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Show 2E Thedlt Lake Tribute. undax imp. In ft-h- IV, Arctic Dreams: Terra incognita of the mind Arctic Dreams Imagination and Desire in a Sortbern Landscape, bx Bam Lopez. Srribnerx, K,1 pp . SJ. 95 I) r, , N , ,s d book abou t.'li Anu. Norm, ,n tne ay tr.at M Do K a novel about whales Though not a work of fiction. Barry Lopez s dazzling new volume re'err.bles Few Surrutire of Arthur (iordou Pyn, and Ted Talley s Ter-- a Sot a in that it treats the distant snowy world of the Arctic as a place that exists not only in the mathematics of geography, but also m the terra incognita of our imaginations For Lopez it is a land where airplanes track icebergs the size of Cleveland and polar bears fly down out of the stars. a land rich in imagery and metaphor, where the moon can shine for a week and the sun may disappear for days It is his achievement in this book that he communicates to us a v isceral sense of his ow n understanding and wonder, as well as an appreciation for this distant country that flickers insistently like a flashbulb afterimage in our minds long after we ve finished reading Lucid Prose Having spent some five years traveling through the Arctic. Lopez possesses a deep almost mystical reverence for nature and the land, and while this results in a handful of passages tinged with a sort of Whole Earth Catalogue sentimentality us 1' possible, he wonders at one point for man ' to live at moral peace with tne most of Antic Dreams universe is set down in lucid, gracious prose ' .0T't V O' son Barry Lopez Writes of Arctic routes cl t.rcs ard animals as .n u.e travel routes of early human settlers, there are intricate overlapping pai-- : rr,s to be found patterns dictated .r, part by the geography of the land t in part by the seasonal sh.fts in and the tiokgaal rhythms of survival Drawing upon the work of geclo-g.stexplorers anthropologists ar-- i heclcgists and biologists m addition to assorted myths and bits of Eskimo ore Lopez beg r.s by conjuring up. f r his readers an impression. Stic. of the North ol!,ge-!- . ke p.cture Rather than distracting the reader, the narrative d.gressions gradually taxe on a k.nd of organic order, as the author loops back and forth from the philosophical to the scientific, the metaphoric to the specific A glimpse of sunlight glinting off an iceberg for instance, will remind him of a painting by a landscape art.st, which will remind him of catnedral architecture. which will bring him back to man s passion for light his craving to come to terms witn nature and God s sun-l.gn- Vagaries of Nature It is a particularly vulnerable ecosystem. this Arctic world, subject to the vagaries of nature a June sleet storm or an August freeze can destroy a generation of birds, an entire and yet, at the same colony of seals time, one of considerable resilience The snow goose population that fell to 50.000 in 1975 following a series of late spring snowstorms rose again to 300.000 by 1982. and the musk ox population that was nearly wiped out on the Canadian archipelago in the early '70s has similarly revived. Arctic Light Lopez describes what it feels like to be a whaler, coming ' upon the loveliness and grandeur of y ' In writing about the animal life of the Arctic, Lopez does not merely use facts and biological data to illustrate ecological theories, he uses them, like John McPhee, to create a dense matrix of observation and research that slowly draws the reader into a palpable world uncharted unclaimed land for the f.rst time He describes the strange, heavenly quality of light found in the high, air of the Arctic and how delicately and suddenly it can shift, playing games with cur minds in the shape of mirages and fata morganas And he describes, too. the complex web of animal and plant life that exists in this seemingly barthus gin-lik- e kimos in build. rg ig.oos that tne-to cover thetr dark r.oses w.h a paw or a p.ece of snw when they art stalking a sea! What s more, in learning ail this we sorr.e.v.w manage to come away w ih a sense of vr.a'. a polar bears Lfe is i.Kt and wr.y animal plays such a symbolic rc!e m art-sai- te native Eskimo culture The disparate ways m which Eskimo civilization on one hand and Western society on the other have dealt with the landscape of the far North this issue lies at the center of .Arctic Dreams, for Lopez is concerned, in the end. with the effect that the Arctic has had on the imagination of individuals who live there or who have chosen to explore its w.lds Can the Eskimo determination to live in accord with nature, he asks, survive in the face of modern man's determination to tame its disorder Why have so many scientists, adventurers and artists risked their Lves to chart the You may re- member having se'en and heard fim in the early days of television. or during one of his many lecture-ap- pearances at the nation's major uni- - ren land What may strike the first-timvisitor ds an austere, utterly monotonous country Lopez demonstrates, is actually a remarkably complex ecosyse . v ersities 4 . RatherlL tall. bald, craggy Ek of face. Remhold iKk Mr. Niebuhr Niebuhr in no way resembled those preachers who frequent the television tube today, men who seem as insistent on raising dollars as they are in seeking conversions." To those of us who heard and remember him, Niebuhr, perhaps the nation's greatest 20th century theologian. was a thinking mans preacher and public philosopher. Book to Ponder It is gnod then, and fitting, that this excellent biography is slow reading, a book apt to make the reader ponder long and hard about his or her own religious philosophy. Lnless, of course, you grew up, Jew or Gentile. Catholic. Lutheran, Protestant or Mormon, learning Biblical v erses by rote, and never questioning the faith of your fathers. To such a true believer, Niebuhr's thought proand career may cesses, seem erratic at best, meaningless at worst. As biographer Richard Wightman Fox makes abundantly clear, his subject's intellectual (and religious) life idea-packe- truth-seekin- g near-milita- Hitler's Germany was the supreme enemy of God, country and civilization. Before his life ended in this was again beset with doubts concerning America's role in the world. Relieved that the Korean War had been confined within bounds and had not resulted in an atomic conflict, he was to become in his latter years an implacable opponent of the Vietnam War, a man eager to parley with the Soviets and the rest of the world in all possible efforts to avoid a nuclear holocaust. In his early beginnings as a preacher, he believed his true calling could be found in a small rural setting, in church-worof the kind. Fate, and his talents as a secular pastor, brought him to Detroit. There, from the pulpit of a growing, 1971. k middle-clas- German-America- s, n congregation, he spoke up for both God and capitalism, and took a e attitude towards Prohibition let-liv- one of the hottest moral issues of the day. After all his parishioners liked an occasional glass of brew. He seemed, for a brief moment, the perfect Babbitt preaching to his own kind until he began questioning Henry Ford and his automotive-industrilk. He came to abhor and fulminate against men who mouthed the most Christian platitudes while pressing a crown of thorns upon the heads of their assembly- Capitalists lars) to the nation an claimed to who gave heed (and dold needs of the of a American president probe "ill-feand one-thir- It was from Union Theological's pseudo-Gothi- c campuses that Niebuhr, alarmed by the state of the world, would sally forth to Madison Square Garden to speak on the same platform as Henri Barbusse of the World Committee against War and Fascism, Communist Party chairman Earl Browder md Norman Thomas. Upset Officialdom He was thereby upsetting the officialdom of Union Theological Seminary no end, but was thereby becoming the leader of a growing Christian (hnd Jewish) fellowship of religious thinkers opposed to Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, whose fascist forces were intent upon overwhelming what remained of European democracy. When World War II came, Niebuhr parted company with his pacifist cohorts, as he had with his German antecedents, even including his beloved father. After that terrible war, despite a succession of physical ills, he came to realize that his views, both during his Detroit ministry and as a religious philosopher at Union Theological, had taken ivy-cla- y -line - - i hu-i- -- Times. i tem whoe surface minimalism belies a wealth of conflict and In the interdependence migratory was a pattern of paradoxes and a sequence of ironies, that of a prophet-priest simultaneously seeking influence and humility. Changing Views Son of German immigrants in the Midwest, speaking and writing in German before he wrote cr spoke in English, he was. as a young man, innately in sympathy with the German "Vaterland. Despite his roots, he became. just prior to World War I. an Anglophile. A reluctant supporter cf the United States during that war. he then became a pacifist and supporter of Norman Thomas' Socialist Party prior to World War II. only to switch to the view that Adolf -- Novelistic Charm Take, for one, his minutely detailed descriptions of the polar bear, which acquire an almost novelistic charm. W'e learn that polar bears are so well insulated that they have trouble getting rid of excess heat which they deal with by eating snowi. that they build dens using the same principles of architecture employed by the Es The life and shifting views of Reinhold Niebuhr A Biography, Re in hold Xiebubr by Richard Wightman Fox; Pantheon Books, 293 pp., $19.95. t puces cf me Arctic Did their imp. 1st- to endow the landscape with of danger, seren-,tcertain qualities stern from some r desolation c cultural assumptions or from - irne more personal need to impose ui r and narrative where none before existed Legacy of Desire "Arctic history became for me. then, a legacy of desire, Lopez writes, "the desire cf individual men to achieve their goals But it was also the legacy of a kind of desire that transcends heroics and which was the deprivately known to many sire fer a safe and honorable passage " In through the world writing this book Lopez takes his place among those same individuals who ventured to the northern limits cf the earth and made of their journey a lasting record of its fiercene.-- s and its beauty Micbiko Kakutani, New York laborers. Slashing Attacks Never mind that Ford paid a wage and that the American Federation of Labor m its day was officially satisfied with assembly line conditions. Detroit's slums were already festering bringing slashing attacks from Nie- preacher-teacher-politic- buhr's pulpit at Bethel Church against slumlords and their less perceptive religious allies. Seeking a broader audience for his views, he began writing for the national Christian press, and was soon called to the service of the predecessor agencies of the National Council of Churches. Prominent Teacher By the early 1930s Niebuhr was the faculty member at the prestigious Union Theological Seminary on New York's Morningside Heights, the darling of the Rockefellers and other thoughtful Chnstian- best-know- n , ment. He had begun, prior to Hoi Id War II. to use a prayer that holds consid- erable meaning today "God, (j ti e us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed. "Give us the courage to change u '.at should be changed, "Give us the wisdom to distinguish one from the other. Apt Praxer It is an especially apt prayer to close this biography of a man who. by his own ability to change, had an immense effect upon Christian America, as a philosopher and as a teacher-guid- e of so many present-da- y occupants of major pulpits and chairs of philosophy at major universities. But author Fox rightly wonders whether Niebuhr would be merely pained, or outspokenly infuriated, by a newspaper advertisement offering his noteworthy prayer in fabulous Crewel Stitchery" for Silent Majority Serenity. The Complete Kit only $2.95. Sure to delight or Full Refund Guaranteed." How would he react to soul today's plastic, and dollar-seekinpulpiteers frequenting the tube in full pastel color? Jack Goodman. honey-mouthe- g The bear is our forest twin. Of a size often close to our own, possessing a hind foot remarkably similar, he favors many of the same foods we do. He is highly intelligent, and more than our equal in strength. No mystery that the eight kinds of bear have engendered fascinat.on, myth and literature throughout the Americas, Eurasia and the Arctic where they and humankind have shared ground. The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Suture. Myth and Literature by Paul Shepard and Barry Sanders $17 95) is a synthesis of our multiplicity of connections to the bear, and what we know of his natural history. Paul Shepard, professor of human ecology at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., has long written of our relations to wildlife and nature. Sanders, a professor of English at Pitzer, offers literary counterpoint. Together, they have come up with a surprisingly coherent and readable assemblage. If the vast quantities of ursine paraphernalia sold in recent years is any guide, there is perhaps a genuinely interested and receptive audience for this species of enlightenment: literate, scholarly, but far from detached. David Graber, Los Angeles Times. 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Overlooked Harlem After all, his Morningside Heights apartment looked down upon the increasing shambles that was black Harlem. He became, in his latter days, a vigorous supporter of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr a leader of white Christian support for black aspirations fur equality in education and employ- The bear facts collected |
