Each week since 1982, New York City's Village Voice has presented one of Sylvia Plachy's quizzical, uncaptioned black-and-white photographs under the heading "Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour."
Even in smeary ink on newsprint, her pictures make you pause. Many of them possess the eerie serenity of dream images and, as in a dream, seem taken from an intimate, free-floating vantage point. Her best photos retain their dreamlike poise even when their content is gritty and jarring (a middle-aged man on a stretcher on a New York City boulevard, his bare chest white in the glare of headlights).
Plachy is both a journalist (many of the images were taken on story assignments for the Voice) and a diarist (one of her most uncanny and ecstatic photographs is a wide-angle of her father and her son clowning together in a swimming pool). In either role she has a refined sense of the absurd, a fluid compositional style and a knack for capturing the ineffable (two lovers, locked in a brooding privacy, leaving a scenic lookout where some restless boys are hanging out).
Some of her more disturbing images (a boy, with his jacket pulled over his eyes, screaming in a parking lot at night) bring to mind Diane Arbus. But Plachy's subtle humor and sensitivity to the forcefulness of the ephemeral recall her friend and mentor, André Kertész, one of the pioneers of 35mm photography.
Like Kertész, Plachy emigrated to the United States from Hungary—in her case, following the 1956 revolution. The cadences and consonants of her native language still flavor her speech in English, but in the language of the lens she has learned to speak like a poet. (Aperture, $39.95)
by Larry King with Peter Occhiogrosso
Dear Larry:
It must be hard to be a talk show host: You spend your whole life interviewing other people, drawing them out about their lives, their feelings, their accomplishments. For all the work you do, you barely talk about yourself at all. You must feel lucky, then, to have gotten famous enough that you're finally getting the chance to relate your anecdotes, indulge your political opinions and generally ruminate in your very own book. And the fact that you have gotten to do it more than once (this is your second memoir, right?) must mean you're really, really successful and popular.
We're all interested, Larry, in hearing about the funny-interesting-unpleasant-but-almost-always-famous people you have encountered along the way. And your self-deprecating style—that you "never pretend to be what you are not"—is nice too; most of the time you sound just like the star-struck kid from Brooklyn, N.Y., you say you always were.
But tell us about those other people, Larry. That's what we want to know. Okay, so you have theories about there being two kinds of actors (method and seat-of-the-pants). It's certainly fine that, for you, "meeting a movie star is a much bigger kick than meeting a major political figure," even though the "ultimate celebrities in America are the President and First Lady." But Larry, give us the dirt—not about your health problems, your daughter and your ex-wives, including the breakup of your most recent, brief fourth marriage; tell us more about all those celebrities who have made you a celebrity.
When you do, it's great. Like that story about Frank Sinatra getting his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity through the mob (a story that was dramatized in the famous horse-head-in-the-bed scene from The Godfather). It's terrific that you found out that it wasn't true and that Sinatra got the part because the producer's original choice, Eli Wallach, bowed out in favor of a role in the Broadway production of Camino Real. Actually, the best part is that Sinatra, forever grateful, always sends Wallach opening-night flowers with a note that says, "You dumb actor. Thanks, Frank."
That's the kind of thing we want to hear from a man who has met 'em all, Lar. Tell us more like that. (Putnam, $21.95)
by Desmond Atholl and Michael Cherkinian
"No one would ever dare write a book about me!" Mario Thomas supposedly once declared. "I'd either pay the f——— off or kill them!" Well, Mario, get your Uzi out. The former head of her household has written a hilarious tell-all tale about life with Thomas and husband Phil Donahue.
From the endless details offered by Atholl about his three years in the Thomas-Donahue orbit, a more fitting name for "That Girl" would be "That Churl." Mario, whose early-morning voice, "to the untrained ear, sounds like Styrofoam crunching," is, according to Atholl, a spoiled, petty Hollywood princess on a perpetual reign of terror.
It's hard to choose the funniest story in this memoir. Maybe it's Mario in a swivet when Desmond brings home tulips that are not the correct shade of white. Maybe it's Mario on a tear when she can't find a certain black dress for an important event and accuses the staff of stealing it. "It was ridiculous to suggest that I might have stolen your dress," Atholl says he informed Thomas when the garment had finally been located. "You know I never wear anything strapless."
Maybe it's Mario rebuking Desmond for serving snacks to Phil's college buddies with linen napkins, then ordering him to count the napkins.
"I told her that since she hated paper napkins, I presumed her guests should have linen.
" 'Not for these people,' she replied. 'Give them paper in the future. They'll never know the difference.' "
Or maybe it's the terrified-of-being-kid-napped Mario selling up elaborate security systems—and the fact that the butler would sometimes trigger the alarms just to frighten Thomas.
One can only wonder why Atholl stayed so long on the payroll. Perhaps it was out of regard for Phil, who's portrayed as even-tempered and easygoing (except when confronted with his wife's especially irrational and intemperate shenanigans). Perhaps he was trying to collect material for this book. Or maybe it had to do with Mario's uncanny ability to "transform herself from a savage beast into a sympathetic little girl in less than 30 minutes—and both portrayals were completely convincing."
The book could have used some editing. There's considerable repetition of details about the New York City and Westport, Conn., homes and about the domestic staff. After a point, the parade of Mario horror stories becomes numbing and tedious. Still, Atholl has a very nice sense of irony and a breezy style. Book him on Donahue. (St. Martin's, $16.95)
by G. Gordon Liddy
It might seem unfair to mention Watergate alongside Liddy's name. The infamous break-in and cover-up happened nearly 20 years ago and convicted conspirator Liddy, after spending 52 months in jail, has established himself as a novelist. But The Monkey Handlers, Liddy's second work of fiction, is so heavy on high-level government-CIA intrigue, and his hero is so stalwart, that you can't help but be reminded that the author is a criminal semimastermind in love with his own supermanliness. (In his autobiography Liddy boasted that he proved he was impervious to pain by, among other things, putting his hand over a flame.)
Michael Stone, a veteran of the SEALs, who, he keeps telling us, are the toughest, baddest operatives in the whole United Stales armed forces, has never exactly come to terms with the fact that Vietnam is over and that his greatest skills—maiming and killing—are not so highly valued in civilian life.
Now an attorney in an upper New York State town, Stone gets a call from an old buddy's sister, Sara Rosen, who has been arrested after breaking into a chemical plant known for inhumane treatment of animals. Stone accepts the case out of loyalty and stumbles into a mess involving neo-Nazis, a radical Israeli group, an Arab terrorist and rabid animal-rights activists. Sensing somehow that this is a situation that calls for more than traditional lawyering (at which, he admits, he is none too talented) Stone seizes the opportunity to revert to type. He enlists some fellow ex-SEALs, breaks into his war chest of high-powered weapons and goes after the culprits. Over-long descriptions of said hardware, convoluted high-level espionage, much macho-speak, and one of the oddest romantic relationships in recent memory ensue.
Liddy hasn't written a novel so much as assembled one out of the tired elements of adventure-intrigue-mystery fiction. Honorable but misunderstood men fighting for a cause, deathbed utterances, enough poison gas to wipe out a whole city—they're all here, updated with topical references. That doesn't mean The Monkey Handlers isn't readable—just that you can't take it as seriously as the author, who compares his protagonist to Julius Caesar. Even the most enthralled reader can see that Stone is nothing more (or less) than Superman and that this book is, at best, a prose cartoon. (St. Martin's, $19.95)
by Larry McMurtry
McMurtry, who did a rather dull job of fictionalizing the legend of Billy the Kid in Anything for Billy, fares better with the ragged final years of Calamity Jane.
We join her at age 38, still hard-knocking her way around the Great Plains. She boozes throughout a stint with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and ends up mopping out a saloon in Deadwood for whiskey and a cot.
McMurtry does a fine job of presenting the hardships and casual violence our ancestors lived with little more than a century ago. He has also stocked his novel with a posseful of colorful characters, including
No Ears, an Oglala older than the hills, and Bartle Bone and Jim Ragg, two mountain men pursuing the obsolete trade of beaver trapping. Then there's the troubled, rough-hewn heroine. Earthy? Hell, she's magmatic.
The ending is a little too tidy, as McMurtry resolves Jane's romantic obsession with the dead Wild Bill Hickok at the same time he drops in a sexual bombshell. The real problem, though, is that Buffalo Girls lacks both the depth and the scope of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. It's a prairie pup compared with Pete Dexter's masterful novel about Wild Bill. Deadwood, which roams over some overlapping territory with a good deal more grace. (Simon and Schuster, $19.95)
by John Saul
Secret Cove, an otherwise lovely if isolated spot on the coast of Maine, has a problem shedding the horrors of its distant past. It seems that about 100 years ago, during the August Moon Ball, a quiet servant girl lost her grip on reality and committed a deed so violent, so ringed with terror, that residents shiver at its mention. Through the years the servant's unspeakable act has become the kind of saga that is retold at camp-fire gatherings, around flickering bedtime candlelight and wherever else children like to hear stories that scare them blind. The fearsome act has mellowed into folklore—until the day shy little Melissa Holloway unlocks her attic door and makes a new friend named D'Arcy.
Saul (Suffer the Children, Creature) knows how to tell horrible little tales. While his horror-arousing skills would place him a distant third behind Stephen King and Dean Koontz, Saul keeps his plots tighter than either of the anointed masters of the genre.
Much like King, Saul often narrates through the eyes of an innocent, or at least seemingly innocent child. In Second Child, as in all his work, Saul's characters are usually one-dimensional fairy-tale caricatures. There is the wicked stepmother and half sister, manipulating Melissa to their advantage; there is the naive father, blind to all but the obvious. Saul draws his scenes with a B-movie eye. The tale offers little challenge in figuring out the surprise twist in advance of the blood-soaked end.
But these are horror fiction flaws we have come to expect, and Second Child's compensations are many. As you're reading, imagine a full moon and the tale being told around a camp fire deep in the forest: Saul spins a most enjoyable tale. (Bantam, $14.95)
>From Doggerel: Great Poets on Remarkable Dogs, edited and illustrated by Martha Paulos (Chronicle, $12.95):
Don Marquis's "Confession of a Glutton" (fragment):
"i am a well intentioned little pup/ but sometimes things come up/ to get a little dog in bad/ and now i feel so very very sad/ but the boss said never mind old scout/ time wears disgrace out."
Erica Jong's "Jubilate Canis" (fragment):
"For, thanks to Poochkin, I praise the Lord/ & no longer fear death./ For when my spirit flees my body through my nostrils,/ may it sail into the pregnant belly/ of a furry bitch."
William Dickey's "Hope":
"At the foot of the stairs/ my black dog sits;/ in his body,/ out of his wits.
"On the other side/ of the shut front door/ there's a female dog/ he's nervous for.
"She's the whole size/ of his mind—immense./ Hope ruling him/ past sense."
- Contributors:
- Eric Levin,
- Sara Nelson,
- Joanne Kaufman,
- David Hiltbrand,
- Lorenzo Carcaterra.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
