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by Phoebe-Lou Adams
The Djinn in the
Nightingale's Eye
by A. S. Byatt.
Random House, 288 pages,
$19.00.
This small book contains five so-called fairy tales. What is a fairy
tale, exactly? In Ms. Byatt's hands it is a vehicle for the exposition of ideas
on art, society, ethics, and freedom, and for the questioning of those ideas,
with all these matters expressed in exquisitely light, witty, oblique terms.
Princesses wander through magic woodlands, a pig survives dragons, and the
djinn -- once out of his bottle -- is a djinn like no other. Ms. Byatt mentions
"flashes and floods of paradisal light in odd places and at odd times." Her
tales cast just such light.
Fantastic Tales
edited by Italo Calvino.
Pantheon, 416 pages,
$27.50.
Mr. Calvino's introduction to this anthology is an acutely thoughtful
discussion of what makes a fantastic tale, how the genre developed during the
nineteenth century, and the reasons for its abiding popularity. Some of the
tales are well known, some not. Most are by European authors. One Russian
specimen hardly qualifies as fantasy -- but the editor could not resist it. One
can see why. It is a wicked charmer.
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Browse an anthology of Brief Reviews by
Phoebe-Lou Adams
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Pickett's Charge
in History and Memory
by Carol Reardon.
University of North Carolina,
296 pages,
$29.95.
Whoever defined history as an agreed-upon lie was not acquainted with
the aftermath of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. Journalists could see no more
than a fraction of the action, if they saw any at all. Participants saw even
less. It took five days for definite word of Lee's defeat to reach Richmond (in
bootlegged northern papers) and longer for it to travel south. Newspapers were
filled with melodramatic babble, and battle survivors, when consulted,
contradicted one another. Even the duration of the initial Confederate
artillery attack remains in dispute; estimates range from minutes to hours.
Such discrepancies are not, however, the real focus of Ms. Reardon's
investigation. She examines the mixture of local patriotism (Virginia), local
resentment (North Carolina et al.), Reconstruction politics, campaigns for
reconciliation, and moonlight-and-magnolia fiction that eventually made
Gettysburg the best-known battle of the Civil War and Pickett's Charge the
heroic high point of the Rebel cause. Ms. Reardon's text is well supplied with
anecdote and quotation and covers events as recent as a 1922 Marine Corps
re-enactment of the action to see "What would have happened at Gettysburg if
the armies of Meade and Lee had met with modern weapons and equipment?" The
conclusion: Lee would have lost, but given air observation, he probably would
not have launched an attack against "the entire Army of the Potomac." Quite
apart from its notable historical interest, Ms. Reardon's work is a splendidly
lively study of the manipulation, not necessarily deliberate or malign, of
public opinion.
Making Faces:
Using Forensic and
Archaelogoical Evidence
by John Prag and Richard Neave.
Texas A&M, 256 pages,
$39.95.
Using what they describe as thoroughly scientific methods, the authors
have reconstructed the faces of unidentifiable skulls for the British police,
with such success that they have been recruited to make a number of such
reconstructions for archaeologists. These jobs require historical research,
caution in handling decrepit bones, and some guesswork in filling gaps. The
authors' encounters with Philip of Macedon and King Midas lead them into
antique medicine and myth. Their work with the badly damaged skulls behind the
gold masks at Mycenae produces faces that would look well at the local chamber
of commerce. Bog bodies present a different set of problems, handsomely solved.
The account given by Mr. Prag and Mr. Neave will please anyone interested in
their technique or their subjects. Readers averse to old bones will not benefit
from it.
Egon Schiele
by Magdalena Dabrowski
and Rudolf Leopold
Yale, 363 pages, $60.00.
The art collection of Rudolf Leopold, displayed in this volume, well
represents the brilliant draftsmanship, idiosyncratic color, and intense, often
neurotic power of Schiele's work. Ms. Dabrowski's introduction tells enough
about the painter's family background to account for his sexually morbid
self-portraits and enough about turn-of-the-century Viennese society to account
for his épater le bourgeois female nudes. Schiele was under
thirty when he died in the flu epidemic of 1918. One can only wonder where his
art would have gone in the 1920s, because in some respects he was already ahead
of them.
Into Africa
by Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle.
Firefly Books, 400 pages,
$29.95.
"Africa," according to the authors, "is going in all
directions at once" and always has been. Their report combines a firsthand
account of the inconsistencies, accomplishments, and plain horrors currently
reported by the media with Africa's long history of rising and falling empires,
wise kings and bloody tyrants, shifting territories and migrant populations. It
is a history as disorderly as that of Europe, and the authors would have the
outside world understand that Africa is a conservative continent that maintains
a constant state of flux. They also assert that "hardly anyone in Africa any
longer blames Africa's problems on colonialism." Altogether, this book presents
unfamiliar facts reinforcing an unusual point of view.
Panther in the Basement
by Amos Oz,
translated by Nicholas de Lange.
Harcourt Brace, 160 pages,
$21.00.
Mr. Oz's reminiscent novel describes the doings of a twelve-year-old boy
in the last year of British control in Israel. Young Proffy has organized a
pro-Israel underground cell that proposes to blow up Buckingham Palace or
perhaps 10 Downing Street. These heroic dreams are no danger to anybody, but
Proffy's friendship with a kindly British soldier causes his two fellow
panthers to accuse him of treason. Around this juvenile imbroglio Mr. Oz
creates a vivid picture of life in Jerusalem, with sharply drawn characters
doing what Proffy reports without necessarily understanding it. The novel
offers an unexpectedly charming and humane memory of a tense, tough time.
Pfitz
by Andrew Crumey.
Picador,164 pages,
$20.00.
Mr. Crumey has written a fantastic novel about a fantasy. An
eighteenth-century prince, presumably in Central Europe, designs a series of
imaginary cities, the last of which he proposes to create in actuality,
devoting his entire country to the project. His people are real, as is the
work they do on the dream city. Eventually real and unreal merge, interact, and
form a tale that is part quirky amusement and part sly satire on governments,
bureaucracies, and the reader's expectations.
The Gashlycrumb Tinies
by Edward Gorey.
The Curious Sofa
by Ogdred Weary.
Harcourt Brace,
each 64 pages and $9.00.
Both these early works of Mr. Gorey's are being reissued for the
pleasure of lovers of fine drawing, deadpan horror, and discreet pornography.
Recent books by Atlantic contributors:
Dog's Best Friend: Annals of the Dog-Human Relationship by Mark Derr. Holt,
380 pages, $25.00. Portions of this book first appeared, in different form,
in The Atlantic Monthly.
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