Summer Reading

Fiction, history and psychology to provoke, instruct and entertain

PSYCHODYNAMIC TENNIS by Ethan Gologor Morrow, 227 pages; $8.95

Ethan Gologor is a psychologist and a tennis player, so it is no surprise when he asserts that "all sports are psychological, but some are more psychological than others. And tennis is the most." Assuming that his readers have the basic tennis skills (no amount of "inner" therapy will compensate for their absence), the doctor outlines the problems of this heady game.

The most serious obstacle is the belief that one must be perfect. "Ironically," Gologor says, "such a belief is held most of all by those who are losing. The leader can say more easily, 'I make errors.' His stature is evident to his opponent, the spectators, and himself. When one is losing, he fears his power may be not at all evident. To accept his errors, then, may be an admission that he's not really so good ... The loser must therefore proclaim his surprise at his error with as many histrionics as the audience will bear." In contradiction to what one may feel during the heat of a match, the author suggests that risks should be taken only when losing. For example, when serving at 0-30 take a chance; your opponent already has a great advantage with 50% of the game points. But when ahead 30-0 play it safe. Most points are won on errors, not winning shots. Gologor covers a lot of psychological ground: the aggression behind politesse, the times when anger and guilt are useful, the devastating aftereffects of missed opportunities. His courtside manner is casual and unintimidating, his prose free of psycho-jargon. There is, however, a bit too much commercial top spin in the book's title. Sensible Tennis may not be so flashy as Psychodynamic Tennis, but it would be more appropriate.

THE SENSE OF ORDER by E.H. Gombrich Cornell University; 411 pages; $38.50

Ordinarily, art histories are not the stuff of summer reading. But E.H. Gombrich is not the usual historian, and The Sense of Order is not a standard history. Subtitled "A study in the psychology of decorative art," this wittily illustrated volume ranges from a New Yorker cover of Saul Steinberg's to a wall inscription of Pompeii. Gombrich's central thesis concerns the need for order that resides in every human brain. Sometimes nature is accommodating: in hexagonal snowflakes, in the rhythmic chirping of crickets, in the natural laws of gravity and motion. Far more often, the eye sees chaos and the hand seeks to regulate it. The manner of regulation, says Gombrich, exhibits itself in decorative art. From the most elaborate Gothic structures to the smallest Christmas trees, individuals constantly attempt to fill in blank spaces and correct eccentricities. Some of the book's conclusions are debatable: "There are no laws imposing the same aim on any artist working at a given time ..." The Renaissance of Christian art would seem to refute that thesis; the poverty and angularity of urban environments surely have their influence on children who have to go to museums for anything more baroque than an equestrian statue. Yet even when he is perverse, Gombrich stimulates and entertains. His own volume is an imposition of high order on the profusion of art books that offer a thousand views but not a single vision.

LIVIA, OR BURIED ALIVE by Lawrence Durrell Viking; 265 pages; $10.95

Lawrence Durrell has written a duet of novels (Tune and Nunquam) and The Alexandria Quartet. Now he is literally trying to go himself one better. Livia is a mirror image and extension of Monsieur (1975), and Durrell has promised that three more novels in this series will follow.

Such structural underpinning helps the writer more than the reader. For all his fascination with the theories of Einstein and Freud, with the fragmenting of personality and time, Durrell fortunately remains a devotee of Scheherazade. Livia stands comfortably on its own as a polished romance filled with bright, interesting characters. They gather in the 1930s at Avignon, home of the medieval and mysterious Knights Templars. The air is "full of the scent of lemons and mandarines and honeysuckle" and of something else: dread of the future that Hitler is planning across the border in Germany. Durrell is still prone to overripe passages, but some of his audacious effects work memorably. He describes the madam of a French brothel sitting in her establishment, "enthroned in wigged splendour like a very very old ice cream of a deposed empress." At its frequent best, Livia offers a world of cool, dark enchantment.

BROCA'S BRAIN by Carl Sagan Random House; 347 pages; $12.95

From the title essay, which deals with the discovery of 19th century Brain Researcher Paul Broca's own brain in a formaldehyde-filled jar in a Paris museum, to his final speculation on out-of-body experiences and life after death, Carl Sagan (The Dragons of Eden) again balances technical expertise with humanistic thinking. The astronomer is not always successful, as when he tries to relate the psychology of the Big Bang to the experience of birth. But he is unassailable on subjects of pure science: the awesome structure of a grain of salt; the strange, hospitable atmosphere of Titan, a moon of Saturn. Sagan is at his wittiest when he attacks his betes noires: the ideas of Catastrophist Immanuel Velikovsky. Scientists usually lapse into tantrums when they discuss Velikovsky's belief in Venus as the cause of Old Testament miracles and plagues. Sagan, in a chapter worth the price of the book, refutes the claim so calmly and effectively that the theory, like an exhausted Sky lab, falls of its own weight.

A YEAR OR SO WITH EDGAR by George V. Higgins Harper & Row; 250 pages; $9.95

Peter Quinn is a successful Washington lawyer who hates himself for the compromises made on the climb upward. Edgar Lannin is a cynical Boston-based newsman whose life revolves around alimony payments and self-inflicted assaults on his liver. Friends since their college days at Fordham, the conflicted personnel of George Higgins' newest novel do not really go any place between the book's first page and its last. But the two, who consume enough alcohol to drown W.C. Fields, manage to talk a good life. Their conversations, about sex and the lack of it, marriage, divorce and children, and Roman Catholic angst, ring as true as quarters on a bartop.

Higgins, author of the minor classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972), still knows how to place surreal descriptions in the dialogue of his characters: "Marian looked like a small horse, perhaps a pony, who had read Vogue and believed it." And he has not lost his conductor's ear for the music and lilt of Boston Irish patois. Here the punch lines are stronger than the plot lines, but Higgins' characters are so shrewdly observed by Year's end, as Edgar confronts Peter, that it is impossible to disagree with his summary: "You're a son of a bitch yourself, but now you've stopped pretending that you aren't. That is our accomplishment." And the author's.

BLOOD OF SPAIN by Ronald Fraser Pantheon; 628 pages; $15.95

Forty years afterward, the conflict that foreshadowed World War II still reverberates in this remarkable oral history. Traversing a scarred land that has endured everything and forgotten nothing, British Historian Ronald Fraser records the memories of survivors. He digs for the truth about Communist betrayals and fascist atrocities, executioners and victims. Many of the recollections are as sanguinary as the war: bombs strike a hospital, airplanes strafe civilians, firing squads are everywhere. Hitler and Stalin control the moves offstage, ever willing to sacrifice Spaniards to German and Soviet causes. Contradiction is the order of the day: "How do you explain that?" inquires a woman. "!Dios mio! The people who destroy holy images kiss them." On the left, a father and son have their own civil war and lead separate socialist organizations. Yet throughout, the reader is struck by the dignity and character of ordinary people who endured and prevailed. Theirs is the Blood of Spain, and their total recall is more valuable than any number of academic speculations. The death of Generalissimo Franco has loosened tongues. Doubtless, many new volumes on the Civil War will follow this one. They will have trou ble equaling its power and detail. None will surpass it.

SUNDAY PUNCH by Edwin Newman Houghton Mifflin; 279 pages; $9.95

Edwin Newman's comic novel about a skinny English prizefighter who spouts economic theory when struck is what used to be called folderol. As folderol goes, it is on the airy side, and even for airy folderol, it lacks substance. A prospective reader should be warned that the author, perhaps driven to dementia by his efforts to persuade Americans to speak English (in Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue), retails a joke about an Oriental fighter named Kid Pro Kuo, "who gave as good as he got." And that one of the characters, a fight manager named Fogbound Franklin, speaks of an important victory as a "mild-stone" and ponders asking for a "decease and desist order" when a gangster tries to move in.

"Very interesting, to exaggerate wildly," as one of Newman's wisecracks goes. Worth a smile, at any rate, as Philpott-Grimes, the overeducated and under-muscled pugilist, puns his way to a title shot. It is unclear, and unimportant, whether Newman actually knows anything about boxing. He does know a lot about journalism, and some of his best gibes are about television and the press, including one notable satire of a team of excessively cheery newscasters. This is only to be expected from a veteran NBC correspondent who has spent a large part of his life on-camera, as one punchy character says about a TV anchorman, "standing in front of a government building and saying that only time would tell."

GIVING UP THE GUN: JAPAN'S REVERSION TO THE SWORD, 1543-1879 by Noel Perrin Godine; 122 pages; $8.95

This surprising moral treatise concerns a historical episode little known in the West in which the Japanese, having learned to make and use firearms, thereupon set those skills aside for 200 years. Portuguese sailors brought the first matchlocks to Japan in 1543, and within a few years the Japanese were using their own much improved models with bloody effectiveness. A nationwide revulsion then occurred, not because of the bloodiness, notes Perrin -- Japan was one of the most bellicose countries on earth -- but because guns gave common soldiers the means to kill noble samurai. By the time Commodore Perry forced the opening of Japan to the West in 1854, only scholars were familiar with the words that described guns.

The nation had been kept free of invasion for two centuries by the fierce reputation of the samurai swordsmen and by the power of artful invention: strips of canvas were displayed on the seacoast when ships passed near. On the strips were murals of forts, and on the battlements of the painted forts were painted cannons.

CLASS REUNION by Rona Jaffe Delacorte; 338 pages; $9.95

Remember The Group -- Mary McCarthy's novel about eight college girls and how they grew? Change Vassar to Radcliffe, the '30s to the '50s, take away the wry tone, and you have Rona Jaffe's readable reworking, Class Reunion. The four women in her sorority are archetypes:

Annabel, the flirtatious blond, ends up as a buyer for Bloomingdale's; Daphne, the Golden Girl, hides her epilepsy from her friends, marries a Harvard jock and has a mongoloid daughter; Chris, the shy romantic, marries a homosexual; Emily, the rich Jewish girl, dreams of med school and settles down as a doctor's wife.

Although Jaffe remarks that there were "civil rights uprisings in the South" and that "the Watergate hearings went on and on," such external events have little effect on her women. When they gather for a 20th reunion in 1977, their preoccupations are unaltered: clothes and contraception, careers and families, the right cars and the right men. It is a formula that Jaffe has cannily employed in her earlier books, and a sequel may soon provide another: in the epilogue, Annabel's daughter Emma is looking forward to going to--where else?--Radcliffe.

WILD OATS by Jacob Epstein Little, Brown; 267 pages; $9.95

Few college-inspired novels this side of Fitzgerald's Paradise have been even B-plus efforts. Wild Oats is a refreshing exception. Recent Yale Graduate Jacob Epstein set his low-key whimsy at fictitious Beacham University, a liberal arts college with a hundred-year tradition of the second-rate. Its off-centerpiece, Billy Williams, literally starts off on the wrong foot by stepping on the college master's dachshund at a cocktail party. He writes a term paper on the Iliad titled "The Shoes of the Greeks," falls for a coed named Zizi Zanzibar and takes Chinese so he can know "something hardly anyone else knew, except for several hundred million Chinese people." Woody Allen would recognize the type.

If only he could go home again. But back in Manhattan lurk Billy's sister Abby, who clomps "the treacherous hike from the bathroom to the kitchen linoleum" in hiking boots; his twice-divorced mother; and her balding lover Henry, whom Billy catches poring over nymphet glossies in a porn shop. Epstein is at his best with fresh comic perceptions of growing up absurd in a multiparent home. He is at his weakest in describing Billy's moony infatuation with Zizi, which leads to the novel's adolescent denouement.

Still, this is promising reading from a young author (son of Jason Epstein, editorial director of Random House) who is just funny enough to be taken seriously.

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