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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1982)
Irving Continued from Page 8B I through. The Berry's passage from ho tel to hotel to hotel to hotel (there are four in all, three named Hotel New Hampshire) spans about a 50-year period. In that time, a circus of characters, ideologies, sexual relationships and bears float on the family's periphery, threatening and tempting its stability The Berrys hold themselves together with the glue of dreams, humor and circumstances that could occur only in Irving's wild and enter taining imagination Because of Irving's relentless juxtaposition of the possible and impossible, the book gets a little out of hand, fictional liber ties aside Like “Garp,’' the story becomes increasingly violent and unbelievable. The central characters, all fairly well differentiated and delineated by their special obsessions and styles of speech (Irving could write great screenplays), seem to lose some substance through the direction of the plot Our interest in them wanes as the story gets sillier and the the plot goes awry Flaws aside, the book should be read and enjoyed indis crimateiy, quickly and with abandon It should be read for its movement, its precise and sensitive rendering of child hood, its elegant depiction of several dreamy scenes that hint of Fitzgerald Certainly no current writer captures childhood and its fears, hopes and anxieties as Irving does, nor does any author guard his characters from ca price, fate and danger as ten derly. Irving makes his best fic tion from characters in touch with their childhood schemes and dreams But when the same characters start to grow up,' he ends the scene, or the novel With this kind of storytelling device, or approach, Irving cheats the reader, especially when "Hotel'' starts to sputter midway We re too often mar ooned before we really know a character or a scene Irving does his job as teaser, magician and stellar storyteller But after "Hotel," he may prove that he's not concerned with resolutions He may continue to exercise the doubtful privilege that fiction can indiscriminately start, stop or go anywhere it pleases Angela Allen L.L. Bean parody wins “Items From Our Catalog” By Alfred Gingold Avon Books. 1982 84 pages. $4.95 “Items From Our Catalog" may very well be the funniest book in years It is a parody of the L.L Bean catalog Right down to the typeface, it captures the slightly stuffy but quaint Maine friendli ness of Bean's, but substitutes a wildly bizarre assortment of items for the normal fare At first one isn't sure what this book is Is it real? Like a good parody should, it takes a moment for the joke to sink in It soon does, accompanied by great laughter Gingold includes items which duplicate Bean's, items similar to Bean's and items so comple tely off-the-wall one wishes they were in Bean's just to tease the Abercrombie and Fitch senses of its customers One classic Bean garment is their Norwegian Sweater Gin gold offers a bulletproof ver Weekend Special $2500 200 FREE MILES Friday afternoon to Monday morning A-WAY 683-0874 #7 Coburg Road Some Restrictions sion Bean's own brand of insula tion is Thinsulate Gingold uses Thinsulite' to insulate papal vestments The classic watchcap in ' Items" is solar powered Then it gets really strange Imagine a down yarmulke. dress waders, camouflage shoelaces and Swiss Army earrings Each item, naturally, is explained in complete detail Then there's lip chaps, fresh air freshener — to make the outdoors smell like outdoors — and the combination compass and compact in an elegant tor toise shell case For Eugene folks there's mis matched socks, tofu innersoles and "Our Own Shoe and Hair Care Products For the really strange there's hubcap cookware, swab covers (to keep your Q-Tips clean, of course) and a well designed, fully functional infant,'' 6 lbs, $13.75 For protecting your food there's the famous fruit sweater (zippered), a fur-lined tuna case Continued from Page 12B TEETH Ignore them and they will go away Teeth Cleaning, Exam and X-Rays as needed $25 Will Morningsun, D.D.S. 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