THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607220214
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: MELISSA H. GUNDEL
LENGTH: 40 lines
HOLDING ON
Dreamers Visionaries Eccentrics And Other American Heroes
DAVID ISAY AND HARVEY WANG
W.W. Norton. 216 pp. $25.
Dewey Chafin has been handling serpents in church for nearly 35 years. He has been bitten 116 times. Although his hands are crippled from the bites, Chafin, his mother and the congregants at the Church of the Lord Jesus in Jolo, W.Va., continue their snake-handling ways because the Bible, Chafin says, tells him to do so.
Chafin's story is included in David Isay and Harvey Wang's fascinating Holding On. Isay's 56 revealing essays are accompanied by Wang's wonderful black-and-white photographs.
Isay and Wang's book project took three years to complete. Originally they were going to document vanishing traditions and trades, but their focus changed to writing about ``eccentrics, visionaries, dreamers, believers: men and women in pursuit of something and holding on to that at all costs.''
One of the more interesting characters the duo ran into was Robert Shields, the author of a minute-by-minute ``uninhibited'' diary. Shields is driven by obsession and admits it. He has kept a record for the past 20 years in which he notes such oddities as the temperature on his porch and keeps such oddities as stickers from meat packages. He also records the time that he takes his medication and the number of milligrams.
Isay paints lively portraits of the secure ``Steam Train'' Maury Graham, 75, who left home at 13 to live among hobos; and of Sylvia ``Ray'' Rivera, who took solace from the streets at age 10 after his mother died and his grandmother didn't want to care for him. Rivera became a street person and a queen on New York City's 42nd Street. He recounts living in movie theaters and hotels. by CNB