Dartmouth Authors

Jack Little '40 is the author of Love-Songs &Graffiti (Confrontation Magazine Press of Long Island University, 1986, $7.00 paperback), with an introduction by George Plimpton and illustrations by Robert Munford. The frolicsome character of the light verse in this volume is indicated by the author's calling himself "The No-Holds-Bard of the Hamptons." Little's 80-page volume is a smorgasbord of poetic oddments, ranging from limericks to knock-knock riddles to polished sonnets, and including even a song with music provided. The author has a lot of fun with his titles: "New-Trition," "Poeme de Terre," "Afraid of Freud?" and "Caninedrums," for example. The targets of his satire are pollution, cigarette smoking, dieting fads, and Wall Street mergers; yet he is soft-hearted toward cats, dogs, and birds, and seems to be favor of the female of the human species. This is Little's first volume of verse, but his work has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, Reader's Digest, and The East Hampton Star.

Jeffrey O'Connell '51 and C. Brian Kelly are authors of The Blame Game: Injuries, Insurance and Injustice (Lexington Books/D. C. Heath and Co., 1986, $12.95 paperback). The authors contend that the existing tort liability system is an intolerable mess, resulting in "shin-kicking litigation" that costs astronomical sums of money and is hurting all of us. They cite cases of damage suits brought by the victims of medical malpractice, defective products, automobile accidents, and athletic contests, and show how such litigation is often akin to trying to win a lottery jackpot and is no guarantee that jury decisions will be rational or just. Reform is urgently needed, O'Connell and Kelly assert, and "an optimal system would be one that facilitates settlement of most claims by prompt periodic payment of the injured party's actual economic loss" without awards for non-economic losses such as pain, suffering, and grief, which cannot be quantified. They discuss the profligate misuse of money in litigation costs, the defense of the present tort system by lawyers who get, on the average, one-third of jury awards, and the difficulty victims have collecting even when they win their cases. Going along with the litigation mess is the insurance liability mess, according to the authors, who see the remedy in no-fault insurance, which eliminates the expensive tort-law process of fixing blame and assures the victim of prompt payment for economic loss. The huge saving in dollars, they claim, would provide greater help for victims who need it.

O'Connell, who coauthored the principal work that proposed no-fault auto insurance, is the John Allan Love Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School, specializing in accident and insurance law.

Anthony W. Knapp '62 is the author of Representation Theory of Semisimple Groups (Princeton University Press, 1986, $75.00), a book intended for professionals in other fields of mathematics and for graduate students. The author's approach is based on examples, which provide an overview of the theory of group representations for semisimple Lie groups and also serve as an introduction to the field and a guide to the most recent research. The author includes a bibliography of 300 items and an extensive section of notes. Knap is Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University.

Brian Porzak '65 is the author of The One (Copy and Concepts Ltd., 1986, $12.95), an adventure thriller set in New Mexico and filled with the mystery and mythology of the Indian tribes of the Southwest. Hardly light reading, the book requires some effort on the reader's part to follow the convoluted plot and keep all the characters straight. There is The One, an assassin of extraordinary skill and in great demand; there is THE ONE, the epitome of evil and controller of all the drug production and traffic in the world, whose existence is known to only a few; there is The One's pawn, Michael Esmund, who is mistaken for Ian Stone (The One) and rightly so because he turns out to The One's. twin brother; there is El Conciliador, head of the Penitente, chief opponent of THE ONE, and possessor of Montezuma's fabulous riches. The CIA is involved in a peripheral way, the Vatican in a big way. Both THE ONE and El Conciliador plot to control the world by becoming Pope. Quetzalcoatl is prominent in the Indian history and my thology which Porzak weaves into his story. After the wiping out of virtually all the leading characters, Michael, a confused Vietnam veteran, establishes his true identity and is the only winner simply by staying alive.

The paperback edition of The One is unique in having a hologram cover, which shows a dove and a raven on opposite ends of a rod, representing the precarious balance between good and evil. Brian Porzak, father of Lara Porzak '89, works in one Dartmouth touch which older alumni will recognize: he refers to Professor Lew Stilwell's famous Battle Nights lectures.

Louise Erdrich '76 is the author of a second novel, The Beet Queen (Henry Holt and Company, 1986, $16.95). The novel follows the tumultuous lives of brother and sister Karl and Mary Adare, whose mother abandons them at a carnival when she flies off with a stunt pilot and never returns. By the end of the story 40 years later, Karl has fathered Dot, a character introduced in Love Medicine, Erdrich's award-winning first novel. Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, creates unforgettable characters, pathetic, courageous, and humorous all at once. Author Gail Godwin calls her "a sorceress with language [with] an astonishing empathy for humankind." Erdrich lives in Cornish, N.H., with her husband, Dartmouth professor Michael Dorris, and their five children.

James C. McKusick '79 is the author of Coleridge's Philosophy of Language (Yale University Press, 1986, $15.95), an October addition to the Yale Studies in English series. In tracing the development of Coleridge's philosophy of language, McKusick seeks to situate it in the intellectual climate of his era. The relation between language and thought was something with which Coleridge was concerned throughout his career. He sought a criterion of linguistic "naturalness" and, according to the author, this was a persistent element in his poetical, critical, and philosophical works. McKusick discusses the influence on Coleridge of the linguist John Home Tooke, whom the poet finally rejected, and also the influence of a visit in 1798-99 to Germany, where Coleridge encountered the emerging discipline of Germanic philology. In the final chapter the author examines Coleridge's Logic as the most sustained and systematic treatment of his philosophy of language. McKusick is assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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