Neotribal Riddles

...Carpenter focuses on the most obvious changes that have occurred among the youth of the technocratic society, particularly the "personal sensory environment" that he thinks has had a healthy influence on everyone, young and old...

...More than mere illustration, it gives substance to the writer's commentary...

...Reviewed by Lincoln Caplan "We're reentering the tribal world, but this time we're going through the tribal dance and drama wide awake," declares Ted Carpenter, an anthropologist who once did research for Marshall McLuhan's early works...

...Brash assertions such as "youth approach problems directly on all occasions" call for some qualification...

...With classical economy and skillful use of basic techniques, Heyman demonstrates that the photojournalist can avoid stagnant repetition and distracting experimentation while producing vivid, memorable pictures...

...How good life has been to me!' She hadn't conquered life, nor been rewarded by it, but life had acted upon her, and this was joy...

...Carpenter's writing, on the other hand, is occasionally flawed by his impulse toward overgeneralization...

...The result is a hopeful, alluring description of the integration, inter-penetration and interplay of sensory modes that McLuhan has been promoting since the '50s...

...Together with photographer Ken Heyman, Carpenter has now produced They Became What They Beheld, a testimonial to the growing influence of neotribal culture in America today, especially among its youth...

...Carpenter's commentaries follow one another on unnumbered pages...

...it should be picked up at frequent intervals and restudied from fresh perspectives until its separate entries gradually acquire a comprehensible form and direction...

...Even a young person who appreciates having Carpenter on his side is apt to wish the author had been more careful...

...He sees new patterns of dress, longer and more elaborate hair styles, and emphasis on self-consciousness or self-awareness ("the inner trip") as manifestations of a nascent lifestyle...

...Although pagination might have aided reference, the nonlinear format allows the reader to find his own order in the collected items...

...His description of a postliterate era in which our print-conditioned impulses no longer make sense raises many questions he does not even attempt to answer...

...These oblique examples of the effect media have on the children of the technological age not only entertain but intrigue one to continue Carpenter's exploration of the new epoch he says is almost upon us...

...The book is, in effect, a catalogue of the elements in Carpenter's vision of a postliterate world, where work and leisure fuse in a total involvement with daily life, where the "human condition can be considered as a work of art...

...The unconventional form reflects the newness each entry conveys...

...Our glimpse of this future is fleshed out by Ken Heyman's excellent photography, which stands coequal with the text...

...Jacketed in a mirror-like cover that casts the inquisitive reader's reflection back at himself, this notebook of disconnected epigrams, assertions and images assumes the birth of postliterate man and sets out to explore the possibilities of multi-sensory communication...

...Furthermore, Carpenter's faith in the social and political potential of the neotribal consciousness or culture requires greater support than he gives it...

...The photographer brings humor, ingenuity and curiosity to his worldwide range of subjects...

...But the visual continuity is too nonlinear to serve as a roadmap for the global village...

...They Became What They Beheld juxtaposes the fantasy world of children, the mythology and social practices of the Eskimos, and the tribal rites of native Africa with the now widely recognized counterculture of "Woodstock Nation...

...Indeed, the book requires more than a single reading...

...Both the subtle details captured in the photographs and the expansive implications suggested by the text demand more than casual attention to be fully appreciated...

...Carpenter writes: "Toothless Kuilasar, an elderly Eskimo, told of starvation, of children born and husbands lost, of new lands and faces, and concluded, 'How happy I have been...

...The reader's enjoyment of They Became What They Beheld will depend upon his ability to become involved in its progression of ideas and images, and upon his willingness to let them affect him...

...The importance of the youth movement has most recently been championed by Charles Reich's description of "Consciousness III," and even the President's Commission on Campus Unrest has acknowledged the existence of an indefinite cult of young people in America...

...Although the book follows no identifiable rhythm, and sometimes stretches the normal parameters of reason, its gaps and disjunctions are justified by Carpenter's aphorism, "The interval invites participation: it creates riddles that involve one...

...Oh, what a beautiful baby!' 'That's nothing,' replied the mother, 'you should sec his photograph' . . . . 'Daddy are we live or on tape?' asked the five-year-old boy...

...The sloppiness robs his valid points of the credibility they deserve and detracts from the force of the book's larger argument...