Book Reviews

The River Sorrow by Craig Holden Delacort, 384 pages, $21.95 Reviewed by Jamie Agnew Owner of Aunt Agatha's, a mystery and true crime book store.

We're starting to get a fair number of authors to come to Aunt Agatha's for signings, and I try to make it a practice to read their books. Needless to say, this is easier with some authors than with others. In the case of Craig Holden's "The River Sorrow" it was truly my pleasure, although "reading" doesn't really seem to be the right word to describe the experience. You don't just read a thriller this good. You experience it like a ride at the carnival or (more to the point) a dose of some wicked drug.

"The River Sorrow" is the story of Adrian Lancaster, a doctor in the small (fictional) Michigan community of Morgantown, who finds his crooked junkie past inexplicably returning to haunt his straight present. When he finds himself implicated in the violent deaths of various druggies, he decides that, in order to exorcise this buried but not dead part of his life, he has to go back underground to the hell strangely shot with heaven, that he hoped he had left forever. Add a good cop with a bad wardrobe, small town and big city politics, designer drugs of deadly potency, heroin heroines and mysterious psycho-killers to the mix, and the consumer knows he or she is n for one-hell-of-a-trip.

Holden's supposed aim was to crank out a potboiler for some chump change, but he found out that it's as hard for a good writer to produce a trashy book (witness Faulkner's "Sanctuary") as it is for a trashy writer to write a good book. If you wanted to get "lit-crit" about it, you could even say that there's a subtext here about a generation still trying to come to terms with the tide of drugs it loosed upon the land.

Despite four years of re-writing and the guidance of the estimable James Ellroy, there are still a few small flaws remaining from this original conception - mostly the stock characterizations of the beginning and the tad-too-clever twists of the end. Largely, however, this is a seamless and compelling ride up that old River Sorrow to the terminal called the heart of darkness, reminiscent of Robert Stone, as much as the usual pantheon of guy crime novelists. l'm not the only one predicting a great future for Craig Holden, and probably won't be the only one cradling my signed, first-edition of "The River Sorrow" as if it were something very precious indeed. (Author Craig Holden will be signing at Aunt Agatha's on Saturday, December 10 from 12:30 to 2 pm.)

PHILOSOPHY What is Philosophy? By Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Columbia University Press, 253 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Lou Hillman

In 1992, Felix Guattari died at the age of 62, thus ending a 20-year experiment with GiIles Deleuza. Their four books utilized their experimental mode of writing called "assemblage"- which in its very making was multivocal. Guattari was a non-philosopher, a psychotherapist whose major focus was the analysis of the social institution. Deleuze was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris until his retirement in 1987. Their experimental collaboration has been described as ". . .an essential relationship with a NO.... Philosophy needs a non-philosophy that comprehends it; it needs a nonphilosophical comprehension just as art needs nonart and science needs nonscience."

This "essential relationship," this in-between, was the space Deleuze and Guattari found so productive. In "Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature" they explore the in-between of Kafka's writing by discussing him as a Jew living in Prague, writing German prose. In "Anti-Oedipus" the authors move between the triangulation of psychoanalysis and the schizophrenia of postmodern capitalism. "A Thousand Plateaus" multiplies relationships to an exponential factor. There they discuss political economy and science, social psychology and art theory, Nietzsche and Marx, Bergson and Foucalt, Castaneda and Reich, and "black holes" and "white walls."

Now in "What is Philosophy?" the writers stay with philosophy, science and art; their relationships and differences and their possibilities as creative activity.

In an earlier work, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the reader "sample" their text as one would sample a record or CD: turn to the chapters that "grab" you; skip over the others. The same holds true for this book. The writers are "doing''philosophy as they explain themselves; they are using terms as they make them. This mode of production makes for an eccentric writing style, which may explain why some readers have difficulty with it.

In the introduction to "What is Philosophy?," the writers take aim at the "simulacrum" and provide us with its greatest rival: pedagogy. The history of Western thought is presented as a territory or "plane" upon which concepts connect and overlap. The creation of concepts extends the plane, allowing thought to move. It is the pedagogy of the conditions of the possibility of the concept - its creation - which provide us with the ability to differentiate between concept and say, advertising.

But "doing" thought in this way, say the authors, has its dangers. It doesn't make for good state employees, soldiers or labor slaves. Providing people with thinking tools for tearing holes in the clichés of contemporary communications can only have a transgressive effect Still, to every warning, Deleuze and Guattari add their trademark humor. From the drawings of Descartes' "cogito" to the brilliant, final chapter on "Chaos and the Brain," the writers blend an intense intellectual rigor with an "impossible joy" which perhaps, only creative acts can produce. As a final contribution to their experiment "What is Philosophy?" shows not only the value of experimenting, but the productivity of collaboration.

COMMUNICATIONS   Pounding Nails In The Floor With My Forehead By Eric Bogosian Theatre Communications Group, 82 pgs., $8.95 Reviewed by Tyler Hewitt Staff member at Tower Records/Video/Books.

Eric Bogosian is an actor-performance artist from New York, best known for his work in the film "Talk Radio," and for a performance on the PBS series "Alive From Off Center." "Pounding Nails In The Floor With My Forehead" is his fifth work for solo theatre, and like most of his solo work consists of several monologues, which are unrelated but linked thematically.

The theme that Bogosian has chosen for this piece is life in contemporary America - an America of greed, fear, and hypocrisy. Through his rapid-paced, occasionally unpleasant, and often confrontational works, he reveals a nation of people unconsciously obsessed with creating a layer of insulation between themselves and the rest of society. Narcissism, materialism, religious fanaticism, and substance abuse are presented as distancing factors- methods that people use to avoid thinking, feeling, caring about others less fortúnate than they are. Bogosian places his characters in m to upperclass urban and suburban settings. By doing this, he reveals some of the real, hidden motivators behind the American drive for success, and places it within a familiar context. Those people that seem completely unable to see beyond the small, protected worlds they have built around themselves could very well be us, or someone we know.

Bogosian's work is interesting and enjoyable because the overall dark thematic content is paired with a biting sense of humor and a rapid-fire delivery. On stage, Bogosian jumps from one monologue to another, pausing only briefly to assume a different character. In book form, the pieces are 10 pages or shorter in length, with an immediacy that makes the reading go very quickly. The humor in this work ranges from dark social satire to sharp parody and makes its presence known on almost every page.

"Pounding Nails In The Roor With My Forehead" is a breath-taking look at the subconscious of the American public. It's funny, frightening, sometimes disturbing, and perhaps more revealing than we would like it to be.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE The Chinese Siamese Cat By Amy Tan Illustrated by Gretchen Shields Macmillan, 30 pages, $16.95 Reviewed by Mark Warshaw & Victoria Watt

Have you ever wondered how the Chinese Siamese cat came into being? Amy Tan's "The Chinese Siamese Cat" answers that question. In this charming story, the mother cat, Ming Miao tells her five kittens the tale of their cat ancestors. It began a thousand cat lives ago with Sagwa, the first Chinese Siamese cat.

Mama Miao and Baba Miao were the cats of the Foolish Magistrate, who was foolish because he only made laws which benefitted himself and hurt others. Mama and Baba Miao's first involvement with the Foolish Magistrate's awful laws began when he started using their tails as pens. As he wrote more and more proclamations, two things happened: their tails became permanently stained black from the ink and they learned how to write without his guiding hand.

One day Mama and Baba Miao were summoned to the Foolish Magistrate's office to write a new law against singing. The Magistrate believed that if people sang while they worked, they could not possibly be working hard enough. Sagwa, Mama and Baba Miao's playful kitten, was napping high on a bookshelf when she overheard her parents lamenting the unfairness of the new law, and decided to follow them and tell them, "We're not helpless. We can change the world." But as she jumped down from her hiding place, she landed right in the ink pot. As she wiped ink from her nose and paws, she changed the course both of the Magistrate's rule and of the people he had so long tormented. Her independence and spirit gained all Chinese cats an honored place in the Magistrate's house and also a new look. From that day forward Chinese cats all had dark faces, ears, paws, and tails.

If you'd like to find out how Sagwa changed so much with a single, determined act, check out this superbly written and beautifully illustrated book. Each page is filled with intricate drawings and decorative Chinese borders. We love this book for its lively telling of a tale of origins and for its focus on a small but powerful character. "The Chinese Siamese Cat" is a great choice for reading aloud to kids - as much fun for the reader as for the listener.