ARTS

The Michigan Daily
*BY JAYPIK
DID you know that unquenchable fires really do burn
"just underneath the surface of the earth in Ohio," due
to a strike in 1910 when miners set coal seams ablaze?
No? Then check out the facts, cleverly caught in the
web of fiction Charles Baxter weaves through his short
story, "Gryphon," in his latest collection,Through The
Safety Net.
"Gryphon" concerns an elementary school teacher
who tells her students incredible-sounding stories
which are actually true, including the story of the Ohio
fire (which, ironically, the New York Times Review
of Books claimed was false, only to be refuted by a
reader's letter).
Like "Gryphon"'s teacher, Wayne State University
professor Baxter believes in nourishing readers with
facts rather than the empty calories of meaningless
words.
"The point of fiction," says Baxter, "is not to
satisfy your characters. It is to bring some truth... to
illuminate it and make it moving to the reader."
Baxter illustrates this point by leaving us hanging
at the conclusion of "Stained Glass," a story inspired
by an article on a man's murder of his ex-girlfriend.
Baxter's own "insecure, obsessive Bobby," tries to win
back his lover, "Donna," by making her a stained-glass
replica of herself.
Baxter's understanding that readers need a "real

Thursday, January 19, 1989

Fact

or

fIction?

'The point of fiction,'

says

Ann Arbor author

Charles Baxter, 'is not to satisfy your charac-
ters. It is to bring some truth... to illuminate it
and make it moving to the reader.'

Page 7
Faulkner, Albert Camus, and Malcolm Lawrey. His
comments on today's authors raise disturbing
questions about a possible trend toward blind
unawareness.
Baxter's work first hit the bookshelves with the
poetry collection South Dakota Guidebook in 1974.
Later Baxter kicked into fiction with short stories i
Harmony of the World in 1984. His first novel First
Light, was published in 1988.
Baxter feels his writer's voice has grown through
the years. Although his first works were characterized
by a "tricked-up" style, Baxter now describes himself
as communicating a "straightforward sort of
simplicity." He plans on publishing two more books
within the year, one featuring short stories and the
other poetry.
Baxter,who first came to Ann Arbor in 1974 "for
the movies," spends "about four hours a day" writing
in his "book-lined" study. His other pleasures include
music, skiing, skating, and traveling to where he is
invited to read.
"Anytime I'm headed north I feel I'm headed in the
right direction," he adds.
CHARLES BAXTER will read from his works today,
at 5 p.m., in the East Conference Room, Rackham as
part of the Visiting Writers' Series sponsored by the
English Department.

subject" is shown through "Shelter," inspired by the
homeless he encounters pacing Liberty and Stadium
streets. His placing of stories in towns reflective of
those familiar to him, like hometown Excelsior,
Minnesota or Pinconning, Michigan, shows his strong
sense of place.
"They are towns in which people act in a way I
understand," he added.
Readers benefit from Baxter's productive usage of
first-hand experience in "Snow," which appeared in the
September 1988 issue of the Atlantic. This tale
originated from Baxter's childhood vision of a tow
truck hoisting a car out of icy Lake Minnetonka.
But Baxter tries not to dwell self-righteously in his
knowledge or experience.

"You don't want art to be a splatter-film," he said,
"You get bored with your own problems and
obsessions. As I writer I am interested in
watching...the spectrum of character."
Baxter's undergraduate education at Macalester
College in St. Paul, Minnesota, shows his attempt to
be, "as Henry James said, 'a person on whom nothing
is lost."' He "sampled the smorgasbord," taking
everything from sociology to music. Specializing in
American literature and Modernism, he received his
Ph.D. from New York State University in Buffalo,
"before the blizzards." He recently fullfilled an adjunct
professorship, teaching graduate fiction writing
workshops at the University.
In his youth, he particularly enjoyed William


I I

A Vision of Light
By Judith Merkle Riley
Delacorte Press/$19.95

To Dance with Kings
SBy Rosalind Laker
Doubleday/$ 18.95
An unfortunate fact of history is
that the overwhelming majority of
people who participated in and af-
fected great events were male. Only
-~ T
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ATHLETICS
MICHIGAN
CHEERLEADING
MASS MEETING
Thursday, January 19
Crisler Arena, 6 pm

in recent years have historians begun
to unearth stories of important
women and of what women's lives
were like in the not-so-distant past.
Historical novels, although not
nearly as scientific, provide a livelier
and more interesting perspective on
the lives of our ancestors than does
orthodox history. Two new novels
in the genre, A Vision of Light and
To Dance with Kings, are written
both by and about women. These
books, set in two different periods,
tell the stories of women who were
not satisfied with their given roles
and succeeded in making more of
their lives.
A Vision of Light is by far the
lighter and less worldly of the two
novels. Set in Chaucerian London,
the story is about Margaret, the wife
of a wealthy merchant, who has
gone through many adventures and
trials to reach her secure position.
Thinking the story of her life to be
worth telling, the illiterate Margaret
hires a monk, Gregory, who is un-
able to find employment within a
church or monastery, to be her
scribe.
Like everyone else but Margaret
in 14th-century England, Gregory is
no feminist, and he scoffs at the idea
of a woman being capable of any
thought other than the parroting of
domestic lore. Starvation is some-
where in the near future for him,
though, and since Margaret's aged
and indulgent husband pays well,
Gregory agrees to the job. The
narrative takes the form of a long
chapter of Margaret's life followed
by the interaction between her and
Gregory as he attempts to lecture her
on a woman's "proper" role.
Margaret's life is deeply reli-
gious; much more so than the en-
veloping story. The complete lack
of skepticism with which people of
this period viewed Christianity is
portrayed very well in Riley's novel.
Margaret has a gift from God; after
being one of only two people in her

village to survive the Black Plague,
she has a vision while praying in an
empty church. This gives her the
power to heal the wounds of others,
which she uses in her later career as
a midwife.
What gives A Vision of Light
more credibility than most historical
novels is the serious attention Gre-
gory gives Margaret's claim. It is
amusing to twentieth-century readers
but at the same time it is very be-
lievable and not at all overdone. This
additional side of the story more than
makes up for the absurd plot twist
near the end after Margaret's interac-
tions with Gregory begin to take up
more and more of the narrative.
To Dance with Kings, which at
six hundred pages of small print is
twice as long as the other, shows
much more detail in the lives of
both aristocracy and peasants in its
period than does A Vision of Light.
It is set in Versailles of the late 17th
and early 18th centuries, from the
time when Louis XIV began to
transform the sleepy village into the
palace we know today until late in
the life of Louis XV.
The story is of a series of mother-
daughter relationships and how each
succeeding woman gets closer to the
court of the King; the granddaughter
Jasmin is a childhood friend of the
young Louis. Each woman is will-
ful enough to be considered head-
strong and each is obsessed with
love in a different form. There is
exquisite detail of everyday life in
France of that time, from the ways
in which the servants interact, to the
way food is preserved and prepared,
to the laws of inheritance and mar-
riage.
What the story misses most,
See History, Page 8

Su Friedrich's Damned If You Don't, featuring Peggy Healey and Ela Troyano, is one of
the films to be presented in the First Annual Yon Barna Memorial Symposium on Avant-
Garde Cinema.

Avantgarde,
BY MA RK SHAIMAN be displayed tonight
BYMAK_.__iiti months to come, at t]
JUST what is avant-garde cin- nual Yon Barna Me
ema? The question is quite similar posium on Avant-Gar
to the one you always hear in En- Yes, that's a m
glish classes: "What is a poem?" what you'll actually1
Of course, the answer can only be a feast for your eye
found by reading through a bunch going to be the kind
of poems and figuring it out for you would find at B
yourself. The same is true for even the Foreign Fil
avant-garde cinema; however, your local video st
while you can go to a bookstore these films are a
and get a few volumes of poetry, everything you are u
it's not so easy to get access to a Storylines are no long
variety of avant-garde films. and the world is pr
At least not until now. Thanks the subjective view
to the Program in Film and Video filmmaker. The avan
Studies, avant-garde films largely pressive, challen
unavailable to the public due to perceptions of the"
their non-commercial nature will Simply, it makes yoi

apres
t, and in the effect rarely
the First An- Hollywood.
morial Sym- Yon Barr
rde Cinema. film festiva
outhful, but major body
be getting is far from H
.s. This isn't - in Ruman
of stuff that and directed
riarwood, or and televisi
Lm section at emigrating
ore. Instead, to find relig
reaction to dom. A no
sed to seeing. author, he U
ger narrative, and historyi
esented from the U.S., an
point of the death in P
t-garde is ex- primarily a
ging your the English
"real" world. the Universi
u think - an S

tout
caused by a product of
na, in whose honor the
al is named, did the
of his work almost as
ollywood as possible
nia. There he produced
d more than 100 films
on productions before
to the U. S. in 1971
ious and artistic free-
ted film scholar and
aught film production
in Israel, Canada, and
d from 1974 until his
976 he taught film,
'ant-garde cinema, for
Department here at
ty.
ee Avant, Page 8

ml I

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I

EPSILON

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