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8 Montrose Voice / June 5,1981
Books
A 1700-mile
Australian
desert
'strol'
By JOHN PINKERMAN
Copley News Service
TRACKS: By Robyn Davidson, Pantheon, 256 pages,
$11.95. With the price of
books soaring beyond the
limits of inflation, this fascinating story may be the best
bargain of the 1980s.
Twenty-seven-year-old
Robyn Davidson (that was
her age in 1977 when the action in her story unfolded)
was and likely still is a remarkable young woman. In
her story, she exhibits a
toughness and a sense of de-
cept for the aborigines
whom she conquered with
understanding. She never did
fully understand, much less
appreciate the white
humans.
They included tourists,
newsmen, television cameramen anxious to gawk at
and write exaggerated stories about the "camel lady"
and miscellaneous others
who interrupted her experi-
termination that defies the
imagination. At the same
time, there is an extremely
gentle strain in her makeup,
particularly regarding animals, wild and domestic.
If you don't believe in her
toughness, just consider her
basic accomplishment — a
1,700-mile walk from Australia's Alice Springs to the
Indian Ocean, accompanied
by four camels and her pet
dog, Diggity. She conquered
and-or survived desert,
drought, near flood — and
human beings.
The human beings seemed
to trouble her the most ex-
ence with nature.
She found beauty everywhere — in stark desert, in
mountains and mere hillsides, in all manner of desert
plants, in cloudy skies and
clear skies, in cold nights
and miserably hot nights —
and particularly in the wildlife she encountered even
though her life was endangered several times by wild
bull camels.
As for hunters, her contempt was in the extreme. It
became even worse the
night her beloved Diggity
wandered from her makeshift campground and came
back a bit later retching and
obviously fatally ill. He had
been tempted by strychnine-
laced meat tossed recklessly
throughout the wild by men
in helicopters — for the purpose of wiping out the dingoes, wild dogs that are a
part of the Australian bush.
Davidson and Diggity,
who seemed to know he was
doomed, shared a final minute of affection — then her
rifle shot put the faithful
friend out of his misery. This
unfortunate incident marred
the latter part of her successful conquest of the desert, and almost as sad was
her parting with her camels
— put into "retirement" in a
safe haven when she flew
back to Brisbane, and on to
New York to first record her
accomplishment for the National Geographic.
"Tracks" is a gem indeed,
particularly at a time when
so much trash is emerging
from even reputable publishers.
A LIFE IN OUR TIMES -
Memoirs: by John Kenneth
Galbraith, Houghton Mifflin,
563 pages, $16.95. These are
probably difficult days for
Galbraith now that conserv
ative economists are in positions of power in Washington. It was Galbraith, a devotee of the free-spending,
liberal policies of John May-
nard Keynes, who has been
most identified by the public
mind with the economic theories first spawned into political reality by the Democratic administrations of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But this book is much
more than Galbraith economics. His life has had an
extraordinary range — from
administrator of wartime
price controls to the interrogation of Nazi war criminals. He has known well the
powers of his time. Well
worth reading, even if you
don't agree with his economics.
TERTIUM ORGANUM -
A Key to the Enigmas of the
World: by P.D. Ouspensky,
Knopf, 298 pages, $15. This
book by the great Russian
philosopher first appeared in
this country 60 years ago.
This new, revised translation
is welcome, indeed. Outspen-
sky's mind penetrated to the
heart of things: the nature of
matter, cause and effect,
space and motion, the transformation of energy. It's not
easy going, but his ideas are
engrossing and could change
your way of regarding the
world.
THE NATURAL WORLD
COOKBOOK: by Joe FiCi-ts,
Stephen Greene Press, 283
pages, $15. This is a cookbook with a difference.
There are all kinds of unusual things: hobblebush jelly
sauce, apple cattail root casserole, rabbit pie, day lily
buds and pork, wild leek and
Indian potato soup, rose hip
nut relish. Heaven knows
how all this stuff might
taste, but the recipes look
very good — and fairly easy
to fix. For woodchuck pie,
however, it might take some
doing to get the main ingredient.
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE
ATMOSPHERE: by Vincent
J. Schaefer and John A. Day,
Houghton Mifflin, 359 pages,
$13.95. A thin layer of gases
held to the earth's surface by
gravity keeps the engine of
life going It's called the atmosphere and it breeds such
things as clouds, hurricanes,
life-giving rain, tornadoes
and snow. It also shields out
deadly rays that would destroy life. This book is an excellent introduction to a subject that is important to all
of us — in an age when people vent into the air man-
made pollution that could
ruin our Drotective shield.
People
SUSAN CLARK
That's why the
lady smokes
cigars
By NANCY ANDERSON
Copley News Service
MIAMI - "It's better for
your health," said Susan
Clark as she lit her cigar.
After practicing a scene
with Gabe Kaplan, she was
practicing her vice (if you
care to call it that) in the
fenced yard of a Miami
warehouse.
The warehouse was loaded with whiskey, top-grade
stuff, but its*yard was loaded
with armaments, all props
for "Nobody's Perfekt," the
movie in which Clark and
Kaplan were starring.
Also starring were Robert
Klein and Clark's husband,
Alex Karras. Peter Bonerz,
who used to be the dentist on
Bob Newhat's TV series, was
directing and playing a
cameo.
Susan's cigar was no slim,
ladylike affair but a big,
smelly roll of tobacco of the
sort George Kennedy
chomps. It seemed odd in
juxtaposition to her beautiful face.
But, she was explaining, it
wasn't filling her lungs with
nasty, death-dealing nicotine, and so she preferred it
to a cigarette.
A year or two ago, she
said, a doctor told her that,
white all smoking is bad,
cigar smoking is preferable.
healthwiseto enjoying a
more ladylike cigarette,
"Because you don't inhale.
Also, this will last me all
day. One cigar will last almost anybody for hours unless you happened to be Winston Churchill who'd go
through a box of cigars and
a quart of brandy between
sunrise and sunset."
Susan began smoking
when she was about 14 years
old, because, amongst her
peers, it was the sophisticated thing to do.
For a while, she smoked
only in a locked bathroom
until a neighbor called her
parents to ask whether their
house was on fire. At that,
Clark's mother and father
invited, "If you're going to
smoke, smoke with us."
So she did. With them and
others.
Finally, health-aware at
last, she turned to stogies as
less dangerous than weeds
and more attractive than
chews and dips.
Though they've played romantic partners on screen,
Clark and Karras aren't the
loving couple in "Nobody's
Perfekt."
She plays Kaplan's sweetie while Alex plays one of his
kookie colleagues in an attempt to hold up the mayor
of Miami. The movie is
about three mental cases.
Kaplan, Karras and Klein,
who decide to fight city hall
starting at the top.
Kaplan plays Dibley, a
guy with a memory problem. He keeps forgetting
things like how to start his
car and how to make love.
Karras plays Swaboda, a
man devoted to his mom
who happens to be invisible.
And Klein is a schizoid who
ping-pongs between Jimmy
Cagney and Bette Davis personalities.
Who says DIANA ROSS
isn't ambitious? At the recent Academy Awards she
told the press that "I hope
next time I see you I have
one of those heavy things in
my hands." Diana would
love to find a good film
property, but she's having
trouble finding money to
finance her return to the
screen.
Question — who's the
most durable continuous
host of a network variety series? Answer — according to
the next edition of the "Guinness Book of World Records"
it's DICK CLARK, whose
"American Bandstand" has
been nationwide since August 5, 1957. That's 24 years,
passing ED SULLIVAN's 23
years.
BUt. as long as we're
counting, the real champ is
BOB KEESHAN, who has
been hosting "Captain Kangaroo" on CBS since Oct. 3,
1955. And LAWRENCE
WELK has been on TV for
more then 25 years, but he's
disqualified because more
than eight of those years
have been in syndication, not
network. These Guinness
folks are very strict about
their rules and regulations.
ROMANTIC NOTES:
Jackqueline Bisset, last
month romancing Warren
Beatty in Manhattan, is this
month discovering Jon
Voight in Hollywood.
... Meanwhile, Jackie's ex-
playmate, French industrialist Victor Drai, is hot and
heavy with scrumptious
Shana Hoffman (she of Peter
Strauss palimony fame).
... And Valerie Perrine is
all atwitter over another
rich Frenchman. He's
Claude Ravier, and he's usually to be found in the company of Cathy Lee Crosby.
Till Valerie came along.
... Rita Jenrette, estranged
wife of Abscamed Congressman John Jenrette, is heavy
dating Hollywood writer
Jeff Silverman. She's also
taking singing and dancing
lessons, and giving lectures
under the auspices of the
Richard Fulton lecture bureau.
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