ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704110021
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
BOOKMARKS
Audubon reader is a paean to the Atlantic region
Reviewed by JUSTIN ASKINS
FROM BLUE RIDGE TO BARRIER ISLANDS: AN AUDUBON NATURALIST READER.John Hopkins University Press. $29.95.
Almost all the inhabitants of the central Atlantic region have sampled its natural riches, both in person and through its many talented writers. But for a newcomer or for one who wants to savor an overview of the area, ``From Blue Ridge to Barrier Islands'' offers an enticing introduction. This volume is both historical (extending back to the 17th century) and expansive (as the jacket notes: ``these selections bring together all the outdoor experiences that have bonded people to the land: exploration, science, travel, country life, conservation, hunting, fishing'').
The 36-page introduction by Kent Minichiello presents an ample perspective on the region's history and its prose chroniclers, particularly how they have influenced one another. However, I thought it a little long-winded and was ready to dip into the selections much before I finished Minichiello's treatise. Once into the work, though, the brightness and beauty of the central Atlantic quickly took over and overcame the shadowy haze of the opening's scholarly labyrinth.
The early selections (up to 1860), including longer pieces from John Smith's ``A Map of Virginia'' and Mark Catesby's 1714 visit to the headwaters of the James, are carefully chosen and culminate in the effusive but engaging narrative of Philip Pendleton Kennedy's visit to the Blackwater River and the Canaan Valley.
From then on, the text has more examples from a number of celebrated writers, including John Burroughs' journey to Washington, D.C., a few brief excerpts from Whitman's ``Specimen Days,'' some snippets from John Muir's walk through the South and Theodore Roosevelt's memories of his Albemarle retreat.
With Rachel Carson's visit to Chincoteague, the modern perspective takes over, and the samples chosen are outstanding. The bigger names are there: Annie Dillard's darkly philosophical ``Heaven and Earth in Jest'' from ``Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,'' a first-rate section on blue crabs from William Warner's classic ``Beautiful Swimmers,'' Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher's account of Washington's natural heritage, and Edwin Way Teale's ``May at Monticello.''
And there are many lesser-known writers, full of details about the C&O Canal and the Dismal Swamp, Chesapeake marshes and Assateague Island. ``From Blue Ridge to Barrier Islands'' offers outstanding evidence of what a superb natural region we live in. Perhaps, it will prompt more action to keep it that way.
JUSTIN ASKINS-teaches English at Radford University.
Golf widow's vacation guide
Reviewed by BOB WILLIS
GOLF VACATIONS EVEN NON-GOLFERS WILL ENJOY: Southeastern United States. By Julie L. Moran. John F. Blair. $17.95.
If your spouse is a golf nut, be prepared to go on vacations near one or more courses. Be prepared, as well, to make the best of your own free time while your partner is on the links.
Julie Moran, who calls herself a golf widow, put this book together for just such couples. In its 380-some pages the golfer can find information on courses in various areas of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, including course history, name of designer and greens fees.
For each area, the nongolfer also can learn where to eat, shop, sightsee or pursue other recreation, with children if need be. For the couple or family, there also is information on a range of lodgings.
The Roanoke Valley gets brief mention for the Hanging Rock Golf Club in Salem.
BOB WILLIS is a retired associate editor of the editorial page.
Photos document seasons of Williamsburg
Reviewed by NELSON HARRIS
WILLIAMSBURG: A Seasonal Sampler. By David M. Doody and Thad W. Tate. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. $14.95.
``Williamsburg: A Seasonal Sampler'' is an oversized, lavishly printed book of photographs that documents the ``seasons of light'' of Colonial Williamsburg. The photographer, David Doody, has been capturing Williamsburg through his lens for nearly a decade. ``I've neither seen nor shot the same thing twice. Each perspective, every moment, each light, presents something new to my eye and to the lens and to the season.''
Writer and photographer have created a book that presents an old, immutable city in a new and creative light. They have concentrated on the paradox of Williamsburg's historical and contemporary place in the life of the commonwealth by trying to show anew that which is so familiar, hoping the reader will ``see things again for the first time.''
``Williamsburg'' begins with the dews of spring, flows through the gardens of summer and colors of fall, and concludes with the Colonial streets draped in the glow of Christmas lights. It sees ``the synergy of detail, time and visual rhythms that make of Williamsburg something more than a collection of buildings.''
NELSON HARRIS-is minister of Ridgewood Baptist Church.
Memories of Lee County
Reviewed by SU CLAUSON-WICKER
ROUGH SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN. By Geraldine Lawson. University Editions Inc. $8.
Fincastle writer Geraldine Lawson remembers an annual event that got everyone ``all het up'' in her Lee County hollow in the 1950s - the day Sherwin Williams came out with their new paint colors. ``It was the colors we came to see - we had no use for paint,'' she says in her semiautobiographical book, ``Rough Side of the Mountain.''
Although many would describe Lawson's Possum Holler childhood as isolated, she seems to consider it ``protected'' as she reminisces about lying contests at the general store, sleigh riding expeditions and ``trees bowing on mummy knees.''
Geraldine Lawson will sign copies of her book at Ram's Head Book Shop in Tower's Shopping Center on Saturday from noon to 3 p.m.
SU CLAUSON-WICKER is editor of Virginia Tech Magazine.
Bus is backdrop for morality play
Reviewed by RICHARD V. ANDERSON
WHITE WIDOW. By Jim Lehrer. Random House. $21.
One Saturday in July 1989, NewsHour's(this spelling is correct) Clipper, and for Lehrer the purchase was the culmination of a life-long dream.
Lehrer has had an unbroken love affair with buses. In 1992, after turning out five works of fiction, he turned to the subject of buses with his autobiography, ``A Bus of My Own,'' which ends, appropriately, with the story of his purchase of the Flxible Clipper.
``White Widow'' revisits the bus theme. It is 1956, and Jack T. Oliver and his wife live happily in Corpus Christi. Jack has a job he loves as a driver for the Great Western Trailways bus line. It was a good life until a white widow boards his bus, on a one-way ticket from Victoria to Corpus Christi. A white widow is a woman traveling alone who can change the course of a driver's life - not always for the best.
In this novel, Lehrer goes back to the landscape of his youth, skillfully capturing life as it was along the Texas Gulf Coast in the years following the end of World War II. He enables us to share the limited universe of the people who lived there, to appreciate their patterns of speech and to feel the salt air coming in off the Gulf.
``White Widow'' is not a typical morality play. Oliver's fantasies do not plunge him into degradation; his fall is more insidious. Yet at the end there is a rousing moment of triumph and a hint of redemption. The story is well-crafted and believable; real people fill the pages.
Jack Oliver represents the zenith in Lehrer's development of characters. To delve into the troubled soul of a love-struck Everyman, read ``White Widow.''
RICHARD ANDERSON lives in Lexington.
SCIENCE-NATURE BRIEFS
Reviewed by JAMES C. MORRIS
DARWIN'S BLACK BOX. By Michael J. Behe. The Free Press. $25.
Michael Behe, a Lehigh University associate professor of biochemistry, is unhappy with Darwin and evolution. He resurrects an old argument that dates back to Darwin's time and cloaks it in more modern garb.
Behe denies he is a Creationist. He says most animal biochemical activities are simply too complicated (``irreducible complexity'') to have evolved. Blood clotting or vision with an eye, for example, could only really function in the final, perfected step, and he thinks intermediate stages cannot be logical. This chain of thought long ago became a non-issue for the main flow of biology.
How science really functions cannot be gleaned from Behe's method of argument. For example, four pages are devoted to an examination of textbook indexes. What is going on here?
He also ridicules modern science's inability to answer difficult questions - perhaps, the reason is simply that they are difficult. Behe supports and argues for a fairly recent offshoot of Creationism that travels under the flag of the more palatable sounding ``intellectual design'' movement.
The author writes: ``For the Darwinian theory of evolution to be true, it has to account for the molecular structure of life. It is the purpose of this book to show that it does not.''
The book does not, and Behe does not.
JAMES C. MORRIS is a Roanoke physician.
Reviewed by SIDNEY BARRITT
THE WOMAN AND THE APE. By Peter Hoeg. Translated by Barbara Haveland. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $23.
A strange ship of animal smugglers sails up the Thames to London. It founders under unusual circumstances, and a large ape escapes, only to be wounded and eventually conveyed to the garden conservatory of Adam, a famous British zoologist. We are led to believe that the ape might be a newly discovered species, a finding that would cap the zoologist's career.
Enter Madeleine, Adam's wife, a woman who spends her days arranging furniture and playing tennis and is more in love with alcohol than with her husband. Odd events and mysterious experiments pique her interest, and she puts aside the sauce to investigate. The ape, named Erasmus, can speak. Madeleine begins to regard him with affection and soon facilitates his escape. They flee to a country game preserve and there become lovers.
This is weird stuff!
How will the author maintain the tone, and where will he take this odd couple? Unfortunately, the story just about collapses at this point. The vibrant prose with some truly brilliant passages loses its luster, and the story comes to a very conventional science-fiction ending.
Peter Hoeg had better success several years ago with ``Smila's Sense of Snow,'' which, for my tastes, was beguiling to the end. He has only half succeeded here.
SIDNEY BARRITT is a Roanoke physician.
Hopper's Treetop Adventure. By Marcus Pfister. North-South Books. $15.95.
Bunnies celebrate spring Reviewed by Mary Ann Johnson
Marcus Pfister is a favorite with younf children and their parents. His book "The Rainbow Fish" has sold more than 2 million copies. "Hopper's Treetop Adventure" is not as colorful, but that is by design.
This very simple story about a rabbit who hunts for hazelnuts in spring, is made winsome by soft, predominantly blue and brown watercolor illustrations. The tale celebrates the end of winter while its soft focus makes it welcome company at the end of the day.
Mary Ann Johnson is book page editor.
LENGTH: Long : 212 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. A character portrayingby CNBThomas Jefferson, second governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia,
surveys his spring garden at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg.
color.