PSU Magazine Summer 1987

------·BOOI<S·------ ' Slapstick in the suburbs • • WATCHMAN TELL US OF THE NIGHT, by A.B. Paulson (Viking Penguin, 1987, $17.95). A ny writer who has the nerve to step to a lectern and play a hymn on a credit card-sized electronic keyboard deserves to have his book read, right? PSU English professor A.B. Paulson drew at least one reader into his novel with just such a whimsical performance at the English Department's Burnam-Clarke– Ford lecture this spring. To be fair, though, his subsequent readings from the book were the real bait. The hymn Paulson played was "Watchman Tell Us of the Night," also the title of his recently published first novel. In the book, housewife, organist and closet poet Lindsay Wyatt Smith has a near-mystical experience while singing this hymn one Easter Sunday, a few days after being found by her parents-in-law in a compromising situation with her dishwasher repairman. It is a turning point for Lindsay, who has been rather busy breaking "the threads that tie her to a dusty doll's world of obligation and dues." With televised world events as an ominous backdrop, Lindsay's wrenching but comic awakening takes place in the suburbs, where "nothing is supposed to happen. .. . That's the point, isn't it?" She stirs from years of mental slumber with help from a mini– malist artist named Garth Erickson, whom she meets in a shopping mall while trying to resuscitate an ofd man having a narcoleptic episode. Garth, whose current creations are cryptic, Haiku-like messages placed among the newspaper's classified ads, and Lindsay become a mutual but distant obsession, while events order themselves absurdly for their coming-together. In a final scene of high farce , a confessional meeting between husband and wife and their lovers turns spontaneously into a rollicking party involving the couple's Zen- inspired 8-year-old son, the repairman (again), a private investigator, a "ghost" who has been watching Lindsay's house for years, Lindsay's uncle who always drops in around the summer solstice, a cab driver, and eventually the whole neighborhood. Stumbling through their banal world, the artifacts and rituals of which Paulson describes as if seeing them for the first time, are very real characters, gently drawn and sympathetic. Paulson combines broad, slapstick comedy and quieter moments of poignant humor with a solid but never overbearing measure of social commentary to create a book that offers meaning as well as mirth. A gift from Portland PORTLAND'S CHANGING LANDSCAPE, edited by Larry W. Price (PSU Foundation, 1987, $12.95). T he 2,700 participants in the Association of American Geographers conference hosted by PSU's Geography Department in April went home with more than seminar notes and field trip memories. They also took along with them copies of a new paperback book, Portland's Changing Landscape, assembled by PSU geographers especially for the conference. The interesting and well– researched book is also available to the public. PSU MAGAZINE PAGE 21 The thirteen essays in the book, nine of which are written by PSU professors from the Geography Department and the School of Urban Affairs, examine the city of Portland in terms of its topography, climate, population, transportation systems, government, economy and industry. A surprising amount of ground is covered in a mere 205 pages, thanks to concise and fact-filled writing. More than a simple cataloguing of Portland's features, Portland's Changing Landscape continually attempts to define the distinctive character of Oregon's largest city. What makes it different from other cities? Why is it so livable? As editor Price states in his introduction, "two threads are woven through the tapestry of the essays. One is that Portland is a big city but with many of the attributes of a small town. The second is the accessibility of city and nature. The problem, of course, is how to nurture and maintain the one without harm to the other." College survivors STUDENT SUCCESS (How to Succeed in College and Still Have Time for Your Friends), by Tim Walter and Al Siebert (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976, $12) N ow in its fourth edition since it first appeared in 1976, Student Success seems to have struck a responsive chord in at least some of America's college students. Co-authored by Portland psychologist and PSU adjunct professor Al Siebert, Student Success offers no short cuts, no formulas for getting through college. Instead, Siebert and Walter's book dis– cusses study methods, locating and using college resources, time manage– ment, paper-writing and test-taking, dealing with difficult instructors and getting support from fami ly and friends. Siebert, who leads motiva– tional and management seminars for PSU's Schools of Education and Busi– ness Administration, is known for his research on the survivor personality. The coping and learning skills that he has observed in survivors provide the basis of Student Success.