Page Four V HE MICHIGAN DAILY SLinday, Mgrch 23, 19 0 PageFourIHEMICHGAN AIL ~jnoy, arc Z3,P.I 2 Readings TUES. 18th: ANDREI CODRESCU This is not an all-day.read- ina. When we know the exact time, we will announce it in the store. FRI. Z1st-3 P.M. SHARON LEITER The lady will be readinq by permission of "The Bailiff of Time." SCI-FI CLASSIC a Trout' BOOKS HOCUS-POCUS More, magic from 'VenUS: Out of obscurity 529 E. LIBERTY 663-8441 .663-8452 Gardner 4 STORIES AND TALES, by John Gardner. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 323 pp., $8.95. .. U We Work Harder to Save You Money ! VALUABLE COUPON ANY LARGE ONE ITEM PIZZA only $3.00 Tax Included Offer Expires Sun., March 23rd MR.PIZZA FREE DELIVERY 769-8030 REMEMBER When You Order Your Pizza on Sunday Night, We Have Ten Drivers to Get Your Pizza to You in 30 Minutes!l I 1 Undergraduate Political Science Assoc. Counseling Service COME IN ... 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday WE'LL TRY AND HELP VENUS ON THE HALF- SHELL by Kilgore Trout, New York: Dell Paperbacks, 95c, 204 pages. By DON KUBIT LISTEN: Simon Wagstaff has one terrible fault. He asks questions no one can answer. In the past this habit would have qualified Simon for residence in a loony bin. But this is the future. Any- thing can happen. And does. Simon Wagstaff is an immor- tal Earthman. He is famous throughout the universe. He is known as the Space Wanderer. He is the hero of a TV series shown on at least a million planets. His exploits are the subject of Venus on the Half-Shell, a novel by Kilgore Trout, part-time science fiction writer and for- mer stock clerk at a trading stamp redemption center. 9TROUT HAS a cult following. Some of his fans are famous people. More on that later. The Space Wanderer's adven- ture begins when Earth is de- stroyed by a mysterious flood in 3069. Simon is the only hu- man survivor. Everyone else dies. So it goes. Simon finds an abandoned Chinese spaceship and decides to travel the universe until he finds the answers to his ques- tions. He befriends a Doberman pinscher. The dog is not space- ship-broken and Simon has to spent a lot of time cleaning the shit off of everything. They be- come friends anyway. At one point in the story, the dog saves Simon's life thus suggesting that the adage about man's best friend may indeed be true. Simon also picks up with Chworktap, a female robot. Al- though originally programmed as a slave, an accident jiggled her circuits and she escaped. Chworktap is much smarter than Simon. They fall in love anyway. After a while, Chworktap re- LOOK FOR THIS SYMBOL it could be your opportunity to be part of the mnost exciting assemblage of people in history i cording to a scientist from Tral-v famadore, only Earthlings wvorry jIJOHN GARDNER'S new col- about free will. Simon is rot lection of stories is a tour seeking absolute freedom. He of the jungle with gun, cam- merely wants the chance to be era and kaleidoscope. We are' free within life's limitations and - taken through literal and meta- those impositions the Creator and distributed them a dirty physical r a i n forests; some-1 of the Universe puts on man. book stores. times the author trots with us Consequently, Trout's prse! like a loyal Indian guide, otherI {IMON IS an atheist. This has often been linked with or- times he skips forward to leave does not prevent him from nography. Nothing could bc fur- us agog and agrope among the praying when he gets into some ther from the truth. There is snakey vines - all of this lead-' tight jams. His primal question no explicit sex in Treut's fic- ing, we must surmise, to a mag- is "Why are we born only to tion. Most ofit is about a tragic ical clearing in which stands suffer and die?" failure to communicate. Gardner's vision of the truth. As it says in The First Book According to an avid ' liout We weave through the shadows,, of Bokonon, God left the answer fan, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 'What startled by strange beasts' to that question for man to Trout has in common witn por- floating eyes (Gardner's beasts decide. nography isn't sex, but anta- all have at least three eyes) Simon tap dances through the sies of an impossibly hospitale enthralled by brilliant skyward universe. He learns +hat it is' oworld.'' imagery that flashes betweenI world."rtoas the tough old trees of the au- far easier to ask questions than ' What Trout does is to desribe tho g ld trechnique to answer them. He visits many an appalling society (not unlike thor s literary techniques. planets. Although many of them his own) and tries to suggest But when we get to the last are technologically advanced, ways to improve it. 'he best page, we know three things for, their inhabitants have the r ame f way being uncritical love. sure: (1) We have not arrived human problems as cavemen.' at the fabled clearing; (2) We i x i E E t i I turns to her former planet to free other slaves. Simon con- tinues his quest for answers. Love ends. So it goes. Simon thinks a lot about de- termination and free will-ac- By DAN BIDDLE . " jungle His use of the language, deepened by his knowledge of Old and Middle English, sparks the hopes of those among us who feared that the world has simply run out of clever things to do with prose. The book is divided in sections, and the five tales in "The Midnight Reader" s m a c k violently of Poe's premature burials, shuddering castles and deaths in amontil- lado storages. A cyclone rips across the Illinois plain in "The Ravages of Spring", making "trees burst to life with the shudder of an infant first suck- ing in air;" white sycamores burst "through the emerald green forest like heart attacks and above us the thunderheads loaded and flickering with light- ning like a dying man's brain." There is a definite ether of Mann or Kafka in these very anatomical descriptions; later the protagonist mounts a porch "slippery as flesh" from the! "blood-dark rain" - and if that isn't Shakespearean enough for? vou, the man's horse is named: Shakespeare. THE LITERARY muscle- flexing does not end there: in the final novella from which the collection gets its name, the: crew of an old New England whaler laugh "like jackals off the Syrian coast" without so much as an apology to Homer or Joyce. Gardner is just plain adept with this sort of stuff, although he tends toward ex- hibitionism more generally as- sociated with older, cruistier al'thors: almost at the end of this final tale, he throws cai- tion and suspension of reader disbelief to the winds by arbuot- l\ -gffirming the existence of "I, John Gardner, the man that, with thedhep of Poe and Mel- rille arid manyak.other men, wrote this book." 6618 HAVEN HALL a ....... Progress doesn't always mnake life easier. THE CITIZENS of e v e r y planet Simon lands on arej repulsed by his odor. There are: many theories in the universe as to why Earthlings smell so bad. The most accepted one isI that psychology affects physol- ogy. Earthmen stink because' their ethics stink. Simon finally gets the an, ver' to his question when he lands on the most advanced planet in the universe. The residents of Clerum-Gowph were the ones who flooded Earth. They de- stroyed the planet to save it from Earthlings. The answer to Simon's ques- tion is provided by an elephant- sized cockroach, named Bingc, who is a friend of It. It. Bingo tells Simon, created the uni-, verse. Bingo's explanation teaches Simon that if the questions don't make sense, chances axe; good the answers won't either.M FVERY'r1ING equals c-u si the end. Although Kilgore Trout is a prolific writer, his work has al- ways been at the mercy of an indiscriminate publisher wh.> at- tached lurid covers to his novels ELIOT ROSEWATER, the only known owner of a complete Trout library, has called him' "the greatest wirter alive today . . . this society's greatest prophet." Trout's writing style is often' hideous. What is important are1 his ideas and imagination. What htretdristlthe truh have the distinct impression of passing it several times; and (3) our guide's wizardy has so; befuddled and befogged us as . to open the possibility that the, clearing is a moving target - that on John Gardner's multi- lingual treasure map, "X" does not necessarily mark the spot. "NEIL SIMON'S BEST PLAY YET. A JOY. A LOVELY PLAY, EXTRAORDINARILY FUN-' NY."-Clive Barnes, N.Y. Times EDDIE BRACKEN ARNY FREEMAN a state which does not alwaysTHE TREASURE HUNT, lend itself to high Lrerary nonetheless, is a reader's standards. dream. The King's Indian is the' latest in Gardner's remarkable Venus on the Half-Shell is apriertn f mgntve puppet show. Like most science- proliferation of imaginative fiction it gives readers a chance prose and poetry (five books to e-nvntthemselves and 'he and one major epic poem in .six' to re-inventtemin.d years), and like his two major world they live in. novels, The Sunlight Dialogues Venus is the first Trout n novel sTeSnih ilge to enjoy mass circulation It is (1972) and Nickel Mountain bound to increase his foilowirg (1973), this new, richly illus- The publication of Venus jia trated collection is not the per- Thefected vision to which he clear- day that will go down in his-IV strives. But at the fresh age tory. But then every d goes of 43, this very American nov-t down in history. elist's vast potential is demon- jT HAS BEEN said that laugh-' strated in his latest imperfect: ter is often the only remedy work. for the bitter disappointments In Gardner we sense the of Truth. There is a lot of Truth I emergence of a Merlin the Ma- in Venus on the Half-Shell. gician to equal or exceed Faulk- Poo-tee-weet. ner and translate Joyce from Dublin to southern Illinois, but as yet the young alchemist is Don Kubit is a frequent con- still testing his elements in odd1 tributor to the Books Page. proportions in his search for molten gold. God knows the1 elements are there, though. As in the novels, Gardner hits his highest heights with a parade I, of fine imagery that began in The Sunlight Dialogues and struts boldly through the nine "Stories and Tales" of Indian. I close. to that clearing in which his truths stand. N i c k e l Mountain, so softspoken and pastoral after the first book's hurricane violence, seemed al- most a retreat from the jungle, a prayer that the clearing need only be imagined and never attained. In The King's Indian, I sense indecision: From an au- thor who undoubtedly will someday write a great Ameri- can novel comes a book filled with other writer's pathways -albeit brilliant explored - and lighthearted jousts with the reader's resistance to the sup- ernatural. In the midst of all this - cy- clones and armored knights, preachers and hippies, monks and whores, Mississippi flim- flam men storm-toss'd with an- cient mariners, magic prin- cesses and evil scientists - there is too much dialogue and not enough sunlight; too many half-hearted stags at philoso- phy. And there are two few of the noble characters who pos- sessed the reader in his earlier books. PUT I SUPPOSE it's only a matter of time. Read this book, for it will outwit you, scare you to death and laugh you back to life. You may soon live in tense anticipation of the day when Gardner rolls up all his tricks in one big triple- decker masterpiece. He will make you stand by the door, as he might say, stamping and snorting like a horse seeking shelter from the wind-whipped night. Meanwhile, read this odd collection and keep an eye out for three-eyed beasts. Dan Biddle recently retired fron his position as Editor-in- Chief of the Michigan Daily. Have a flair for artistic wr;tinq? If you are interest- ed in reviewing poetry, and music or writing feature stories a b o u t the drama, dance, film arts: Contact Arts Edit %r, c/o The MichiganDiy NCIL LMON3 scwCOXiEDT Here the trickerv becomes tronvhlesome. Granted, the ma- nimNlation of narrators and snir-' its in the novella is so remark- able that a little reassurance is almost necessary, but Gardner nroceeds to declare the bookl "not a child's top . . . a col- lage: a celebration," to the en- liuhtenment of no one. This may be his key flaw: he has not vet found a consistent nath between the understatemnt and the sledgehammer, be- tween comnlex symbolism and pure arcanerv for the fun of it. In the Sunlight Dialogues. Gardner's incredibly rich and ambitious allegory of socialj conflict in a small American town, he came agonizingly -I r p yGi ti " \ I / \ I / Adlkk-" N'dolk"', \\ MARCH 28-29, 1975 POWER CENTER (Eves. 8:00 p.m., Sun Mat. 3:00 p.m.) U-M PROFESSIONAL THEATRE PROGRAM Advance Ticket Sales-PTP Box Office in the Mendelssohn Lobby, 764-0450 4Aflcg-QnQQo ich 80 r, _- . . ----_ _- Ia DINNER SPECIAL TODAY COQ AU VIN (chicken cooked in wine) 13.60 The WORLD'S FAIR HAS ARRIVED! BY THE University of Michiqan Foreiqn Student Association FOOD, MUSIC, DISPLAYS from "ll over the world FRIDAY: 6 p.m.-midnight SATURDAY: noon-midnight SUNDAY: noon-6 p.m. North Campus Commons Admission: $1 Adults 75c Children VARIETY SHOW 50c for everyone FRIDAY: 7 & 9 p.m. SATURDAY: 3 & 7 p.m. SUNDAY: 2 & 4 p.m. Information: International Center-764-9310 I Sun.-Wed. 11-9 Thurs.-Sat. 11-1 a.m. I It I I i U, q ii How To Do Your Own Seder Workshop SUN., MARCH 23 2:00 p.m. HILLEL-1429 Hill 663-3336 I COLLOQUIUM { GET HIGH THIS SUMMER why not fly for MARCH 24 8:00 p.m. MARCH 26 4:00 p.m. MARCH 27 4:00 p.m. MARCH 29-30 8:00 p.m. APRIL 1 8:00 p.m. MARCH 25-30 7 and 9 p.m. ORIGINS OF SURREALISM MICHEL BENAMOU SURREALISM IN LITERATURE PAUL ILIE, ROY NELSON, INGO SEIDLER, MARK ZIMMERMAN SURREALISM AND THE VISUAL ARTS DIANE KIRKPATRICK, MARVIN FELHEIM "ELEPHANTS ARE CONTAGIOUS" SURREALISTIC DRAMA, LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE BY MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF PRODUCTION AND DIRECTION OF CONTEMPORARY DRAMA AND THE READERS' THEATER DIRECTORS: PAUL HUSTOLES, LARRY HARBISON, JAMES MAMMARELLA, RON CRI BBS, RICHARD HAAS (also Coordinator) APRIL 1 SURREAL CONCEIVED AND PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF H.A. 676 CONCURRENT EVENTS: SURREALISTIC FILM FESTIVAL Rackham Amphitheater Rackham Amphitheater Rackham Amphitheater Rackham Amphitheater Rackham Amphitheater Auditorium A -Angell Hall I I T AIL ARL Trans-World Airlines is now hiring stewards and stewardesses for summer employment. A TWA represntative will be on campus at Kuenzel Lounge, Michigan Union, on Monday, March 24 and Tuesday, March 25 to discuss seasonal employment opportunities. We will hold briefings every hour on the hour, 10-6 p.m., to describe the job to you and to answer your questions. SOS--Help Us -Help Students OFFICE OF STUDENT SERVICES STUDENT PROGRAMS A Resource Committee for Student Organizational Services (S.O.S.) is being created. The Resource Committee is to be composed of 9 members; 5 students and 4 faculty. S.O.S. is composed of several offices which work with student groups: the Educational Innovation Advocate; the Human Sexuality (Gay) Advo- cates; the Organizationl Development Coordinator; Student Organization Business Services*; and the Women's Program Coordinator. The Resource Committee will help the S.O.S. director and staff mem- bers to identify the needs of students. suaaest programs and services, and ,