thursday, november 3, 1977.
page 8
daily nebraskan
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McFadden novel 'Serial'
'insult to give, joy to read'
By Mark Young
The Serial, Cyra McFadden, Alfred A.
Knopf$4.9S
The Serial is a book to get behind and
evolve with. The Serial disects the middle
class of Marin County , Calif.
The Marin residents gobble up a candy
land of Volvos and $200 bias-cut jeans.
While they stuff themselves with material
goods, McFadden's characters put down
greed and get into personal growth.
Ultimately, this funky middle class lives
only to take lovers, yoga and, in the end,
each other.
Our guides in this 'candyland are Kate
and Harvey Holroyd. Kate and Harvey live
in a "tacky" tract house and bum each
other out.
book
Serial's 52 episodes chronicle Kate and
Harvey's attempts to relate and coexist.
They .can't, but their attempts make for
some of the best comedy I've read in a long
time.
McFadden, a Marin resident, turns the
hype called language in California into a
blunt assualt weapon.
McFadden's wit bites like a shark. The
long gags are timed well and each
paragraph thoroughly damns its occupants.
McFadden never pushes her point and the
characters are wisely allowed to condemn
themselves.
The book peaks when Harvey comes
home to a living room full of his lovers and
their friends, all of whom are in, a lynching
mood.
"I hear you. I hear you," Harvey said
sincerely. He was trying to remember the
enemy avoidance techniques he'd learned
in Korea. Could he pull off a combat crawl
out the patio door?
"Harvey," Martha said, "we love you,
you know? That's why we're here. That's
what you've gotta grasp. We really, really
love you. We wanna help you."
Harassed at home and exhausted by
extra marital acrobatics, Harv loses it.
The Serial has run through six printings
since June. The major reason is that it is
a damn fine book.
McFadden has cranked out a minor
satirical marvel. The Serial is an i.nsult to
give and a joy to read.
The book's success is due in part to
clever packing by Alfred A. Knopf, The
Serial's publisher.
Knopf choose to market The Serial as
a glossy, spiral-bound paperback. Each
episode is complimented by a Tom
Cervenak drawing.
At $4.95 the book is a bargain. Give
The- Serial to that professor who tries to be
with it, without it. Better yet give it to that
special someone in your life who slurps
down $1.90 drinks at the Clayton House
and babbles about Hegel and Marx.
Liquor licenses renewed despite LPD's concern
By Jim Williams
Are ten Lincoln bars in big trouble? Are they about to
have their liquor licenses revoked, forcing them to
close? Are police planning a massive crackdown on liquor
violation?
No, say City Council and police sources.
Reports had said terr bars might not have their licenses
renewed; the Royal Grove, 340 W. Cornhusker; God
father's, 240 N. 12th; Town Tavern, 1115 P; the Office,
1705 O; the Night Before, 1035 N; Sandy's, 1348 O;
Chesterfield, Bottomsley and Potts, 245 N. 13th;
the Morocco Lounge, 1010 P; Oscar's, 245 N. 13th; and
George's, 2555 ComhV.er. The Zoo, 136 N. 14th, which
changed ownership at the time of the controversy, mis
takenly was included in some lists.
City Council Chairman Richard Baker said all 10 bars'
licenses now have been renewed.
Baker said licenses usually are renewed automatically
each year after the licensee fills out a short request form.
If citizens, the police or fire departments request it, the
licensee can be asked to fill out a long form, Baker said.
The long form is the same one used by first-time liquor
license applicants, he said.
Baker said all 10 requests for the long-form procedure
came from the Lincoln Police Department (LPD).
Trouble spots
Detective Sergeant Don Wilkins explained how police
chose the 10 bars on the list as potential trouble spots.
He said the four plainclothes officers on the liquor de
tail wer asked to list problem areas. Of the 15 or 16
nominees, Wilkins said he selected the bars in the list.
Wilkins said the long-form procedure is LPD's only of
ficial way to bring problems to the attention of the City
Council and the State Liquor Commission.
Baker said the council approved the license renewal
requests after the bars' managers discussed problems with
the council and LPD. He said he had asked LPD to report
on the ten bars every three months, instead of the usual
annual report. He said if the reports show frequent viola
tions, the council might exercise its power to have liquor
licenses revoked.
Dancers perform
Members of the Raymond Johnson Dance Company
will present a free lecture-demonstration in the Union
Ballroom today at 3:30 p.m.
Judy Sornberger, Kimball Recital Hall publicity
assistant, said the demonstration would be a good way for
students to learn about modern dance and the Johnson
company. She said it also would help people find out if
they'd enjoy the company's dznee recital set for 8 pjn.
Nov. 5.
"Certainly we realize that some violations are going to
occur," Baker said. .
He said the council would take a harsh view of viola
tions like employees drinking on duty or sales to minors,
but would be more lenient on incidents like parking-lot
fights that are not subject to control by a bar's
management.
No crackdown
Wilkins said there would be no crackdown or step-up
in police enforcement efforts at the bars. He said the
liquor detail's plainclothes officers usually visit managers
about once a month to discuss problems. He said that of
ficers probably would have more frequent discussions
with the managers of the bars on the list.
Wilkins said a change in LPD's procedure in reporting
incidents at bars might make a difference in reports to the
council. Tom Jelsma, part owner and manager of the
Royal Grove, agreed.
Jelsma said that under the old reporting system, police
simply kept track of the number of police calls to each
bar. Jelsma said that meant if bar management called LPD
to help solve a problem, it was held against the manage
ment's record. Jelsma said that under the new procedure
such calls would be listed in the management's favor.
Jelsma said the council was helpful with his renewal
application.
"The problem was the way it (police calls) was report
ed more than any problems," Jelsma said. "We've had a
good working relationship with the police. I don't think
the problem is nearly as great as was made out by
everyone."
A definition is a definition is a . . .
What is Art, besides the guy who does the shoe rentals
at the bowling alley?
Pick your definition and read your character
a) the making of things that have form and beauty.
(You must have had Art Appreciation in junior high, and
this answer is just as true as everything else you learned
there.) -
Jim Williams
brain waifs
b) a conscious expression of the tension between the
preconscious self and dissonant real-world cultural impera
tives; synthesis. (You're a terror at pseudo-intellectual
cocktail parties, but you'd be better off spending your
time searching shark-infested waters for a case of
Canadian Club.)
c) whatever I say it is (You wanna write this column,
wise guy?)
d) nothing is Art, until the true Socialist state has
purged the last traces of oppressive feudalism from our
culture. (Why aren't you standing in front of the Union
passing out unattractive literature?)
e) pigeons on the grass, alas.
0 Uh, I don't know. (Congratulations, at least you're
honest.)
Unlimited arts .
Yes, what is Art? There are the Fine Arts, the Visual
Arts, the Plastic Arts, the Art of the Theatre, Conceptual
Art, Anti-Art, Environmental Art, Manual Arts, Arts in
Transition, the Art of Sensual Massage, Martial Arts,
Culinary Arts, the Art of Padding a Column with Long
Lists, Non-Art. . .the list certainly is not endless, but it
approaches the limit at a rate equal to the square of the
number of artists practicing on any intellectual level
higher than that of Manfred the Wonder Dog.
There's no reason to suppose the artists have the
answer. Once there was an artistic person named Gertrude
Stein, best known for being incomprehensible at great
length. It was she, in fact, who penned the pigeon ditty
above. She also began a poem, "A rose is a rose is a rose,"
and may have ended it eventually.
Stein once wrote a serious essay. She thought it was an
ambivalent prose poem, condemning and yet encompass
ing the creativedestructive nature of personal and societal
greed.
Hysterical farce
George Horace Lorimer, then editor of the Saturday
Evening Post thought the essay was the most hysterical
farce since the founding of the Democratic Party. He
printed it, 'probably paying Stein a big bag of gold for the
privilege Who was right? They used to say "Ars est celare
artem (they may say it yet for all I know,) which means
Ait lies in the concealment of art ." Did Lorimer conceal
Stem s art? Did Stein? 0 did she do the whole thing for
the big bag of gold? "Pigeons on the grass, alas" doesn't
pay much rent, especially if you get paid by the word.
Which recalls another American female intellect
Dorothy Parker, who presided over a group of shinine
minds calhng themselves the Algonquin Round Table
TTm merry group heard that some Englishman had made a
list of the most beautiful words in the language, com?
stuff like "autumn leaves." The Round Table wiu UiS
quite correctly that the limey had picked wod by thd
meanings, not their sound. They debated several weeks (
.was pretty dead around the Algonquin Hotel haain
and finally pronounced 'the most beaut fulunC
words in the English tongue to be "cellar door " '
However legend has it that Dorothy Parker's own
