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Nighttouch
A "nighttouch" is a disturbing message from
the unconscious during a dream or night
mare. It is like hearing "a whistler in the
graveyard" — frightening, yet entiling.
Xightlimeh (St. Martin's. $5.95) is also one
of the finest and most bizarre literary an
thologies of the year. Kditors Gerry
Goldberg, Stephen Stomschuk. and Fred
Corberr have arranged five chapters of ter
rifying prose, poetry, and pictures to corre
spond with the five stages of nightmare. In a
typical nightmare, they tell us, a dreamer is
plunged into an extremely threatening situa
tion, is overwhelmed by dread, makes futile
attempts to escape, is paralyzed by fear, and.
at last, temporarily eludes the nightmare,
awakening in a cold sweat.
Kach chilling chapter is framed by quota
tions from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Kxcerpts
from the psychiatric writings of Freud and
Jung, as well as quotations from the dark
journals of H P. (.ovecraft, provide a cold
blooded appositive to each chapter. Science
fiction and horror stories by Poe, Guy de
Maupassant, Theodore Sturgeon and others,
pull the reader into the realm of nightmare.
The Rod Serling classic, “The Monsters Are
Due on Maple Street," is appended with his
closing narration from The Twilight Zone. In
telligence and taste are displayed in the selec
tion of poetry by Philip Lamantia. Mark
Strand, led Hughes, and Louise Bogan, to
name a few. Black-and-white stills from The
Mole People, (In (.'hien Andalou (yes, the razor
and the eye), Nosferatu, The lUrewolf of London,
et al., provide the appropriate dark and
foreboding atmosphere.
Kafla said “a hook should serve as the axe
for the frozen sea within us.“ Sighttmuh is an
axe in motion. For the unwilling reader, for
those who close their eyes al honor movies, it
is frightening, exhilarating, and only to be
opened in broad daylight. For those who try
to go hack to sleep after a bad dream, this
hook should f>e kept on the night stand
Richard Jones
More Rock
Chronicles
If any conclusions are to lie drawn from the
plethora of rock histories that hit the
liookstalls in the past year, the mint obvious
is that rock has hit middle age, firmly and
squarely. B> middle age, I mean that point at
which rock is no longer underground, no
longer open to a secret society, even if that
society numbers in the millions
The histories are everywhere, and cover
everything, from volumes on punk to quick
ies on John Travolta, Shaun Cassidy and
Peter Frampton. They range from the last
word [Rolling Slone’t Illustrated History 0/ Rmk
and Roll) to the chronologically pretentious
1 Ritchie Yorke’s The Union oj Rod and Roll)
But just about the only history which ranks
as seriously comprehensive—the only set
which I would use as a reference work — is
7he Illustrated hmttl"P>dia* 0/ R»tk by Nick
Logan and Bolt Wollinden, by Brian
Case and Stan Britt and ( onnlry Munt by
Fred Dellcr and Roy Thompson (Harmony
Books, $7.% per \<4ume).
Between these three lavishly illustrated,
coflee-table-sized paperbacks, there are over
1500 separate entries, each neatly cross-
referenced so that the progress of, say, John
Gale from Velvet Underground through
Brian Eno, Nico, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop.
can be followed without need for a scorecard.
The Irooks casually list items which can drive
a writer mad in their elusiveness, like band
members at different stages of a group's de
velopment and the all-important discog-
ru|)hy
And, amazingly enough, the hooks read
well. Rather than trying to maintain a dis
tance throughout, the authors toss in the
occasional point of view, a tendency which
keeps the series from turning into a pile of
academic mush.
If there is a failing in the F.neytlopedta*, it's
also one of the series strangest strengths—
that the hooks, which are for the most part
about American phenomena, are all written
by Britishers. This leads to a tendency to
speak glowingly of groups like PF.M. and the
Pink Fairies, while Elvis Presley gets much
less space than Pink Floyd. The strength of
the Britishers, though, is that England had
come to appreciate the American under
ground long before we gringos, and this dis
tance gives our rock, jazz and country scene a
clean, fresh perspective.
Who else but a Limey, after all, would ever
s|>eak of a witless TV show like Hee Hau as “a
surprisingly young television show filled with
cornpone humor and . . a lack of sophistica
tion." Now that’s what I call genuine under
statement.
Morrill Shindler
Robots Everywhere
‘The creative act of the human intelligence is
but one in art nr in science." Jakob
Bronowski said that in 1956, expressing an
idea that's currently in vogue. An especially
copious amount of ink is getting spilled over
the "structural fit" between technology and
the humanities or arts. Onto this new and
still rather untamed frontier come Robots:
button and Preduiton by Jasia Reichardt (Pen
guin. $8.95) and The Robot Rook by Robeit
Malone (Hariourt Brace Jovanovich. $6.95).
Ms. Reichardt’s book, assembled with
much imagination and evident love, can be
called inclusive in its approach. Not satisfied
to trace the concept of the robot bark to the
1922 play R T R. by Karel Capek (which
everyone usually does), she pursues it back to
the moment when the Maker <4 Heaven and
Earth became the first to operationalize a
man-shaped mechanism. She finds rolrotics
in diverse fields of endeavor: magic, indus
trial design, charlatanry, religion, medicine,
computer science, philosophy, alchemy. Her
sources range from Descartes and the Rig-
Irda tn Zombie* of the Stratosphere and < >nofl the
Wonder Robot, who peddles picture post
cards rif himself on a (California street outside
his home museum.
Reiehardt's work is as addictive as—and
only somewhat more organized than — the
Wallace-Wallechinsky Rook 0/ Luts. The
reader is already in its grip when page 11
reports 1 homas Aquinas's alleged response
to a public greeting from Albert us Magnus's
robot. Displeased, the Learned Doctor of the
Church smashed the offending automaton to
bits. Interest is still high when on page H't
Reichardt stops to meditate on the lack of
satisfying fictional love stories involving
female humans and mechanical men.
The Robot Rook is more straightforward in
its presentation. Malone is less excitable than
Reichardt and gives short shrift to, for exam
ple, the assertions of artificial-intelligence
proponents. In his effort to s»*t forth his mate
rial logically, he tends to lapse into Psythalogy
Today language, e.g., “We have always turned
to our artists for a clear picture of who we
really are” While he will not win prizes for
feverish invention, he does succeed in integ
rating a good deal of material from populai
culture with technological information. For a
high-school textbook. Malone’s book would
lie excellent; for restless grownups, Reichardt
is the choice.
Naomi Lindstrom
The Jazz Writer
James Collier has written a serious, readable
book explaining The Making oj Jagg
(Houghton-Mifhin, $20.00) in terms of social
traditions and instrumentation, musical
conventions and individual phrasing. Full of
statements like "It’s doubtful Blind Lemon
Jefferson ever sang a major third in his
career,” the hook explains musical concepts
without lieing boring or overly academic. His
biographical research, although secondary, is
excellent, with photos I’ve never seen. Collier
also poses intriguing speculations about
jazz's cthnomusMological development, but
so easily read. A must for the serious jazz DJ
or listener, the hook, in paperback, should
become the standard text for college jazz
surveys.
The tiook is not without faults, the least iff
which is continued reference to an English
fusion guitarist, “John McGlaughlin." For
the most part Collier's research and thinking
ended five years ago. He writes off fusion too
easily. No mention is made r4 Anth<»ny Brax
ton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago or other
memlwrs of Chicago's Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians Keith
Jarrell is mentioned in passing as a protege iff
Bill Evans. Trad jazz pianist Art Hodes, an
important figure in the Dixieland Revival
Collier otherwise covers so well, goes tinmen
firmed, as dices »he magazine he edited. The
Jagg Retard
These are relatively minor points against
the 4‘<K pages that cover jazz, pre-jazz and
African music so well. Collier, a musician
himself, is to be applauded
Davt Helland
Chivalry’ Is Still
Dead
Thomas Berger’s latest. Arthur Re\. A l.fgen
dary \01el (Delarorte. $10.95), is a 500-page
joke in search of a punchline. Berger, an out
standing prose technician, ha*. more than
once had problems with his ImnAs' themes
and concepts, but the muddle he has made «4
Arthur Rex shows a real crisis of direction in
the writer’s career. What has worked most
strongly for Berger at his Irest (Little Rig Man.
Vital Part1. Sneaky People) is a mournful yet
incisive irony, delivered with genuine skill
and rendering him, in the school of humanis
tic cynicism, as a sort of thinking man's Kurt
Vonnegut. Unfortunately, Berger's sorrowful
passion has too often turned sour, his sense of
pathos surrendered to a maudlin and con
trived prose style.
An attempt to “do” the Arthurian legend
as Berger has “done” the ()ld West (with real
success) in Little Rig Man. Arthur Rex includes
all the major figures of the original epic Marie
d'Arthur, which Berger is said to have trea
sured since early childhood. One ran sym
pathize with hisdesire to make these giantsol
fiction — King Arthur. Merlin. Lancelot, the
Lady of the I.ake, el al. — real to today's
reader. The problem is they were never real
to begin with, serving instead as distinctly
two-dimensional embodiments of the chival-
ric ideal. Berger’s attempt to bring a
psychological depth to these eipher-likc
characters is at liest a misconception and at
worst a ludicrous disservice to the entire
genre iff heroic myth. While the Arthurian
age offers a w ealth of quaintness in language
and custom, to which Berger, sometimes
quite entertainingly, employs his frolicsome
word play, Arthur Rex broadly misses the
point in its unwillingness to address chivalry
and all its attendant virtues and foibles on
their own terms.
Berger spends a lot of this overwrought
hunk working in clever, if not exactly divert
ing, ribaldry and clamour, but to very little
meaningful effect. It is funny in an oddly
condescending way, which is linallv not very
funny With .fr/br Rex. Thomas Berger lias
created the literals equivalent <4 that merit
duool Three Musketeers costume comedv films
of dim lor Kir hard (.ester heavy on atmos
phere and casting hut ultimately soil at the
center, it burns itsell out from a sheer weight
of preciousness.
Oavin Saay
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