Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9412020016
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Paul Auster. Viking. $21.95.
Paul Auster's new novel, "Mr. Vertigo," moves quickly. By the top of page two, Master Yehudi, the great and mysterious Hungarian wizard, has made his promise to the young orphan, Walter Rawley: "If I haven't taught you to fly by your thirteenth birthday, you can chop off my head with an axe."
It really isn't giving anything away to say that, rather than decapitate Yehudi, Walter becomes the levitating "Walt the Wonder Boy," initially a Depression-era fairground attraction and, eventually, a vaudeville star competing for headline space against fellow aviator, Charles Lindbergh. Everything is going great for the kid, at least until his evil Uncle Slim steps into the picture.
"Mr. Vertigo" is an unhappy adult fable, with comedy and tragedy facing off a little unevenly for center stage. In some ways, the book is like a dark version of Woody Allen's "Zelig," and, in other ways, it's like a friendlier, PG-13 version of Peter Straub's ultra-bizarre horror novel "Shadowland."
As he has done in his previous novels, Auster manages to take wildly unlikely plots, craft self-consciously goofy dialogue, borrow some of modern fiction's most glaring cliches, and mix everything into a whole that can stand as unique and interesting literature. Though not as inventive, nor as carefully concluded as "City of Glass" or "The Music of Chance," "Mr. Vertigo," is still an imaginative, entertaining and more accessible book which serves as a good introduction to a writer who hasn't really gotten the attention he deserves.
- NEIL HARVEY
Once Upon a Telephone.
By Ellen Stern and Emily Gwathmey. Harcourt, Brace Price. $27.95.
Subtitled "An illustrated social history," this small work (for a coffee table book) uses pictures, original text, pictures, quoted text from personalities ranging from Helen Gurley Brown to Sidney Biddle Barrows to Russell Baker, and more pictures to trace the development and impact of the telephone on society. Anyone who has had a dinner interrupted by the University of Illinois soliciting funds, some obscure bank in North Dakota hoping to pad itsr balance sheet with more revolving debt, or some charity trying to flog dish towels understands that impact is too mild a term. Unfortunately, no advice is offered for just letting the ringing phone remain unanswered. Trust me, no federal or state law is broken by just ignoring the ring. It builds character.
- LARRY SHIELD
Death Dream.
By Ben Bova. Bantam Books. $22.95.
Ben Bova's imagination has provided new slants on many areas of scientific inquiry in such novels as "Mars," "Cyberbooks," ``The Weathermakers" and others among his nearly 40 works of fiction. In "Death Dream," he tackles virtual reality and - as with all the other subjects covered - takes it several levels into the future.
Dan Santorini has been hired to help create a virtual reality theme park in Florida, implementing the far-out ideas of computer nerd Jace Lowrey with whom he worked on an Air Force virtual reality flight training simulator. But he find Jace and his various new bosses playing for higher stakes than entertainment; they have their own agendas, ranging from using their gadgetry for private sex games to influencing government at the highest levels (imagine VR as a briefing tool for the president, if you were programming it).
Dan finds that not only he but his wife and children are at risk in this fast-moving cyber-mystery, which raises such questions as whether it is murder when someone dies because a false reality is made too intense, or whether it is rape when the victim experiences the assault mentally but not physically. As always, Bova is raising tough questions about technology that could be just around the corner and getting uncomfortably close. Now is a good time to consider them, and a suspenseful techno-thriller isn't a bad way to do it.
- PAUL DELLINGER
Neil Harvey lives in Blacksburg.
Larry Shield trains dogs and horses in Franklin County.
by CNB