' 9 K-.3 S; _4 -- -- Write to the Send questions, ommA-n t ennrn se 1 Cover Story Continued from Page 11 CDaily ithout complaints, findercommendations to f; a MICHIGAN TDAILY" I l Re-writing history with a different perspective Read Jim Ponie a "" g.p ; - , " ' " " of . " lei " " " ! " 0 ! " " A " 11 ! ULIAN ARNES r PASS IT AROUND! r Mannequins show off the latest styles at a local mall store. "The Bhne Nife wraps up the f avor of Ethiopia." Molly Abraham Detroit Free Press "Like an oasis in the desert, an island in the middle of a turbu(ent sea, B(ue Nile is an escape, a sanctuary." Sandra Silfven Detroit News 'Experience the 3000 year o(d culture of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian diet is based onpracticafity and "tota( health." Even our butter called, "niter kibeh" is purified by boiling and ffavored with ten different herbs to give it a pure sweet ffavor. Poultry, beef, lamb and vegetarian dishes are aLt preparedfrom traditiona( Ethiopian recipes keeping in mind our philosophy of "totaf health". The end result is a unique variety of pleasing textures and tastes. Ourfamous, imported "Tej" honey wine is the perfect accompaniment to your meal and to our knowledge is not served anywhere else in the United States. Our teaprovidesyet another unique experience for in the Ethiopia diet there is no cane sugar! However our tea is noticeably sweet and ight. The reason is its naturaf ingredients including rose hips, cinnamon, orange, and(emonpeeL. It's very refreshing andgood for you. Join us tonight for a dining experience that is to be shared and ong remembered. *The Miller and David Vontom. "Lots of stores are here, it's just easier." Not everyone agreed with the mall diversity. "There's not enough variety, its not up to date," com- plained 19-year-old Valerie Brights. from Ann Arbor. "Every store you go into has the same thing." But, she added, this problem is not so much an indictment of mall culture on the whole, but that Briarwood lacked a certian je ne sais quoi com- pared to other area malls. I'm here with my grandchildren. I'm not following them around be- cause I can't walk too well. I come here a lot with just my wife, too. We have lunch, shop around. Once in a while we buy something. -Jack, 69 years old For Jack and many other senior citizens, the mall is a safe, easy place to go. Jack, waiting patiently in the mall's central square, by the information desk, remained there for at least two hours. Rather than laz- ing away on a back porch swing watching the leaves blow around, he could sit there and witness a verita- ble parade of shoppers of all shapes and sizes. People-watching, a sport as old, presumably, as people themselves, takes on new dimensions in a shop- ping mall. You can watch families haggling over gifts for Aunt Zelda, teens with lopsided haircuts tucking skateboards under their arms, profes- sional shoppers lugging scores of bags of assorted colors, and more. Better than the MacNeill-Lehrer re- port? Probably. "I come here quite often to see a lot of people and meet a lot of peo- ple," said Bob Miller, as he sipped a Burger King shake. "The upper-middle class like to go and shop as opposed to going to the country," he added.. So, months later, when you roll through that mall parking lot ...well, bam! a certain kind of sizzling mer- cury light hits you, and there's all that new-black asphalt with the per- fect yellow lines, and that parking lot is stunning. ..Jnstead of ignoring (or moaning about) the byproduct of 60 kinds of venal and reprobate corporate behavior (all of which you too abhor, more or less), you look around, you let yourself be touched. -Author Fredrick Barthelme, in the New York Times Book Review, April 3, 1988 In the final analysis, mall culture is no more than an outgrowth of the death of Post-Modernism. One time, nothing so palpable and common- place as the mall would have been considered worthy of literature. Writ- ers, like Fredrick Barthelme's late brother Donald, Don Delillo and John Barth, explored all the strange and wonderful things that language could do. Collectively, they were the Post Modernists. But now the revo- lution is over. The literary commu- nity, at last, has come to appreciate the worth of the modern shopping mall. Barthelme, like many of his gen- eration, has come around from writ- ing about writing and has begun to write about people again. And where do you find people? Your average day-to-day people and their average (but fascinating) problems? Where else, but at the mall. Remember, there are only 45 shopping days until Christmas. Julian Barnes A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chap- ters Julian Barnes Alfred A. Knopf, $18.95 Glancing through the pages of the New Statesman a couple of weeks ago, I chanced upon the not-so-mind- less musings of one Noel Petty: "So God said; 'Let there be light and there was light and by the light that shone God saw that it was not good... And God decreed that the cre- ation should be aborted for he desired to take it once again from the top.'" Petty might have been debating a possible version of the verses pre- ceeding the infamous, "In the begin- ning..." of the Old Testament, but his tone strikes a chord that res- onates thoughout Julian Barnes' lat- est novel, A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters. So if the world went wrong, what went wrong and whose fault is it, anyway? Well Barnes, (author of Flaubert's Parrot and Staring at the Sun), is baffled; his history is a be- mused wandering through the annals of history, a history which though resolutely Anglocentric, questions Judaic-Christian tradition. If Barnes learns anything it is this: should there be a God, Barnes probably wouldn't like him very much.. None of which means that history can't be fun. So we start somewhere near "The Beginning" with a revi- sionist report of "The Flood," re- counted by a disgruntled woodworm who has little respect for Noah and even less for his entourage. We take a giddy course though the interven- ing few thousand years, alighting at whim on the bizarre, the amusing and the downright terrifying. The Ark becomes the leitmotif for the following nine and a half chapters, O FTH NEXST 0 Rib 0 y \ N 1O0.2 AP Tp INTRODUCING NAILS 'R' US UNiSExSA LON Complete Nail Service 2440 W. Stadium 747-NAIL 10% Student Discount (./ I S A NO V So if the world went wror whose fault is it, anyway? mused wandering through t and the woodworm reappears with, alarming frequency. As in many collections of short. stories, and basically that is what this volume is, some tales outshine the rest. Barnes is most compelling, when he contemplates, when he forces us to look at the world askance, and least exciting when he, dwells overly on the cute, which he, does occassionally. It's easy to tire; of a woodworm's endless whining over injustices on Noah's flotilla; easier at any rate than ignoring Barnes' search, in his half chapter, into the futility of love . Barnes questions the absurdities of E L ng, what went wrong and ...Barnes' history is a be- he annals of history. existence in a mild and whimsical manner that is unquestionably Bri- fish. He enters into a lengthy dia-- logue with his reader, and, with an irreverence that is irresistible, he casts doubts upon the definite and suspicion upon the irreproachable. And as he points out eventually, even if God did try and abort his catastrophic creation with the flood and begin again from the top, his- tory is not repeating itself; "No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago." -Sharon Grimberg 1ff '89 ~Blue Nile Restaurant 300 Braun Court Ann Arbor "Kerrytowns newest restaurant~ 663-3-116 Next Week in Weekend Magazine TIpC v U~be Liditugm 3Daint - s - a ,r_. Page 12 Weekend/November 10, 1989 Weekend/November 10, 1989 A