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Reviews 341 but at the same time he knew of no great literature that ignored it. William Humphrey's Farther Off From Heaven passes the test. GEORGE D. HENDRICKS North Texas State University The Carmen Miranda Memorial Flagpole. By Gerald Rosen. (San Rafael: Presidio Press. 176 pages, $8.95 cloth, $3.95 paper.) “This book will make you laugh,” boasts the blurb on the back cover of The Carmen Miranda Memorial Flagpole, and it will. This is the first novel in Presidio Press’s California Series, books written by Californians or/and about California. Gerald Rosen, a resident of San Francisco, proves to be no less than a passionate, tender Philip Roth. The book is full of jokes: “Descartes had to be French, right? That’s the problem with the French. Always putting Descartes before the horse.” “(If) you think all vegetarians are harmless, you should check out the Hindus in India. They don’t kill cows. They only kill Moslems who kill cows.” A restaurant in South Bend, near Notre Dame, offers “Veal Parseghian.” Driving into Chicago the two (or three) “brothers” (actually “they” may only be one person) shout, “Look out Gene Ammons! Look out Nelson Algren! Look out Andy Pafko!” There is also a brilliant, as well as hysterical, exegesis on why the author (who may or may not be the “author”), a Jew from the Bronx, will never understand a White Protestant. (This last has to do with soldiers getting hit with sacks of flour dropped by helicopters during maneuvers in Texas.) On its most obvious level this book is about two(?) brothers from New York who drive across the country with their dog, Ilark, the Herald Angels Sing, psychologically pursued by Dr. Samuel Freudenberg (who loses his way, or loses interest, one), to settle in a small town north of San Francisco. One of them, Jack, teaches English at a local college, gets married to a woman named Nectarine, and embroiled in a series of /any mishaps — caused, perhaps, by his post-Vietnam war disorientation. The other(?) brother, Jerry, follows Jack around, gets him out of trouble by explaining his (Jack’s) actions as involuntary (what does he — Jerry? — know?), and writes a book called The Carmen Miranda Memorial Flagpole, the title of which has something to do with a fruit-laden hat hoisted on a flagpole. BARRY GIFFORD, Berkeley, California ...

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