NONFICTION - Nov. 29, 1992

NOAH ADAMS ON “ALL THINGS CONSIDERED” by Noah Adams (Norton: $22.95; 332 pp.) Radio requires a different pace, and a different kind of concentration, than do more overwhelming media like film and television. The listener has to pay attention to what he or she hears, and block out the rest; has to fill in the images that correspond to what is being said. Adams’ memoir of a year at “All Things Considered,” the National Public Radio show he has hosted for almost 10 years, is deliberate, detailed, an attempt to find order and meaning in the chaos of daily journalism, which his predecessor Susan Stamberg describes nicely in her foreword: “That ‘big picture’ we all aspire to get painted in Seurat-like dots of days.” Adams looks for the pattern there, and his reminiscences have a cumulative power to them. It is as though he has gone searching for a continuity in his own life, this admittedly shy man who has a great deal of trouble talking to strangers. His search gives the reader a delightful, anecdotal history of one of radio’s most respected shows, as well as an index of the events of 1989. We sometimes find out more than we need to about what Adams (a notorious amateur foodie) ate on the road, but it all sound pretty good, if somewhat irrelevant.