With a zillion books to choose
from, it’s hard to know what to
read. Nevertheless, I’ve found a
few in the last while that were solid
masterpieces. The Golden Age of
literature isn’t over, television,
video and movies notwithstanding.

The selection is eclectic, but
what did you expect? Here’s my
recommended reading list to get
you through until the worst of
winter is over.

One of the books is by Hank
Searls, a writer I happen to have
met several years ago.

i

K. ataki is a war story
with a real twist. It
weaves fiction and fact
together sensationally,
deftly blending a wartime
experience of George
Bush’s in with the horror
of Hiroshima, giving the
reader some terrific
insights into Japanese
culture and psychology
along the way.”’

He drove all the way up from
California, where be was living on
his oailboat, to talk to me about an
ecology-action thriller he was
planning to write, but decided
against it on the grounds that I had
already written it in non-fiction
form in a book called Warriors of
The Rainbow.

This is by way of saying that I
am partial to Hank and like his
previous books, especially Over-
board, a sailing book with an un-
compromising and pitiless ending,
enough, in fact,.to scare any sane
person away from ever sailing
again. He also wrote one of the
Jaws books and scripts.

But his latest, Kataki, A Novel
of Revenge, is his best work yet.
There is still that uncompromising
streak that characterized such
writers as Hemingway, except that
Hank Searls has far more range
than Hemingway ever did, and is a
far better writer.

Kataki is a war story with a real
twist. It weaves fiction and fact
together sensationally, deftly blen-
ding a wartime experience of
George Bush’s in with the horror
of Hiroshima, giving the reader
some terrific insights into Japanese
culture and psychology along the
way.

Imagine you were the descen-
dant of white settlers in the Bonin
Islands, near Iwo Jima, when they
were taken over by Japan and,
even though white, you grew up
thinking you were Japanese. And
then came the Second World War
and your mother was killed by the
Yanks during a bombing raid.

4 - Sunday, January 29, 1989 - North Shore News

BoB

HUNTER

> © strictly personal ¢

DEEPEST, DARKEST winter is the time for reading. Ca-
nadians apparently do it as much as any people in the

world, unless the Scandinavians hunker down the same way,
waiting for spring. But I hear tell that they’re more into sex.
Ah well, be that as it may...

Without turning his story into
yet another soppy plea for
sweetness and niceness in the
world, Searls takes us from the
Bonin Islands to Hiroshima and
keeps us there during the atomic
bomb attack.

He brings us along through the
harsh years of reconstruction and
occupation that followed, and
takes us upward with the Japanese
as they clawed their way out of the
rubble to their present status as the
world power they always intended
to be.

For anyone remotely interested
in understanding modern Japan,
this is a wonderful piece. It is writ-
ten so well that you find yourself
closing in on the final pages long
before you want to. The highest
compliment I can pay a book is
that I wish it wasn't over, and this
one fits the bill entirely. Good
stuff, Hank!

Another wonderful read that
likewise draws some of its material
from the Second World War is
Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard.

Like all of Vonnegut’s stuff, it is
black humor, essentially sur-

realistic, but somehow cutting to
the bone of real life. It is about an
Abstract Expressionist painter
named Rabo Karabekian whose
parents survived a massacre of one
million Armenians by the Turkish
Empire, back before the word
genocide was invented.

Karabekian wanders through
war and peace bearing a great gift
but mistaking it for an affliction.
He’s an artist who thinks of
himself as a hack and because of
that never seems to realize his
potential. Now does that sound
like a profound theme or what?

When I say that’s what the book
is ‘‘about,’’ what I mean of course
is that this is Vonnegut’s starting-
point for another one of his jaun-
diced but terrifyingly funny exam-
inations of the slime-pit that the
human soul so often turns out to
be, or at least makes itself into.

You are forced to Jaugh, but
there is as much pain in the
faughter as amusement, and usual-
ly a lot more. In the end, when he
does find something joyous to
celebrate about human nature, it is
such an irony that the effect is to
make you cry at the very point
where you should be laughing.
Like that.

lt turns out that like Bluebeard
the pirate, Karabekian has an
enormous secret. Bluebeard’s was
@ room into which he told each of
his new wives never to look. The
reason, it turned out, was simply
that he kept the bodies of all his
previous wives in there, all of
them, except the first, having made
the mistake of peeking.

Of course I can’t tell you what
Karabekian’s secret is without
ruining the book...

Vonnegut at his best, as the
blurb on the cover says. And yes, I
have to agree, the old master
hasn’t lost it@

City pound policy

COMPLAINTS FROM an irate
taxpayer over dog impoundment
fines have led North Vancouver
City Council to consider restruc-
turing their fees to bring them
more in line with other
municipalities.

In the coming weeks council

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may consider decreasing fines for
unlicensed dogs picked up by the
city from a maximum of $150 to
around $80.

The woman who lodged the
complaint had paid a $95 fine to
the SPCA to retrieve her licensed
dog.

N. SHORE

‘*Mental cravings and physical
cravings feel and appear the same,"’
explains Daniel J. Rutley, a clini-
cal hypnotherapist in North Van-
couver who helps smokers kick the
habit. Research tells us physical
cravings stop within 72 hours. It’s
the mental cravings or habit that
most people battle.

**Many people get uptight when
they quit. Hypnosis can help the
person to feel relaxed. It can also
helptocliminate both cravings and
withdrawal symptoms."’

HELPED BY
HYPNOSIS

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reviewed

Council will also consider drop-
ping the $5 fee it currently charges
for the first day a dog is impound-

d

ed.
Ald.’ Stella Jo Dean said that
while the city wanted to encourage

See Lower
Page 5

SMOKERS

Weight gain is practically non-
existent when hypnosis is used.
Habits are controlled at their
source: the subconscious. The
results are calmer, happier non-
smokers.

Danici Rutlcy has been help-
ing individuals stop smoking for
over itcn years. Hecan be reached
at his office for those interested
in a free consultation by calling
986-9304, Ext. 9.

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