The Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays,...

The Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays, Joseph Epstein (Norton: 7.95). Cheer, clarity and brio abound in these exceptionally enjoyable and intelligent essays by Joseph Epstein, editor of the American Scholar and today’s most witty conservative essayist. Some of his convictions are oldfangled (his “rage at a granddaughter brought up in a spirit of complete permissiveness crying for designer jeans”), and some of his perceptions debatable (the 1950s were “a time when intellectual considerations were still taken seriously”). But his sense of humor and smooth, unpretentious writing style will disarm, even charm, liberal critics.

While his attack on the cynicism and skepticism in present-day America is both serious and convincing (He paraphrases Gertrude Stein, “There is no now now”), he forwards other criticism with tongue in cheek, citing a list of “vulgarities,” for example, that ranges from Barbara Walters to “dialogue as an ideal.” At the same time, Epstein’s solid sense of humor lets him get away with an overly pat dismissal of liberal issues and ideas. Thus, not all readers are likely to be as proud as he is of his indifference toward any societal reform: “I have yet to toss and turn over soil erosion or to wake up screaming that something must be done about replenishing marine life . . . . What troubles me more is getting my shirts properly laundered. To do so has become costly--one dollar a shirt--and even at that price they are not very carefully done. . . .”

Thinking Machines: The Search for Artificial Intelligence, Igor Aleksander and Piers Burnett (Knopf: $17.95). If you thought you were confused by computers, join the crowd of experts in these pages. They are more adept than most of us at programming, but they too are puzzled by the nature of artificial intelligence. Consider: Master chess players are, almost by definition, highly intelligent, but what about that seemingly unbeatable computer chess machine sold at the corner computer store?

Some of the scientists whose ideas are profiled in these pages would argue that an intelligent machine is one that can do things which, if done by people, would require intelligence. Others argue that once it has been shown that a machine can do something, then, whatever was previously believed, it is now obvious that the task is entirely mechanical. Then again, if we conclude that a thermostat is not “intelligent” because its operations are predetermined and entirely mechanical, we must also conclude that humans are mechanical, for our behavior can be attributed either to God or to evolution.

The middle chapters of this cogent, colorfully illustrated book are fascinating but difficult; they detail new types of machine intelligence such as “connectionism,” which links numerous microprocessors into a super-computer to allow complex algorithms. But there is a payoff for those who plod through, for in learning about the amazing complexity of the computer, we come to appreciate the infinitely more amazing complexity of the human brain, the most super computer of all. For, as the authors point out, despite all of the myriad bits of information that a computer can process, it still doesn’t have our inductive ability to distinguish a nut from a bolt, much less “a peach from a plum, a poodle from a Pekinese or a Peugot from a Pontiac.”

Soledad, R. G. Vliet (Penguin: $6.95). Caleb, the lonely protagonist of this emotionally-charged novel, discovers his self and spirit in the most unlikely of settings: the vast American West of the 1880s, where the land, ancient and perdurable, stands in stark contrast to the volatile, transient human population. “I seem to be away out of nowhere,” one of the book’s many vagabonds tells Caleb, “and I wonder if you might put me up for the night.” Another character arrives after “a twister sort of blew him in.” The author, who died in 1984 after revising this novel (originally published in 1977 as “Solitude”), was no closer to the Old West than many urban Americans--he was born in Chicago and educated at Yale. But in reconstructing the people’s dialect--lilting rhythms, sentences made static by an absence of verbs, slurred speech (“childern” for children)--he has captured their spirit: enduring but unassertive, only halfheartedly attempting to transcend their isolation through conversation.

Vliet symbolizes the spirit of accepting one’s lot in a vignette near the beginning of the book: Two steers lie down on the ice “as if they were satisfied to stay there until they were dead, and the rest was just foolishness.” Caleb sees the steers just after having shot and killed a Mexican who had been coming silently, threateningly toward him. At first he denies his culpability--”It don’t sweat me none.” But only moments after a friend enjoins, “Anyways dead cocks don’t crow,” a spirit rises from the body and Caleb’s guilt grows. Caleb is not, however, defeated by his guilt. Accepting his weaknesses in a sensitively portrayed epiphany scene--”It’s myself comin’ at me!” he realizes--he finds the strength to overcome even the most daunting Texas blizzard, the kind, Vliet writes, “that could have shifted Hell eastward and frosted the corners.”

East Along the Equator: Traveling Up the Congo and Into Mobutu’s Zaire, Helen Winternitz (Atlantic Monthly Press: $8.95). Travel writing can bring home strange people, places and politics, but it rarely does all three at the same time. Articles evoking place are most popular because they are most practical for travel planning. Profiles of people are rarer, but overviews of dress and custom are generally available in the nearest National Geographic. Politics is almost never viewed as a traveler’s concern; for this we must turn to the opinion pages, which are more often argumentative than illustrative. Helen Winternitz, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, successfully incorporates the triad in one text, chronicling her journey from Kinhasa, Zaire’s dusty capital of 500,000 people, to the volcano-studded savannas of the Great Rift Valley (“the cradle of mankind”) and the Ituri Rain Forest, where Pygmies still live where they first settled 20,000 years ago. Winternitz knows when to socialize with the bizarre mix of locals (traveling on an “extravagantly overcrowded river boat replete with hippo hunters, government spies, whiskey drinking clerics and Congo fishermen”) and when to gain some distance, examining U.S.-Zaire relations in Washington and flying over the country: “The view from up in the cockpit gave the impression that the forest had no limit and had made no concession to the advent of man.”

People in Zaire, however, must make daily concessions to Mobutu Sese Seko, the nation’s president of 20 years. Elected with the help of the CIA and praised by President Reagan as a leader “of good sense and good will,” Mobutu is portrayed here as a tyrant, who withholds teachers’ pay, allows soldiers to rob citizens and conducts frequent nighttime raids against suspected supporters of the country’s would-be second political party. The book has stylistic problems--some phrases, while clever (Mobutu has imposed “a violent sort of peace” on the Central African nation), are repeated several times on successive pages, and we learn more about the author’s boyfriend than necessary. But small quibbles aside, “East Along the Equator” is broadly focused, inquisitive and informed, one of the most remarkable books in the publisher’s “Traveler” series.

NOTEWORTHY: Silent Partners: The Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments, Eugene Linden (Ballantine: $3.95), explores “our responsibility to the natural world” through the story of apes who became celebrities when they were taught sign language in the ‘70s. Nine-Headed Dragon River, Peter Matthiessen (Shambhala: $12.50), follows the author’s journeys from depression when his wife died of cancer to a brisk state of Zen consciousness, alert to the natural world and to dreams: “I choose to awake, for fear of falling, yet such dreams tell me that I am a part of things, if only I would let go, and keep on going.”

--ALEX RAKSIN.