The Michigan Doily - Tuesday, September 19, 1989 - Page 9 _ F Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane Houghton Mifflin/$18.95 Thomas McGuane's seventh novel is like a good canoe: solid, light, and streamlined. It will move you along along easily at a decent pace, and if you keep it in control it will really take you places. Geographically, it travels to Key West, the Yale Club of New York City, and a cattle farm in Montana. Psychologically, it voyages into McGuane's familiar waters of love and hate, commitment and betrayal. Joe Starling is a successful artist in New York until, "his love of paint and painting deepened to a kind of dumb rapture." He feels, simply, he has run out of things to paint. Rec- ognizing this, he gives it up to be- come a freelance illustrator of opera- tion manuals. He moves to Florida and soon meets Astrid, a Cuban en- chantress who rules his heart for the rest of the novel. Theirs is a unsteady union plagued by her health-food ob- ssessions and her numerous friend- ships with other men, and his mad- dening practice of what she calls "poetic detachment." Joe and Astrid share several tender moments, like when he sings "Like a Fridge over Troubled Waters" to her one night after a reconciliation which follows a long separation. More often, though, they are saying "I hate you" in voices quiet enough to really mean it. The fact is, Joe can't survive with- out Astrid. But when he steals her pink convertible and takes off with- out saying goodbye, he refuses to William Butler Yeats' wonderfully musical poetry will be presented by his son and daughter-in-law this afternoon in Rackham Auditorium. Yeats: 'Sing what- Thomas McGuane, once an undistinguished student at the University, will make his peace with Ann Arbor professors tonight at Rackham Auditorium when he reads from his new novel, Keep the Change. ever is well-made' )3Y CRAZY JANE 'THOUGH nothing could match the pleasure of the wild old wicked man himself growling through "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," we've got the next best thing: Michael Yeats and GrAinne Yeats. Michael, who has served as Chairman Irish Senate and Vice- President of the European Parlia- ment, is the son of the great ,.William Butler Yeats and will give a lecture on his father's works. Gr ainne Yeats, one of the foremost singers and harpists in Breland and Michael's wife, will be ,on hand to perform some of her father-in-law's songs and ballads. Essayist, dramatist, poet, and ,mystic, W. B. Yeats died 50 years ago, and his poetry continues to dominate the verse of this century. Poems such as "The Second Coming," "Song of the Wander- ing Aengus," and "Sailing to Byzantium" can still evoke a shudder in the loins. Rich with images from all seven heroic cen- turies of Ireland's mythic past, Yeats' poems and plays revived interest in Celtic folklore and its heros. Railing against British economic and cultural imperial- ism, he created a new Irish iden- tity for his revolutionary times. WORDS AND MUSIC IN THE WORK OF W. B. YEATS begins at 4 p.m. in the Rackham East Conference Room. The program is sponsored by the Department of English and Rackham Gradu- ate School. admit the fact to himself. "Joe was filled with a mad sense of freedom, free to eat fast food, free to sleep with a stranger. Instead of solving his problems, he had become some- one without problems, a kind of ghost," assesses McGuane. Joe Starling's dominant conflict in the novel is not merely with Astrid. It is a struggle to quit being a ghost, to be a human being with enough courage to care about and relate to others. Smitty, for example, his al- coholic uncle who faces a jail sen- tence for an insurance scam involv- ing rotten seafood, laughs when he tells Joe that his father never liked him. Joe has been patient with the abuse but "he was weary of trying to understand Smitty. He had just seen a child abusers' support group on tele- vision. It seemed society didn't un- derstand their need to beat children. It was getting harder and harder to be understanding." Without ever shaking things around to much - remember, this is a canoe ride and not an amusement park adventure - McGuane gets it across that Joe wins the struggle. He finds a way to feel compassion for even the most intolerable of his fel- low men. Of course, the small men- tal victory doesn't turn his life around like winning the lottery might. But there is, indeed, a ray of hope at the end of this novel that ut- terly convinces. With change to spare. -Mark Swartz GE T IT! -- The Personal Column MICHIGAN DAILY CLASSIFIED ADS J Our way L i ~1,t 1.a L '3 P I FINISH Mpse Wednesday September 20 7:00 PM Anderson Room Michigan Union Interested in: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 concert promotion, sound production, graphic arts, publications, booking, meeting jazz artists, learning about jazz. or just hearing some great live music? Come and be a part of a rare college experience. ci zj wsAM Soph Show presents . I N THE UNI ONN . :"N :':: :;!;:iinw"v rt : You can save literally days of work between now and grad- uation. Simply by using an HP Better algorithms and chip design help you finish much faster and more accurately 4k n is