Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9407310004
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by MARIE S. BEAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Arianna Huffington, born in Greece and educated at Cambridge, is the wife of California Congressman (and Senatorial candidate) Michael Huffington. She is the author of five books and is the host of her own live television talk show, "Critical Mass.
She defines "The Fourth Instinct" as "the instinct for meaning, transcendence, wholeness and truth." The other three (for survival, sexual satisfaction, status, power) she contends link us to the past and lead, by themselves, to dead ends. This is a thoughtful book, but it was written for a popular market. The author avoids the hard questions of linguistics and theology, dismissing them as things people don't want to hear. Some critical religious terminology is treated in an almost off-hand manner. The book is catalogued under "spirituality," but a reader hoping for guidance in spiritual growth will be disappointed.
Huffington concurs with the opinion that there is "overwhelming" evidence for the disintegration of American culture. The Fourth Instinct, she believes, is "the force within us all that urges us on beyond faith, to understanding, knowledge and the actual experience of this power to transform ourselves and our world when it is translated into values, priorities and behavior." She thus reduces a powerful and profound concept to a utilitarian plank in a platform for social change.
"The Fourth Instinct" is not about the call of the soul so much as it is about Arianna Huffington's call to America. She is part of a growing and notable company of Americans who are lifting their voices against moral decline and who are unapologetically crusading for a recovery of the ideals of decency and virtue. They have struck a raw nerve in the body politic. The book will likely enjoy a wide readership.
\ The Whipping Boy. By Speer Morgan. Houghton-Mifflin. $21.
Speer Morgan teaches writing at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He is also a writer of considerable skill. "The Whipping Boy," his fourth novel, is set in the Oklahoma Territory, 1894. The central character is Jake Jaycox, an aging hardware salesman who has taken a handsome half-Indian teen-ager, Tom Freshour, under his wing. Attaching herself to this pair is Samantha King, a beautiful woman with a mysterious past and even more mysterious plans.
Using an assortment of strongly drawn characters, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, and a collection of riveting events, Morgan constructs a story that keeps the reader turning the pages. His prose is straightforward, lucid and deceptively simple. This is not a run-of-the-mill Western. Morgan effectively demythologizes popular conceptions of the settling of the Oklahoma Territory.\ Marie S. Bean is a retired college chaplain.
by CNB