NONFICTION - July 5, 1992

HOW I GOT CULTURED by Phyllis Barber (University of Georgia Press; $24.95; 216 pp. ) Phyllis Barber had the kind of childhood first novelists dream of, which is what makes her memoir such a wacky, poignant hoot. She started out life in 1943, the daughter of a devout Mormon who had settled his family near the Hoover Dam. But Dad had a crisis of faith when Barber was 15 and careened as far from his religious life as he could, moving the family to Las Vegas and trying to leave the past behind. Barber’s essays tell of her interest in the arts, which led her to a brief stint playing studio piano for classically trained dancers and hotel showgirls and a heartbreaking non-encounter with the visiting Leonard Bernstein. Barber, on the faculty of Vermont College’s MFA-in-Writing program and the winner of several writing prizes, sets her tone in the book’s introduction with an eerie, perfectly chiseled scene about a little girl caught in a scary case of mistaken identity. This puts the reader on notice that everything following will seem just a bit out of sync--just familiar enough for anyone who grew up in the ‘40s and ‘50s to be engrossing, but just peculiar enough to appeal to people who like paddling at the edge of the mainstream. There are moments when the style slips, and there is little behind it, but writing a memoir is a harsh task. Few of us can manage to be fascinating all the time.