Gossip, Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of Chicago:...

Gossip, Patricia Meyer Spacks (University of Chicago: $10.95). However favored it might be on television or in daily banter, gossip is usually dismissed as trifling, sensational, or, in the case of Shakespeare’s Othello, malevolent; hardy against the most formidable opponent, Othello was nevertheless destroyed by words. Kierkegaard was even more critical, writing that “talkativeness (is) afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness.” Patricia Sparks, chair of the English department at Yale University, counters some of these popular conceptions in this witty and unique 1985 work, arguing that gossip can indeed be good for you. Paging through literature (its narrative frame, she writes, is similar to the oral narrative used by gossipers), she points out gossip’s most important role: It gives voice to our desires, then directs them toward socially acceptable channels. Stories about a young woman’s unbridled fantasies, for instance, inevitably end with her social ostracism. And so, ultimately, gossip’s role is conservative: delineating frontiers, specifically an “outside” inhabited by those talked about, and an “inside . . . inhabited by the temporarily secure territory of the talkers.” Nevertheless, Sparks emphasizes that gossip is more contemplative than Kierkegaard might have realized: It can help people gain intimacy, reflect about themselves, express wonder and uncertainty and locate certainties.

Voices of the Old Sea, Norman Lewis (Penguin: $5.95). Troubled by the years he spent in combat, the author “sought out the familiar” after World War II. Failing to find it in his native England, which was bustling with post-war development, he spent the next three summers in a “vanished time and place,” a small village on the coast of Spain. Ancient Celto-Iberian ritual and beliefs still dominated village life during the author’s first season, but, by the second year, the village’s very survival was threatened by dwindling fish harvests and new harvest technology from the cities. The fishermen had no recourse, Norman Lewis writes, because “the sea (was their) only employer.” By the third summer, however, the villagers had found prosperity because of a growing tourist trade. The interlopers brought with them new customs, and, soon, even one of the village elders was seen wearing leather shoes--the first of many cultural taboos that were to be violated. While Lewis’ quiet account of changes in the village resembles an elegy, most of the villagers accept their new prosperity in good spirits, insisting that whatever happens, they won’t be carried away by ephemeral tides: “We shall remain,” says one, “listening to the voices of the old sea.”

Socialism for Beginners, text by Anna Paczuska, illustrations by Sophie Grillet; Zen for Beginners, text by Judith Blackstone and Zoran Josipovic, illustrations by Naomi Rosenblatt (Writers & Readers: $6.95 each). It’s no wonder that the progressives behind the “Writers and Readers Series” turned to documentary cartoons to “reach the proles,” for cartoons have long been the print media’s most populist form of communication. The initial efforts in the series--introductions to Freud, Einstein and Marx, among others--were particularly successful, turning a potential weakness of daffy images (the tendency to trivialize and condescend) into a strength (illustrations were used to order and regulate the flow of ideas). Unfortunately, “Socialism for Beginners” doesn’t follow in the “Writers and Readers” tradition, taking its heritage, instead, from political pamphleteering. The authors are hesitant to contrast competing ideologies, failing to chronicle socialism’s recent setbacks in the West, for instance. “Zen for Beginners” is more successful, offering a broad overview of ideas in Oriental art, literature and architecture, and illustrating their effect on writers in the West, such as Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder.

Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, Daniel Goleman (Simon & Schuster: $8.95) , begins with broad social and political ambitions. The author hopes to call attention to the dangers of self-deception in order to help improve a world in which “those in power are too comfortable to notice the pain of those who suffer, and those who suffer have no power.” The book ends, however, on a more humble note, with the observation, based more on intuition than analysis, that “somewhere between the two poles--living a life of vital lies and speaking simple truths--there lies a skillful mean, a path to sanity and survival.” The change is welcome, for the author’s psychological observations are far more sagacious than his sociological ones. While he acknowledges that an entire society can distort reality, for instance, he doesn’t explain the types of mass self-deception, such as ethnocentrism. The author’s ideas about interpersonal interaction, though, are original and intriguing, especially when he examines our remarkable skill at self-deception: “In our family,” says one subject in the book, the child of an alcoholic, “there were two very clear rules. The first was that there is nothing wrong here. The second was, don’t tell anyone.”

NOTEWORTHY: Days Between Stations, Steve Erickson (Vintage: $6.95). Michel Sarre finds himself in Paris without any memory of his past. Searching for some clue, he wanders through a darkened Paris, where people burn museums to keep warm, and a hallucinatory Los Angeles, where sandstorms send dunes crawling up the buildings. The Postman, David Brin (Bantam: $3.95). “Welcome to Oregon,” reflects Gordon, a bitter survivor of a devastating nuclear war, “and I thought Idaho was bad.” Gordon’s spirit rises, though, when he finds a symbol of hope in the uniform of a long-dead postal worker. The Birds of Paradise; The Mark of the Warrior, Paul Scott (Carroll & Graf: $4.50 and $3.95). The first looks at a man who tries to achieve greater emotional clarity by reflecting on his childhood in India, school years in England, and tenure in Japanese prison camps; the second, set in India during World War II, chronicles the British resolve to fight back from the brink of defeat. The City of Joy, Dominique Lapierre (Warner: $4.95). Love and endurance, generosity and happiness in the midst of poverty--a widely acclaimed work about everyday men and women who abandoned affluent and middle-class lives to dedicate themselves to helping the poor in a sector of Calcutta.