Pilgrim’s Guide to the New Age, Alice...

Pilgrim’s Guide to the New Age, Alice and Stephen Lawhead (Lion Publishing, 1705 Hubbard Ave., Batavia, Ill. 60510: $9.95). Anti-war, anti-Establishment--1960s counterculture was understandable, if not agreeable, to most Americans. “New Age” culture, on the other hand, is harder to peg, for the steadily growing ‘80s movement doesn’t seem to be anti-anything. Embracing East and West, capitalism and environmentalism, self-fulfillment and social sacrifice, followers of the movement predict that our divisive world will soon become a pacifistic “Global Village.” Under which ideals will the world unite? Most New Agers won’t say. The problem with this ambiguity is that it leaves the movement open for expropriation by a host of people promoting special interests, such as the authors of this book. Slickly promoted as an introduction to “the New Age,” this book is actually an attempt to show that the movement’s goals are grounded in “Christian thought.” The appeal is subtle. No mention is made of God or religion on the cover and in the introduction, and most chapters carefully avoid polemics. One section, for instance, refrains from saying “whether it is right or wrong to live in a commune, have a child out of wedlock, stay at home with small children or pursue a career,” but later cautions that “God won’t be changing any of his ideas, visions, or expectations for marriage or the family.” Contradictions continue. The authors salute Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin by printing noble pictures of the scientists (tailored for the TV generation, the book is abundantly illustrated), while disputing their ideas in the text: “The jury is still out,” we read, “on much of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.” The authors seem to have good intentions--they’re part of a growing number of young Christians trying to reconcile traditional teachings with scientific advances and new, alternative life styles--but there remains a problem with the book’s packaging; a better title might have been “Pilgrim’s Guide to New Age Christianity.”

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry (Sierra Club: $7.95). When the author composed this warning in 1977, then-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz was predicting rapid farm growth at home and grain demand from abroad. Now, of course, the problems Berry predicted are well-known--soil erosion (worse today than during the years of the Dust Bowl), soil damage caused by single-crop farming, overuse and waste of the water supply, and toxic pollution from agricultural chemicals. “The Unsettling of America” remains relevant today, however, for after pinpointing the causes of today’s “farm crisis,” Berry moves on to explain what we still don’t understand: underlying causes, predominantly a “mentality of exploitation” deeply rooted in our past. To succeed in the long run, Berry believes, mechanized farming cannot remain blind to the ecosystem. For economic as well as humanitarian reasons, we need a “sustainable agriculture,” one that “does not deplete soils or people.” While Berry details some specifics (smaller and more self-sustained farms, more reliance on natural fertilizers, less on chemical pesticides), this is a work of philosophy. Readers looking for more practical suggestions should read another of Berry’s works, “Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship” (North Point Press).

No Place Like Home, Amy Arbus (Doubleday: $14.95). If the phrase, “It’s a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there” didn’t exist, it would have to be invented to describe The Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, where guest rooms resemble everything from caves to ocean seascapes and South American jungles. Great fun, of course, but for daily life, most of us prefer to be surrounded by more serene and subtle environments. We already encounter our fair share of familiar obsessions and unfamiliar milieus; we don’t need them resonating from furniture and walls. Some, however, are more daring, as New York City artist Amy Arbus shows in this lively volume. Arbus’ photos of homes (primarily in Los Angeles, though also in San Francisco, New York, Houston and Albuquerque) capture architectural inventiveness and absurdity. Most interesting to Arbus, however, is the way the houses reflect their owners’ personalities--from perseverance (the man who stuck half a million jigsaw puzzle pieces on the walls of his house) to harmony (a couple on the fast track who retreat to a stark tan and white bedroom) and hope (“If I had the money,” says a singer with a black velvet painting that lights up, “my place would look like Caesars Palace”).

Lonely Crusade, Chester Himes; I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes (Thunder’s Mouth Press: $8.95 and $9.95). “Lonely Crusade” follows the life of Lee Gordon, one of the first blacks to become a union organizer. Gordon’s proud of his new job when the novel opens--it offers an outlet for his intelligence and his communist ideals. But after Gordon is confronted by “the hostile faces of the white workers, their hot, hating stares,” the pleasure of pride gives way to an onerous pressure to succeed. As Graham Hodges writes in a new preface to this 1947 book, “Lionized by the black press, Gordon feels the pressures of any ‘first.’ ” Gordon is even more weighted down by his feelings of inadequacy as a husband, a failure made all the more acute by his wife’s success in her job as a counselor at a major company. Ultimately, then, this is more than a novel about being black or communist. Social and political injustices are far from illusory, but Gordon’s real battle is against himself; he’s sensitive enough to know that fulfillment lies not in trading communist rhetoric or nurturing righteous indignation, but in developing self-respect. Disappointment is more successfully kept under wraps in “I Wonder as I Wander,” the second volume of Langston Hughes’ autobiography (his first, “The Big Sea,” was reissued by Thunder’s Mouth earlier in the year). Hughes is best known as “the bard of Harlem,” but Himes’ text more accurately captures the black experience in America than the spunkiness, idealism and worldly curiosity that pervades “I Wonder as I Wander.” Nevertheless, Hughes spins an abundance of intriguing and suspenseful yarns about travels from Tashkent to Carmel, Mexico City to San Francisco, the Soviet Union and China to Japan, and home again, after Japanese officials thought he might be a spy.

NOTEWORTHY: Artifact, Gregory Benford (Tor: $3.95). John notices “something inside the artifact that’s hotter than the surface of the sun,” and soon, a global storm of espionage, theft, diplomacy and war is stirring as people struggle to discover the secrets of the black rock cube. On Becoming a Biologist, John Janovy Jr. (Harper & Row: $6.95), forgoes the often-wooden formalities of career introductions for an explanation of ironies (“money often becomes more of a problem if a biologist’s career progresses successfully”), rewards (being invigorated by students’ interest) and specialization (successful biologists can still be narrow-minded). Solzhenitsyn, Michael Scammel (Norton: $14.95), his most comprehensive biography, won a 1985 Times Book Prize. Selling Out, Dan Wakefield (Penguin: $3.95). Determined to capture the human condition on screen with sensitivity and intelligence, Perry Moss leaves his job as a professor and writer at a small Vermont college for Hollywood; by page 229, he’s compromised “a bit,” struggling to formulate the best car chase ever.