THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 1996 TAG: 9609250032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER
LENGTH: 69 lines
ANDREI CODRESCU began his literary career as a poet, writing with a pencil on the backs of napkins. If he did not have a napkin he wrote his poems on the wall. All he needed was the inspiration of beautiful girls.
Twenty years later, Codrescu writes few poems and much prose. Using a word processor, a personal computer and a Mac notebook, he has increased his productivity as he has lost his creativity; at least this is what he says in his latest book, ``The Dog With a Chip in His Neck.''
Composed from 1993 through 1995, these 80 essays appeared as magazine pieces, op-ed articles, speeches and as commentary for the National Public Radio program, ``All Things Considered.'' Some are very brief, consisting of a page or two. Others extend to 10 or more pages. All of them comment on contemporary issues.
Some originate from headline stories, such as when the Mississippi overflowed its banks in July 1993. Some are from more personal stories, focusing, for example, on Codrescu's frustration with the computer. Then there are the celebrity commentaries, on topics such as Michael Jackson's sexual antics or Hillary Clinton's hairstyle.
There are a few literary essays. Codrescu, who is a professor at Louisiana State University, looks at the history of the spoken arts and applauds the current poetry renaissance.
Codrescu emigrated from his native Romania in the late 1960s and has a deep appreciation for American English, which, he says, was taught to him by the poet Ted Berrigan.
Berrigan, Codrescu says, helped to bring poetry out of the academic quarterlies and into the streets during the 1960s and 1970s. Today, ``America is once more in the throes of a poetic revolution. . . ,'' he writes, ``and appropriately, Ted Berrigan's poems are back in print.''
In an era of self-important writer/celebrities, Codrescu is gracious, able to express freely his admiration for those writers who inspired him. Here he is on Mark Twain: ``When I was a boy growing up in the mountains of Romania I read `Life on the Mississippi' by Mark Twain and got chills of wonder spelling the name of the mighty river. I suffered alongside the young pilot the arduous task of learning every bend, every tree, every comma, colon and dash in the `book' of the river. I grew dreamy and daring with the inexhaustible stories spawned by the river.''
Codrescu's tone is humorous. The title essay, for example, mixes a Mark Twain-like satire with commentary on the computer revolution, which in Codrescu's opinion is not so much a revolution as it is a takeover. ``There is a New Order in effect. We live in ECC, Era of the Computer Chip, and this technology calls the shots now.''
For Codrescu, this technology began with the typewriter - a gun-blue Smith-Corona 220. When it entered his life, Codrescu began writing prose - stories, novels, essays. He could only write his poetry by sneaking away from the machine. If the Smith-Corona heard him leave, it would take revenge by smudging or popping a ribbon.
Yet Codrescu writes from a poet's perspective: ``It would be a great mistake to believe that language communicates the truth of one's human condition. . . ,'' he says. ``The only approaches to truth by means of language are artistic. Art is capable of supporting paradoxes. . . of constructing myths and stories that are little engines of reflection.''
Eighty such engines of reflection power this book. MEMO: Diane Scharper is a poet who teaches writing at Towson State
University in Maryland. ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC
BOOK REVIEW
``The Dog With the Chip in his Neck,'' by Andrei Codrescu. St.
Martin's Press. 272 pp. $22.95. by CNB