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Show CUE h z r THE COLD SIX THOUSAND KmpU27J5 Q33 PBM 9371419152 KVKW BY JAMES MEN. WEBB November ; It'i 1963, sod Wayne . .; Jc,Las i Tedrow, Vega cop, is given ; $6,000 and sent to Dallas with instnic-tions to make sure a pimp named Wendell Durfee pays die price for knif-- : , AM e s ". . : A. l. . ; f Codling to me is ao erotic as a hotel room, arid thodbre to penetrated udfli . life and death. Thus begins Paul Theroux's latest volume of autobiognlphy-as- novel. Hold Honuhiiu (Houghton Mifflin, $26, ISBN 061 80950 12). The fimt ; sertence 'should serve as either appetizer or wamingThis is a brilliantly written , " book, .beautifidly imagined, a detached arid sometimes dulling excreise. in which tries n kMt his. will to unite, to tiie narrator; an authrewhq pays he has regain that will by retreating to a seedy hold ujWsikikLBut tire salvation he daims to have found at books end comes with no emotional experiditure on his ' fint-pern- . . ' part.'":;' ,v ' 7 ';v ' ' C-- Thatthebook'l title echoes Grand ore is no accident, of course; the pioT is ;. primarily a serire of diancter vignettes that ody occasionally intersect, thoui ' they often shine a edd glitter of inference oh one.andhex Most are keenly obrerved portraits of the tourists, natives, exiles, escapees and cons the narrator meets through his job as the motel manager. The narrator himself is just such an , ; exile, a man in his 50s who, sfter thirty years of moving around the world, ind tiiirty yeare of books, ii agnin on the run from failed relationships of various types. (This may sound familiar to those aware of Theroux's own acrimonious ' tendencies.) 1 ncoded a rest fromeverything imaginary" the oanator says, and I felt that in settling inHawaii, and not writing;! was retuming tothe worid." v: Yet this prodigal admirer of Somerset Maugham cannot help but flee to a place of the tropics, the of Mooted fecundity and constant decay. It's that .' heavy scent of flowers, the quick frailty, the Vast and perviarire corruption of die ; settles mtouThrough'hisjbb, hn meets people ; , mold and its cast dud the narrator who sell themsdves and one another; commit murder and mayhem, lie about their ages and sexual proclivities, drink, srink and commit suicide. Theroux is fastinat-- : ed widr there characters, and he makes diem find-- ; . vio-leac- . ; over-ripene- ss . . hft-i- lt ;.v--':- ; a Mackjactdealcc A relatively straight Cop .from ft corrupt city, Tedrow is on hisway io ; ground zero of a pivotal ' . event in American history. But Hie Cold Six ; Thousand isnt about Wayne Tedrows little errand; its about the men ". Tedrow meets, the men ; who really murdered '. JFK the assassins their, confidants, their paymas--; ten, dieir bosses. Its about men with the hubris to thipk that people and events can be. manipulated for their own personal ends, whether they are motivated by greed or .Thousand provides a graphic glinqe of idealism or the sheer lust for power:; how things worked back far the 60s and Author lames Ellroy has covered this ' our nation hasnt been, (hesame since pound before in his novels of the seamy that turbulentera. underbelly of Los Angeles like White v. Jazz and LA. Confidential. The Cold : J,amet Neal Webb can remember where Sfr Thousand is a sequel to his critically he was when Johrr F. Kennedy died. ing 'ik-i- Therouxs strangers in paradise ex-co- p, BhmKBtnt) . 4 acclaimed novel American Tabloid, and many of die characters from dial booh, show up hero. WudLitteH; late of the CIA FBVand PeteBonderiuit, asset and killer, wheel and deal with die likes of Howard Hughes, J, Edgar Hoover and Floyd Patterson. History moves with lightning speed in die 1960s, and in EHroys fictional world, those , who don't like the way its moving plot , to chaqge its Oourre, on the beaches of Cuba, the streets of Las Vegas and even in the jungles of Vietnam. ' Some warnings are warranted. The Cold Six Thousand is not a pretty book.' The language is find; the ; e sex is cweless; the is expliciU and the racism is disturbing in ; short, its a painful mirror of the era. The good guys ; dont win because dim are )no good guys, just a lot of black with a few shades of gray. EUroys trademark r ; staccato prose style reaches new crescendos.At times its almost like a tone poem or a '50s beat rap. . It would be nice to dunk that James Ellroy is wrong, that history isn't .really made by tire greedy and the ugiy and the amoraL But The Cold Six " natingtodiereadec' - Unvgk Udjobf Rb MamtorJ meets . . - . la. . . driak, gUakaad commit tukkfg. liana It toebuted rRI then ' DANCE WITH DEMONS life of Jerome ByGngLnmaca Robbins A driven perfectionist, choreographer-directJerome Robbins was startlingly prolific. But in pushing at the creative boundaries of ballet and Broadway, he was also maddeningly cruel a maestro of insult and innuendo. Complex and colorful, hesnares die spotlight in Dance with Demons. Written by Greg Lawrence, who knows his way around the dance ' floor (he teamed with balls-- . rina Geisey Kirkland for her rxmai Dancing on My Crave), this is die first ..... account of his professional..-- . or al . triumphs off-sta- bscbutlagtotbamder." Accustomed to towing off accounts of people in V. faraway places, thenanator finds that. this time ; around, he is the curiosity, Tiired because I was a white man, a haoie. comes through; his precocious and Nevertheless, his Underlying acute daughter is not only his great pride, but seems to have emerged Athena-lik- e from his mind alone, with no help from his natrvehoni and somewhat simple. ' is a prostitute, profession Theroux never wife. (The narrator'i mother-in-ladres of; and in one 6f die oddest madio fiurtasiex in the book, the narrator's wife . ; is the result of a tryst with JFK.) You might say die narrator takes Nod Coward's way out of the sitiuoil, open- -. ing every snapshot with an epigrammatic sleight of hand. One morning at first ; . light, quite by chance, she entered the hotels coffee shop in a tight tube (frvss that motion of her wicked shoes. (This rode up her dtighs from the being the former novice nun whose ecsiatic visions had been not of God but of : her incestuous father) ; . Again, Theroux's opening rematks in the book serve as both lure and warning. The happenings at the botd arc by turns raunchy. grisly and hilarious. While the nanator makes lots of sllowances for himselt pretending that his passivity is a sort of free pass, he trains an imyielding eye on the other inhabitants of this ' tawdry part of paradise. As Theroux has demonstrated before, in more than 30 books, there are few writen bo can lure the reader into more unlovelycompli- ance with his view of the world. ?. Jewish-Catholi- ; tra- vails. .. Robbins, who died in . ' 1998 at age 79, grew uplov- ing dance, taking lessons as . ' chiM(to theirrilatioo of bis father). As a teenager; he was influenced by the pioneering modem dance artistsof the 1930s, who explored political and social themes. Then came a project under choreographer Antony Tudor; ' whose ballet rehearsals resembled psy--. . chodramas, complete with Stanislavski acting techniques and Freudian insight ' homo-sexuali- . : w ; . . heel-and-t- oe ; ' ty ; . Dance with Demons is full of fascinating quotes from Robbins associates and wonderful minutiae about the ballet world. Hundreds of the choreogra-pbe- HONOLULU a novel PAUL THEROUX . REVIEW BY PAT BROCSKE and Robbins' own ballets would reverberate with TWor's influence. ; OneofRobbins'most famous works, Hirst SideStory. wasalso oneofhis most audacious. He once talked of doing a c take on Romeo and ' after Juliet, but reading headlines about ; Robbins turned Hirst delinquency, juvenile Side Stoty;: into the saga of the Sharks and the Jets, and Tony and Maria. From the nightof its 1957 premiere. West Side Story was a monster, hit .. Thanks to his troublesome behavior during the making of die West Side Story movie, Hollywood eluded the man whose ymds an Gypsy, Fiddler on the Roof and The King and I pmxtd him five Tony and two :. Academy Awards. Robbins was further hampered by : hispersonal relationships. In an era in which was taboo, he . was involved with men as ' well as women.'. , . Hm Ideal pairing: tropical setting and a fine Santana .. . . Such baroque and floral ruination does bring one unadulterated pleasure to mind: the honeyed, rore-gol- d and Semilion Sauternes from Peter Lehmann. like Theroux's Hawaii (and the decaying honey plantation he lives on), there wines are made from grapes intentionally gone to high sugar and the noble rot that produces true Sautemes. With a clean, cittary nose, a whisper of almond and the slimmest, most elegant diifion of citrus, there wines arc perfect at the outset with fire gras or fine olives (nor the bland martini ones, toe real tilings) or at the end with cheese. Its sold in half bottle; the 1997 goes for about $17. ; . rs colleagues spoke with Greg Lawrence for this book, and the interviews help flesh out his lively portrait of Robbins. An engaging biognphy of a complex man. Dance with Demons brings Jerome Robbins center stage right where he belongs. If : . ed . . 1 Eve Zibari is the restaurant critic for TheWashington PoAsweekend section. This column reflects her dual interests in wine and travel - Pat Broeske writes firm California. . MAY-20- 129 |