Summer Reading: Back to the hills with Ernest Hemingway, to London with Samuel Pepys, the Sudan with John McPhee, and much more.
Bartelme, Elizabeth
Gabrielle Steinfels Gabrielle Steinfels lives in Manhattan. hat ever possessed your W niece to pierce her navel? Is there a meal to be found on the front lawn? Are you...
...will tempt, urge, and incite you to get out of that chair, hop on a bicycle, and take a good look at your own world...
...Their experiences are epitomized by one Carroll W. Brew-ster who at age twenty-eight traveled the Sudan collecting records of court and tribal law to compile the first of several issues of Sudan Law Journal and Reports, a public, national source of legal precedent for the Sudan...
...How is the appeal of the suburban lawn rooted in our country's agrarian past...
...and Temple Hor-naday Fielding of Fielding's Guides—are all experts in their respective fields (grass or other...
...Robert Twynam, the man responsible for the lawns at Wimbledon...
...McPhee's one group biography in the volume, "Fifty-two People on a Continent," focuses on a collection of bright young things sent off to Africa to work as midlevel bureaucrats...
...written in the late 1960s...
...Admittedly, much of the book's appeal is voyeuristic—I don't want to shave my head, be rolfed, or go without sleep for a week—but watching another walk on the wild side makes for excellent summer reading...
...Are you commuting on the military's most extensive weapon...
...Jenkins is concerned with experiences of the physical and how they define us...
...Finally, John R. Stilgoe's Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places (Walker and Company, $10.95, 187 pp...
...Outside Lies Magic leads the reader, the "explorer," behind gas stations, under bypasses, and along small-town main streets, all the while pointing out a fascinating range of cultural artifacts: What political and social forces were behind the development of the Military and Interstate Highway System...
...Within John McPhee's endless output I recently discovered a collection of biographical essays, A Roomful of Hovings (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $11,250 pp...
...Euell Theophilus Gibbons, roadside gourmand and author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus...
...His subjects—Thomas P. F. Hoving, then director of the Metropolitan Museum and former clothing-store floorwalker in men's suits...
...Why that tattoo there...
...I was prelit-erate at the time, so it's all new to me...
...All this and more are revealed by Emily Jenkins while exploring the very exotic everyday worlds around us...
...Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture (Henry Holt, $14.95,224 pp...
...The adventure is in how they got that way...
...The author also explores more mainstream experiences: cosmetic counters, sensory deprivation, nude beaches, and the ultimate physical experience, aging, with enough humor and insight to justify peeping...
...Now that you are tired of reading about other people's adventures, take a look around, pick an element of your own universe, and wonder out loud how this came to be...
...contemplates the abstract, the semantics of men's underwear, and the physical—say, how do you go about picking a tattoo...
...Aside from the pleasure found in these real-life "boy's adventures," the optimistic tone of McPhee regarding Africa's political future is a thought-provoking reminder of how much has been lost in thirty years...
...What is the relationship between fire insurance policies and the classic small-town Main Street...
Vol. 126 • June 1999 • No. 12
