Faithful Are the Wounds, May Sarton (Norton:...

Faithful Are the Wounds, May Sarton (Norton: $4.95). Deeply committed to the fight against fascism in the 1930s and ‘40s, Edward Cavan, an English professor, was driven to be something more than a witness and was deeply loved by a small circle of friends at Harvard and Cambridge. So, when he commits suicide in the middle of this novel, he sets off a shock wave of soul-searching among his friends. At first, they cope with his death by hiding behind intellectual masks and pretenses. But a series of crises, most prominently the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, pulls them out of their stupor, giving them new courage about their convictions. This is an engaging novel by an author who has won critical acclaim for her exploration of such themes as courage, death and purpose, but has been stereotyped as “feminist” because many of her works chronicle close friendships between women.

Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker (University of California: $7.95). Most Pro-Life and Pro-Choice activists agree that science, with its rigid certitudes, is unlikely to shed light on the acrimonious abortion debate. Yet Kristin Luker goes a step further, suggesting that the activists’ beliefs are not even influenced by ideology and religion. In this 1984 analysis of the controversy, supplemented by in-depth interviews with activists, Luker argues that views on abortion are determined by family life, sexual behavior, belief in technology and views on the importance of the individual. She paints an even-handed portrait of both sides of the debate, although Pro-Choice activists have criticized her for implying that the link between the Pro-Choice agenda and conservative causes is automatic: Pro-Choice activists have said they do not necessarily believe, as Luker claims, that “men are best suited for the public world of work and women are best suited to rear children.”

The Culture of Technology, Arnold Pacey (MIT: $7.95). The book begins with a story of how Eskimos reacted to snowmobiles in the 1960s. At first, they could not be persuaded to forgo dog sleds. But, as the years passed, they heartily endorsed the use of the machine, in some cases even modifying rituals to suit the new technology. To Arnold Pacey, the snowmobile’s unmistakable impact on Eskimo culture calls into question the popular belief that changes in society are solely the work of people, not gadgets. Pacey dismisses the theories of the malevolent computer that have become so popular in science fiction, insisting, instead, that the “culture of technology” can help awaken our consciousness. He supports his point with a historical overview that is sweeping, but convincing. Long before Columbus’ day, for example, a majority of the educated public had realized that the Earth was a sphere, but the real dawning of recognition didn’t arrive until Columbus’ quest offered tangible proof that this familiar academic fact had unrealized practical potential.

The Red Couch: A Portrait of America, Kevin Clarke and Horst Wackerbarth, photography; William Least Heat Moon, text (Alfred van der Marck Editions: $17.95). The concept on which this book is based--hauling an eight-foot, 200-pound red velvet couch around the world for photograph sessions in mid-air, on snowy mountains and in Manhattan streets--sounds playful at best, but the authors have fashioned the gimmick into art. The root of the idea was unpretentious: Two New York City artists, Russell Maltz and Kevin Clarke, wanted to photograph the couch against the cavernous interior of a vacant swimming pool. But the artists grew so fond of the swimming pool session that a national project was born, and helicopters, boats and even aerial tramways were used to juxtapose this “symbol of suburbia” against a plethora of cultural and natural settings. The accompanying text is brief but engaging: In one photo session an American Nazi Party member sitting near the couch realized that he was wearing Levi Strauss blue jeans, and he quickly found a swastika to cover the “Jewish product.” Many of the pictures are intriguing in themselves: One shot, for example, shows animals looking at the couch in the middle of a desolate marsh, examining what appears to be a curious artifact from another era.

Of Women Born: Motherhood as an Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich (Norton: $6.95) is the first work of prose by a writer who seeks in poetry the authority, meaning and coherence she cannot find in life. While Americans, she fears, will remain outsiders to each other, in poetry they can find “the drive to connect, the dream of a common language.” Though associative imagery and personal memories recur throughout the book, Adrienne Rich becomes more of an anthropologist than poet when looking at forms of motherhood in non-Western cultures. She recalls, for instance, Persian myths of genesis that both worshiped women for their unique creative power and castigated them; if women give life, the myths held, they also can end it. Even when exploring foreign cultures, though, Rich continually recalls her own anxieties as a mother: guilt for “having failed” her children, anger at their demands, respect for her husband, but frustration at being stigmatized as a “dependent.” By focusing so closely on her own experience, Rich comes to controversial conclusions. Motherhood, she writes, can impose harsher limitations on the individual than slavery “because the emotional bonds between a woman and her children make her vulnerable in ways which the forced laborer does not know . . . the woman with children is prey to far more complicated, subversive feelings.”