AMAZON HERITAGE by Roberta Allen (City Lights:...

AMAZON HERITAGE by Roberta Allen (City Lights: $9.95; 181 pp., illustrated, paperback original). The author-artist traveled to a conservation camp on the Peruvian Amazon because she felt a mystic tie to the jungle. But she didn’t like what she found when she got there, and devotes a lot of her book to complaints about the dirt, noise, disease, rain and insects; she also complains about the local people, whom she distrusts, yet lusts after. At one point, she notes, “The Amazon may be the mother of life, but she doesn’t play favorites. I’m not special here.” Allen obviously wanted to be special: She comes across as a spoiled city-dweller who expected a tidy, Disney-style Amazonland, where the animals would emerge for her inspection and friendly natives would offer her colorful pottery. After so many gripes, the paean to the wonders of Amazonia in the final pages sounds singularly unconvincing.