give substance to Clarke's concepts of future possibilities. But this one book is enough of an idea factory to keep other writers busy for years.
At one time, Clarke - who is well-known for his science-fact books like "The Exploration of Space" - thought about giving up fiction. It would be our loss if he had.
- PAUL DELLINGER
Crow and Weasel. By Barry Lopez. Illustrations by Tom Pohrt. HarperPerennial. $12 (trade paper).
This a reprint of a North Point Press edition of what the jacket notes describe as an "... allegory of hope." I guess my mind is to unimaginative. All I see is a compilation of grandiloquent prose held together by glorious illustrations of American Indian regalia. The story describes a journey of two young Indians into the unknown territory surrounding their home. They leave. The see. They gain wisdom. They return. Buy this book for the illustrations of American Indian clothing and tools. Forget the story.
- LARRY SHIELD
Robert Rivenbark is a Blacksburg writer.\ Paul Dellinger covers Southwest Virginia and Pulaski for this newspaper.\ Larry Shield trains dogs and horses in Franklin County.
by CNB