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Show BOOK BUZZ By 'Guitar Man' plays dispiritedly, but comes together in the end LAURA WADLEY The Terror1 Dan Simmons's "The Terit will be a better-writte- n but conventional horroradventure novel, something like "The Thing" meets Shackleton and the Endurance. In fact, it is a horror novel, but the horror does not reside primarily in whatever it is out on the ice that is slaughtering and eviscerating the men of the John Franklin expedition. Those familiar with the history of Arctic exploration will know that Sir John Franklin ror" sounds like commanded the 1845 venture of two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, in search of the Northwest Passage. The Franklin Expedition disappeared, all hands missing, never heard from again. Simmons writes his version of what became of them and it is cruel, terrifying, and cold beyond bearing. In Simmons's story, Captain Franklin makes a fatal mistake, the ships are frozen into the pack ice, not just for the winter, but for the summer that follows, and the winter that follows that. Fire, plague (scurvy, dysentery, botulism) and relentless fear are the common and unrelenting lot of these explorers and they take it out on each other, and on the silent Inuit woman who has joined their party and is considered a witch and a pariah. "The Terror" is neither quick nor easy reading, but it is filled with the richness of historical David LOS L. Ulin ANGELES the late 1980s, I During aguitar in a pickup : shifting amalgam of friends and fellow travelers that gathered on Saturday afternoons to bang out ragged chords and rhythms for a couple of hours. Like any self respecting would-b- e rockers, we had a few originals, although we mostly filled our repertoire with oddball covers a version of Suzanne punked-u- p Vega's "Luka," a power pop take on Talking Heads' "Heaven" and idiosyncratic jams. Occasionally, we came up with something that felt almost revelatory, like the day we discovered that Keith Richards's guitar lines from "Sympathy for the Devil" fit perfectly over the changes for'"Dear Mr. Fantasy." Mostly, though, the real revelation was the joy we felt in playing together, in taking a song we knew or even better, one we had written and thrashing it out until it became uniquely ours. Will Hodgkinson's "Guitar Man" revolves around a similar sort of experience; it culminates with the author's first gig as a guitarist in a band made up of his friends. I'm not giving anything away here, since that performance (along with the question of whether Hodgkinson is ready) drives the narrative of the book. -- DAN SIMiMONS non-existe- inquiry and verisimilitude, with mysticism and brutal nature, with man's assaults on the Earth, and her revolt against them. 'Sea of Thunder1 Equally well written is Evan Thomas's "Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941-1945- ." Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek magazine, has a historian's breadth of research and understanding, and a novelist's way with the written word, and the result is a reading like watching a classic war movie. Thomas tells the story of World War II naval battles from the viewpoint of four commanders: Admiral William "Bull" Halsey and Commander Ernest Evans on the Allied side, and Admiral Takeo Kurita and Matome Ugaki on the Japanese side. Thomas's inclusion of items from these men's journals and letters, and materials from friends and family members brings them into full character on these pages, where Thomas's narrative skill sets the reader alongside these historical figures in the immediacy of battle. "Sea of Thunder" will be a treasure to history buffs, both enlightening and gripping. I Laura Wadley is a librarian with the Provo City Library. her at laurawprovo. lib.ut.us. www.heraldextra.com yellowpages Indeed, much of his "odyssey" (which takes him from the British guitar underground to the American South) feels like a collection of dutiful journalistic profiles, patched together to form the simulacrum of a narrative. This is especially true when Hodgkinson pays the obligatory visit to the Mississippi delta, where he seeks out, like far too many acolytes before him, the legacy of Robert Johnson and searches for the crossroads where the bluesman purportedly sold his soul. As it turns out, the site is hardly elusive. "I expected a lonely, isolated spot surrounded by flat expanses of cotton fields," the author tells us. "What I got was a brightly lit intersection. ... There was a stream of traffic and a dirty tin sign featuring two guitars crossed together, under which, in case anyone was left in any doubt, was the word 'Crossroads.' " Yet rather than explore the irony, Hodgkinson plays out an amorphous riff about selling his own soul, which he has no intention of doing, even if he could. Leaving aside the legend of Johng son's which I've always considered misguided, if not racist it's a radically wrong turn that highlights many of the book's problems, leaving us to wonder just how deeply rooted, how essential, Hodgkinson's guitar fascination really is. Surprisingly, "Guitar Man" does manage to come together, coalescing around its author's unlikely gig. It's not much, a short section at the end of the book, but here Hodgkinson finally gets at the ragged glory of the instrument, the reasons it exerts such a pull. He describes the joy, the transformation, the sheer emotional power of getting up and playing music missteps, inadequacies and all. "It became obvious after a while," he reports, "that the mistakes didn't really d TIMES - - " slash-and-bur- n posing before a mirror with a tennis racket, no lessons, none of the usual initiation rites; it's as if he's lived apart. Even his guitar heBert Jansch, roes are offarack not Jimi Hendrix; legendary British folkie Davey Graham as opposed to Jimmy Page. But if all that gives "Guitar Man" its own idiosyncratic personality, it's a personality that doesn't emerge completely on the page. For one thing, Hodgkinson is a pedestrian writer, whose scenes never take form. Whether describing encounters with such players as PJ Harvey, Roger McGuinn and the Smiths's Johnny Marr or deg Subtitled "A Odystailing his wife's growing annoyance at the way his acoustic plink-in- g sey, or, You Love That Guitar has taken over their small More Than You Love Me," "GuLondon home, he can't quite get itar Man" means to investigate a at the heart of the situation. These certain kind of obsession: male are less set pieces than sketches, guitar hero madness, the lure of the power chord, of the pose that quick takes, blends into music, the idea that Equally problematic is that, as Man" progresses, Hodgworld. "Guitar can the change guitars kinson's upcoming gig seems It's a childlike fantasy but continues to have resonance because, more like an impediment than a like so many people, Hodgkinson centerpiece, a limiting influence rather than a source of discovery. has become an unwitting adult, with responsibilities he's not sure He worries about performing, two kids, a mar- wonders if he'll have the chops he can handle or the playlist and fears that he'll riage, the need to support a family. As a result, his plunge into the embarrass himself. Such concerns are certainly legitimate, but in the world of guitars has a quality of context of the larger story, they the road not taken, of the counter-life. "The possibilities of life serve to narrow his focus, reducare infinite," he writes, "limitless ing everything else to a kind of and exciting before you start atheightened The trouble is that you can see tempting to do something. But the contrivance; the whole thing as soon as you apply yourself to learning a new skill, you are consjems as if it were being staged fronted with the severity of your for the book. Nowhere does limitations." Hodgkinson explain how he got This notion of "a new skill" his gig, nor does he admit that it is, perhaps, a bit backward to makes Hodgkinson distinct, for until the action in the book belearn to play for the purpose of gins, he never had picked up a performing instead of the other guitar in his life. No air guitar, no way around. al show-and-tel- L soul-sellin- matter: the key was to remember that there was an audience out there, that you are not doing this in your bedroom." It is precisely for this experience that generations of wannabes have picked up guitars and headed for a million garages, basements and rehearsal studios, to live out, at whatever level, their rock 'n roll dreams. "Guitar Mart A Odyssey, or, You Love That Guitar More Than You Love Me," by Will Hodgkinson Da Capo Press, $16.95 paper, 292 pp. Six-Stri- |