BOOK REVIEW : Revelations From a Life of Travel

Sensuous and vibrant, “Etchings in an Hourglass” is an intensive course in lifemanship written by a woman with a remarkable capacity for love, work and friendship. The third and last volume of Kate Simon’s autobiography, this book concludes the saga begun in “Bronx Primitive” and continued in “A Wider World”: the story of a child brought to America as a tot, her sensibility shaped first by the stark realities of tenement life, then honed by the intellectual rigor of Hunter College, enlarged by the cultural opportunities of New York, broadened and deepened still further by travel.

Simon became a multilingual citizen of the world, at home in France, Italy, England and Mexico.

She’s best known for her books on the places where she happened to alight and settle. During her long sojourns, she invariably succeeded in immersing herself so thoroughly in the life of her chosen country that the revelations astonished natives and visitors alike. There are 10 such books, each filled with the thoughts, perceptions and appreciations of a woman who could never have gone to sleep at night without having learned something new that day.

This book is considerably more personal than the ones upon which her reputation has rested; more poignant and candid even than the earlier autobiographical volumes. Here Simon concentrates upon family, friends and lovers, the profound connections and casual encounters that punctuated her peripatetic career.

We learn of a tragic early marriage to a young scientist whose deafness was caused by a genetic brain tumor, a flaw inherited by Simon’s only child, a daughter who died at 22. As a second marriage promising tranquillity and consolation disintegrates and fails, the author finds relief and challenge in extensive travels, the journeys culminating in the superb European and Mexican books, then doubling back to the delights of New York.

Once returned, she applied the same rigorous techniques used abroad, exploring her own city with the eagerness and enthusiasm of a total stranger and the specialized knowledge of a resident connoisseur. Along the way, there are lovers embraced with passion and occasional liaisons evolving from a simple zest for adventure.

Simon had an uncommon willingness to gamble on a safe and happy ending, a trait rare among women of her generation and background. More often than not, her risks were rewarded, contributing to her understanding of an entire culture and enlarging her knowledge of her own selfhood. She not only acknowledges these escapades wittily and frankly, but writes about them with the same grace, elegance and gusto she applies to the Renaissance masterpieces of Florence or the bridges across the Seine. Though she never apologizes, she does explain, earning the reader’s admiration. Written as her health was deteriorating in her last years, “Etchings in an Hourglass” has little artificially imposed structure. Instead, incidents are recalled as the author thinks of them, in order of importance. Because her images are so arresting, her depth of field impressive and her style so fluid, a clear pattern emerges to give the memoir cohesion and power. Early widowhood, the subsequent marriage for intellectual rather than emotional reasons, the almost simultaneous deaths of her daughter and a beloved sister are in retrospect the pivotal events that gave Simon’s life purpose. Who wouldn’t yearn to flee the scene of such tragedies? But few could transform escape into a splendid, disciplined and enduring body of work.

ETCHINGS IN AN HOURGLASS: by Kate Simon : Harper & Row: $19.95, 240 pages

Next: Carolyn See reviews “Meteors in August” by Melanie Rae Thon (Random House).