Oregon daily emerald., March 12, 1981, Section B, Page 4 and 5, Image 12

Books, books and more books
How to be Preppy
The Official Preppy Handbook
Edited by Lisa Birnbach
Workman Publishing, $3.95
Some people say they originated in
New England, and others say they are
just a phenomenon of birth. Whoever
they are, you can usually point them
out them because of their delightfully
stereotypical garb.
Ahh, the top-siders, the Lacoste
shirts, the khaki, the clogs . the list
goes on; the Preppy wardrobe.
Lisa Birnbach points this out in her
book The Official Preppy Handbook. A
funny conglomeration of all the stuff
you’ve heard in days gone by, the
book starts off with a bit of humor and
continues throughout to engage the
reader in a rather condescending and
tongue-in-cheek rehashing (on paper)
of the age-old tradition of Preps.
Birnbach initiates the reader to the
Prep world by simply stating that "it is
the inalienable right of every man,
woman, and child to wear khaki.
Looking, acting and ultimately being
Prep is not restricted to an elite
minority lucky enough to attend
prestigious private schools..." But,
Preppies do have a class of their own.
Without a doubt, Prep dressing is
one of the more noticeable and
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obvious forms of Prep behavior (just as
being a “freak” in high school meant
you wore your jeans so the hem
slurped dirt under the sole of your
shoes).
At one point, Birnbach speculates
on why Preppies all dress alike. She
mentions that some “amateur
historians” have thought that the Prep
set wears the same clothes because its
members are used to wearing
uniforms, but Birnbach points out that
Prep homogeneous dressing starts
much earlier than uniformed
schooling: “Preppies dress alike
because their wardrobes are formed
according to fundamental principles
that they absorb from their parents and
their peers.”
These "fundamental principles” are:
conservatism (“Preppies wear clothes
for 25 years”), neatness (Socks, when
worn, always stay up), attention to
detail (“Everything matches — some
Preppies go so far as to change their
watchbands every day”), practicality
("Layering is a natural response to
varying weather conditions"), quality
(“Preppie clothes are built to last”),
natural fibers (they look better, require
professional maintenance, are more
expensive, are “key”), anglophilia
("The British have a lot to answer
for . . . ”), specific color blindness (“In
some subcultures, hot pink on men
might be considered a little
peculiar. . . ”), the sporting look
(“Even if they've never been near a
duck blind or gone beagling, Preppies
are dressed for it”) and androgyny
("The success of the Lanz nightgown
is based on its ability to disquise
secondary sexual
characteristics. . .”).
Portrayal of the sensed mediocrity of
this class continues throughout the
handbook. Prep sex is a good
example.
"Most Prep men," Birnbach says,
"suffer from the virgin/whore
complex, and only want to have sex
with bad' women . Prep men will not
marry these women; they will marry
other Preppies."
There is, of course, much more to
the Prep world than clothes and sex.
There’s the proper Prep pet, what to
have and have not in your house
(mahogany or macrame?), Prep
schooling, fraternal instincts, certain
(acceptable) ways to express
drunkenness, where to shop, the
country club, sailing, and the like.
Basically, Birnbach’s edited version
of the Prep set is complete. She points
out L.L. Bean, riding lessons, tennis,
and using summer as a verb: After
reading her book, you'll know what to
say, wear, do and think to be Preppy.
The Official Preppy Handbook is
hardly intellectual fare, but if you have
"twenny” minutes to dribble away, you
might peek in on Birnbach’s Prep
world; she’s awfully accurate.
Erzsi De’ak
Poetry by a Monk
ENOUGH SAID
By Philip Whalen
Grey Fox Press, 1980, $4.95
As a poet, Philip Whalen is
precocious enough to begin a new
collection of poems by admitting the
book “was written under ideal
conditions.”
“The author was living a life of
elegant retirement in the character of a
Zen Buddhist priest at the Hossen
Temple in San Francisco and at the
monastery of Zenshinji at Tassajara
Springs, far in the mountains east of
the Big Sur,” Whalen explains in the
preface to ENOUGH SAID, Poems
1974-1979 .
“Given ideal conditions, how could
life be anything but a joyous round of
pleasure. What could possibly go
wrong.”
In Whalen’s view of life — that of a
Zen priest — nothing can actually go
wrong. But of course, most of us at
times perceive things as going wrong.
The poems that Whalen takes from this
paradox comprise a sizeable number
of the collection’s 60-some poems.
One of the best is “Waste.
Profligacy. Fatuity.” The first five lines
are:
We get ourselves into a mess when we
say
“Thank God that's over," "Never
again will I do thus & so."
Nothing is over or under; things is and
then change,
We think of ourselves as we used to be
What is we now?
In other poems, such as “How Many
Is Real,” Whalen takes a more formal
philosphical stance:
Whether we intended it or liked it or
wanted it
We are part of a circle that stands
beyond life and death
Happening whether we will or no
We can't break it, we are seldom
aware of it
And it looks clearest to people beyond
its edge.
They are included in it
Whether or not they know
Whalen often struggles with the gap
between the philosphical stance he
describes in poems such as "How
Many Is Real” and the less abstract
activities of everyday life. And getting
the two to overlap requires a letting go.
The first two stanzas of “Wandering
Outside” read:
Purples flags for the luxurious color
Extravagant form; and then I calmly
Empty dead tea leaves into the toilet
I hate the world I hate myself the
dragon wind
I allow everything to happen
I want luxury, extravagance. to use
To give to you,
A wild naked leap in moonlight surf
Wildflower meadow, swim in alpine
lake
Stand under waterfall
The joyous poems in which Whalen
successfully transcends that gap —
and there are several — are best
represented by the one-line poem
“The Inspection of the Mind in June”:
All of me that there is makes a shadow.
The best poems in the collection are
marked by similar simplicity and clarity
— characteristics that can’t be fully
appreciated or understood without
struggling through the more dense
philosphical poems.
One of the best of these is “The
Laundry Area":
Each time I hang up a washboard
The slenderest thread of cold water
Runs down my wrist and into my
armpit
Without wetting my clothes.
Glenn Boettcher
Of reggae and
ganga
Reggae Bloodlines
In Search of the Music and Culture of
Jamaica
By Stephen Davis
and Peter Simon
Anchor Press/Doubleday, $6.95
Reggae is Jamaican ghetto music, a
relative of American rock and roll and
soul music, with the accent on the
second and fourth beats.
Reggae Bloodlines is an effort by
Stephen Davis and Peter Simon to
point out both the sociopolitical and
musical origins of reggae. Well
intentioned though it is, the book is
severely damaged by the superficiality
of the authors' understanding of the
culture they are trying to describe. And
the book is sloppily organized.
Writer Davis and photographer
Simon spent, in their words, "most of
the winter of 1976 in Jamaica, visiting
and talking with . . reggae master
musicians as well as the producers,
ganja traders, Rastafarian brethren
and elders, and even a politician or
two. . . We tried to penetrate
Jamaican life to the roots
The contradiction, not to mention
arrogance, inherent in those two
sentences is staggering. Davis and
Simon expected, in the space of a few
months, to be able to penetrate to the
roots of a culture developed over
hundreds of years. That they didn't
succeed hardly needs to be
mentioned.
Reggae Bloodlines begins
promisingly enough, with a brief
outline of the history of Jamaica. Davis
traces the development of the music
as mento (a relative of calypso, mixed
with American rhythm and blues,
eventually producing ska), a quick,
party-oriented music which evolved
into the slower rock-steady, and finally
reggae. He gives a reasonably lucid
overview of the Jamaican subcultures
which produced and embraced
reggae. Then the book falls apart.
Where it would seem appropriate to
examine more deeply the cultural
phenomena he has outlined, Davis
jumps to an interview with Bob Marley.
He begins the chapter by referring to
himself in the second person: “You
scream into Jamaica over an
aquamarine Caribbean mirror ..."
It's an interesting approach, but Davis
doesn’t even bother to sustain it for a
chapter, much less for the length of
the book. A mere 16 pages later, Davis
switches to the third person, and
seven pages after that he and Simon
are “we.”
This literary laziness is annoying,
and is present throughout the book.
During an interview with singer Max
Romeo, Davis brings up a song Romeo
Bloodlines
In Search Of
The Music And
Culture Of Jamaica
Stephen Davis and f ~
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wrote about socialism. Davis reprints
the interview verbatim in
question-and-answer form, and never
does get around to mentioning the
name of the song, or exactly how it
treated the issue.
Davis’ insistence on merely printing
interviews without really examining
what his subjects are saying means
that Joe Higgs and Peter Tosh can, in
separate conversations, each claim to
have created the Waiters, and Davis
will never even attempt to resolve the
contradiction.
For all the flaws in the text, Reggae
Bloodlines deserves praise for pointing
out some of the major forces in reggae
music. Most of the artists whose
records are fairly easy to find on these
shores are mentioned — Marley, Tosh,
Burning Spear, Toots and the Maytals,
the Heptones — enough to give the
novice reggae buff a good start on a
record collection.
But even this virtue is diluted. A
“Jamaica Discography" is listed in the
table of contents as appearing on
page 211. It doesn't appear at all.
The nonexistent discography is a
final symptom of the carelessness
which ruins what could have been a
useful, informative study of a culture
and its music. Phil Bernstein
Fun with Fanny
Fanny
By Erica Jong
New American Library
Vice. Debauchery. Lust. Love.
Moralism. Adventure.
All this and more is seen through the
eyes of an 18th-Century maid, told in
the manner of the 18th-Century novel,
and set in the rank, putrid and barbaric
ways of 18th-Century England.
Fanny, being The True History of the
Adventures of Fanny
Hackabout-Jones, is Erica Jong’s
best-selling novel rivaling that of
Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and
Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of
Pleasure. In her slightly epic but racy
adventure, Jong successfully portrays
a woman’s life in an era when women
suffered far greater oppression than
they do today.
Complete with all the standard plot
conventions, moralistic diversions,
exclamations and of course, Proper
Capitalization, Fanny is at times a
tedious adventure, but well laced with
scenes one often finds dog-eared after
some readings. And in the course of
reading one may find every possible
synonym for both male and female
genitalia. *
Fanny, seduced by her step-father
(Lord Bellars), finds herself a runaway,
dressed en homme, on the road to
London. Along the way she
encounters witches, highwaymen
(notably Lancelot Robinson and his
band of Merry Men), and the notorious
Mother Coxtart, whose famous Brothel
becomes Fanny’s second home.
Her Fortune now fixed as a Whore,
Fanny takes on the position famously,
entertaining such notables as
Jonathan Swift and William Hogarth.
She nearly escapes to join her true
love Lancelot as a pirate on the high
seas, but Fate leads Fanny to Lord
Bellars as his mysterious mistress. Her
only happiness is the birth of her
daughter, but is soon dashed when the
child is kidnapped by a crazed
wet-nurse.
Fanny's adventures now take her on
the high seas in search of her
daughter, where she is held captive by
a perverse and depraved Captain,
becomes a pirate herself, and joyously
is reunited with Lancelot and his Merry
Men. Together they rescue the baby
and make their way back to Fanny’s
childhood home, Lymeworth. Of
course, everyone's true lineage comes
to light and most everyone (who is left
alive by this time) ends up living
happily ever after.
Although novels of this nature can at
times be predictable and tedious,
Fanny is a well-executed blend of
tasteful erotica, historical adventure,
and feminist philosophy. There is,
basically, something for everyone on
an unpretentious but edifying level.
Those readers who enjoyed Jong's
previous works, Fear of Flying and
How To Save Your Own Life, may find
Fanny a bit shallow. Yet Jong
incorporates the feminist views of
today into a first-rate, light novel — at
some points thought-provoking and
controversial, and at others whimsical
and, of course, quite erotic.
Jerril Nilson
? Live ^
and lovin’ it!
Sapphire-'
Direct from Seattle . . . come welcome back
to Eugene this versatile and entertaining all
female show and boogie band.
St. Patrick’s Weekend starts
Friday the 13th with outrageous
Irish fun all weekend.
Playin’ to Dance
Friday and Saturday
from 9 p.m.
w O’CALLAHAN'S J
\w^440 Coburg Road. Eugene Phone 343-1221
ACTION
SURPLUS
Lane County’s Surplus
and Outdoor Store
Summer Supplies—
Sleeping Bags • Tents • Rafts • Summer Clothes • Foot
Lockers • Duffel Bags • Ammo Cans • Tarps...and much more
We’re open 7 days a week!
Mon.-Sat. 9:30-6:00 Sun. 11-4
4251 Franklin Blvd. on the Glenwood strip
just before the Springfield Bridge.
746-1301
Layaways
WANTED
Your Unwanted
Records
Top Prices Paid
"We Buy- Sell-Trade
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HOUSE OF
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258 E. 13th
Between Pearl
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Wandering from
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2709 Willamette St.
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Anti-Freeze
Tire Wear
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Brakes
Exhaust
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An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
183 10th Ave. W. on the Downtown Mall
Appointment suggested. Call 687-7095
Otter expires March 31, 1981