Discoveries

LOVE IN THE DAYS OF RAGE, By Lawrence Ferlinghetti, The Overlook Press: 128 pp., $13.95

Paris, May 1968; this novel is Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s love song to adolescence, perhaps his own, not unlike Thomas Mann’s ode to youth, “Death in Venice.” The compatibility of revolution and sex, making something new, being alive, is the philosophy. There is the echo of pas perdus throughout, a hollow sad sound, which is the poet’s memory, the naive hope of a girl that her revolutionary boyfriend will turn out to be the real thing and a sort of end of the world feeling that “they”--the petty bureaucrats, the humorless matrons, the belligerent police--are hard to beat. Ferlinghetti does well with particulars, especially the streets and skies of Paris, but his heart is in the history. The woman, a 40-year-old painter and the third person voice of the story, is one version of a ‘60s girl, just dying for a man with ideas she can support or critique, rarely her own, a woman who “wished to be used.” This misconception alone could feed the rage of generations.

ON POLITICS AND THE ART OF ACTING, By Arthur Miller, Viking: 88 pp., $15

Such a delicious book, I wish I could quote the whole thing for you. Arthur Miller, the author of “Death of a Salesman,” “All My Sons” and “The Crucible” writes as he talks: in a quiet low growl. Between the news and entertainment industries, he writes, it has become hard for any of us to “locate reality anymore.” “It may be that the most impressionable form of experience now for many people if not most people consists in their emotional transactions with actors.”

Reagan’s inability to distinguish reality from movies, for example, was actually symptomatic of his utter mastery in acting. He had reached the pinnacle of his craft. The great difficulty for a politician, especially a president, lies in finding “the magnetic core that will draw together a fragmented public,” just as an actor must somehow fit everyman into a single character and please an entire audience.

Gore, for example, “cast himself in a role that was wrong for him,” with his Bing Crosby mellowness. Both Bush and Gore, in trying to be men of the people, had to renounce their upper-class upbringings and run against Washington, the very place they came from, while Clinton, in all his human frailty, actually was a man of the people.

As for the American press, writes Miller, it is “made up of disguised theater critics” who do not, for one second, want to see a president fall out of his presidential role. Once that happens, the game is up for everyone, “substance counts for next to nothing compared with style and inventive characterization.” Miller confesses a weakness for Roosevelt; the Republicans, he insists, “have not stopped running against him for a whole half century.” As for us, the audience, Miller invokes Brando: “Brando had not asked the members of the audience merely to love him; that is only charm. He had made them wish that he would deign to love them. That is a star.” Miller writes with affection, a lifetimes’ worth, for the actor and the audience. Art is the only thing that lasts, he says proudly. A true artist cannot fake it. As for us, the fickle audience, well, he quotes Huey Long: “When Fascism comes to America it will be called anti-Fascism.”

LOWELL LIMPETT And Two Stories, By Ward Just, PublicAffairs: 126 pp., $14

“Do you know what a limpet is?” the aging journalist Lowell Limpet asks his audience in Ward Just’s one-man play. “A mollusk that adheres to any material that’s near to hand, and never lets go.” He longs for a clean lead, no adjectives, no bright writing. He never missed a deadline in his life. “So it’s a beauty contest,” he growls when his editor says they are competing with television. “Our bimbo versus their bimbo.” Lighten up, Lowell, his friend in the newsroom tells him, or you’ll fall into the news hole. “Did you hear? Lowell disappeared into the news hole.” Missed his son’s birth while covering Vietnam. Got divorced. Had a little breakdown. Won a Pulitzer, which he sarcastically notes seems to make people take him seriously, including the audience. “You know what we say in our business. You’re not blooded until you have your divorce, your Rolex, your war wound, your drinking problem, and your Pulitzer Prize.”

It’s one version of the life of a reporter, ripely told by a veteran who does, in the end, have his dignity, which is more than many can say.

The two stories, “Wasps,” about a married couple in Washington politics, and “Born in His Time,” about a decent man who gives his life to his work, are jewel-like but do not shine with the ferocity of the play. Just gives so much dimension to his characters, so much humanity. The problems his characters face seem eternal and therefore more worth solving.