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Show OlfitlM in E OUT I QN COLLECTED TALES AND FANTASIES By Lord Berners Turtle Point Press, ISSN $16.95 1885983387 REVIEW BY MICHAEL ALEC ROSE Lord Berners the name can hardly be uttered without a sniff and a smirk. The author's full name says it all: Sir Gerald Baronet, 14th Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilso- n. Baron Berners. This peer of England, the last of his line, lived during the period (1883-193when the privileges of the aristocracy fell rapidly into anachronism and absurdity. The stories and short novels collected in this edition can be read as fables of this decline, a haunting mixture of hilarity and melancholy that could only have come from the pen of a man called by his own biographer "The Last Eccentric." Lord Berners's writing tends to be funny in a way that only a very small number of brilliant English Writers have the levitating capacity to be, and he ought to be read only when uninhibited laughter is an option. Take the scene in the novella The Camel, in which Mr. Scrimgeour. the church organist, bungles the vicar's entry on Sunday morning with a disastrous performance. Lord Berners's prose is at all times beautiful, as clean as an English lawn, just as sharply cut, and with just as ESSAYSMW BETWEEN FRIENDS Perspectives on John Kenneth Galbraith Edited by Helen Sasson Houghton Mifflin, $25 ISBN 0395971306 REVIEW BY ROGER BISHOP Last October, on the occasion of John Kenneth Galbraith's 90th birthday, he was honored with a reception and dinner at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. At that time he was presented vv ith a festschrift of essays by. among others. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Derek Bok, and Robert Heilbroner. That work, under the title Between Friends: Perspectives on John Kenneth Galbraith, has just been published. Through it we gain a better understanding of the person and his economic and political ideas. To Carlos Fuentes, Galbraith is a Quixote of the Plains, an economist whose subject is no less than concrete their human beings, their health, their education, their hope Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., notes that for well-bein- ..." 24 MAY many surprising felicities to the senses. It would perhaps be nearest the mark to call his writing "musical, especially e Sir Gerald Hugh since this was also an outstanding Tyrwhitt-Wilso- n musician, whom Igor Stravinsky considered the best English composer. Music features centrally in the 1941 novel Count Omega, whose composuccumbs to his own ambiser-hero tion. It is a comic twist on the Faust legend, a striking forerunner to Thomas Manns tragic musical novel Doctor Faustus, which appeared only a few self-sam- years later. In First Childhood, the first of his two splendid and equally funny MEMOatIK ANOTHER LIFE A Memoir of Other People By Michael Korda Random House, $26.95 0679456597 ISBN REVIEW BY GEORGE COWMEADOW BAUMAN Michael Korda has been at the heart of the book business both as an of Simon and Schuster and editor-in-chi- as a author. best-sellin- g For over 40 years he has been on the inside of American publishing, from the time when it was perceived as a gentleman's occupation" through the '90s, from the time when editors were the premier decision-maker- s autobiographies (both published last year by Turtle Point Press), Lord Berners describes a portrait of his Victorian grandmother which hung in the dining-rooat her estate. It showed her dressed in a rather elaborate evening gown of the period, smiling benevolently in complete disregard of a terrific thunderstorm that was approaching her in the background." He goes on to remark that the picture might, in fact, have stood for an allegory of the later Victorian period." In Lord Berners's own time, the storm had broken. The fact that he continued to smile benevolently through his wonderful stories is both a touch of his class and his class's last hurrah. ft A Michael Alec Rose is a music professor at Vanderbilt University. Hie Birth of the Grand Ole Opry Galbraith theory itself. Its function ... is not an end ... is to explain, in From the 60s to the 90s, Korda documents the publishing approach to creating bestsellers, finally concluding, The celebrity autobiography was well suited to the growing symbiosis between books and television. "Give the reader a break, was Dick Simon's dictate to every editor at Simon and Schuster. Korda applied this wisdom to the books he edited, but also to this book hes written for us now. The stories flow. He drops celebrity, publishing, and writers names as we would those in our own office, for his office really did see all those noted people. His anecdotes convey both the positive and the behavior of those he worked with. He also offers lots of book trivia, including the tidbit that Catch-2was originally titled Catch-18- , until it was discovered that the new novel from Leon Uris was called Mila-1This is a fun and fascinating look into the business that generates all those books we read, ft to todays 2 accountant-dominate- d industry. Max Schuster once told Korda. This is commerce, you see, as well as culture. Although Another Life is written as a memoir, Kordas emphasis is on the people hes worked with over the years. Presidents and royalty, great writers and unknowns have all benefited from Kordas editing. And we benefit by Korda having such a good memory and a George Cowmeadow Bauman is the of Acorn Bookshop in Columbus, Ohio. talent for storytelling. NH aIST0 SRlfcYMNN GOOD-NATURE- D RIOT By Charles K. Wolfe Vanderbilt University Press, ISBN $29.95 082651331X illu- minate, and, if possible, improve the conditions of life. Politics and government in this perspective are not digressions for economists but are central to their work." John Kenneth Galbraith has been one of the most notable public intellectuals of the last 40 years, or since the publication of his still relevant book The Affluent Society. He is known for his many other books, including The New Industrial Stale and The Nature of Mass Poverty. In one of my favorite essays. Galbraith's son Peter discusses how his father sought a role in the major foreign policy questions of the Kennedy administration. Contrary to the wishes of the Secretary of State. Ambassador Galbraith expressed his views directly to the President. The views, in hindsight, were good and prescient, including in particular Galbraith's early opposition to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Peter closes by noting that the greatest and most common vice of politicians and bureaucrats is cowardice. John Kenneth Galbraith is the most courageous man I have known. ft REVIEW BY EDWARD MORRIS Now approaching its 74th anniversary, the Grand Ole Opry is more than just America's radio show. It is also a cultural force of limitless reverberations, one whose impact far surpasses that of any of its biggest stars whether of Roy Acuff. its first musical titan, or Garth Brooks, its current behemoth. No scholar is better suited to reveal the Grand Ole Opry's historic underpinnings than Charles K. Wolfe. He has written extensively on the subject before and has contributed valuable studies of such country music luminaries as Kitty Wells, Grandpa Jones, the Louvin Brothers, and DeFord Bailey, the Opry's first major black personality. A tireless interviewer of peripheral figures and a rooter-ou- t of obscure archives, Wolfes most recent offering was The Devil's Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling. In his new book, Wolfe chronicles the Opry from its advent November 28, 1925, on Nashville radio station WSM as a regional bam dance to its development into a cherished national institution by longest-runnin- g 1940. He explains as well how the Opry cast evolved in its first 15 years from a loose collection of musically talented amateurs into a corps of polished show business professionals. At the center of all this activity stood the Oprys originator and guiding spirit, station manager George D. Hay, the solemn old judge. Wolfes research turns up a number of notable firsts. By his account, the Binkley Brothers and Jack Jacksons Ill Rise When the Rooster Crows, recorded in 1928, was the first country hit to come from Nashville. Obed Dad Pickard, who made his Opry7 debut in 1926, became the show's first vocal star. And the Vagabonds, who came to the Opry in 1931, are credited with creating its first souvenir songbook and establishing Nashvilles first country music publishing company. A segment of the Opry first began airing regularly on the NBC radio network in October, 1939. Wolfe also points out that in spite o'f the Oprys growing importance Nashville did not become a country music recording center until the Although many of the Oprys early performers made records, they did so in such faraway places as Atlanta and New York. This text is enriched by 46 photos and a complete annotated listing of the Oprys cast members from 1925 to 1940. It bears emphasizing that Wolfe is as readable as he is detailed, ft s. , fact-fille- d Edward Morris is a Nashville-basejournalist and former country music editor of Billboard. d twww.bookpagt.com |