Under the Sign of Saturn by Susan Sontag, and: Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige, and: By Popular Demand: Plays and Other Works by The San Francisco Mime Troupe, and: Plays In Process ed. by James Leverett and TCG, and: New York Literary Forum ed. by Jeanine P. Plottel, and: Critical Moments: Reflections on Theatre and Society 1973–1979 by Robert Brustein (review)

books and compan_ Under the Sign of Saturn. Susan Sontag. Farrar Straus Giroux, 204 pp., $10.95 (cloth). What we have come to expect from Susan Sontag are highly original, polished essays arguing for the life of the mind. In her first collection of essays since 1969, she writes about seven extraordinary people: Artaud, Paul Goodman, Walter Benjamin, Hans - JUrgen Syberberg, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti. Sontag always connects her subjects to history, be It cultural, political or artistic, and that Is what makes her writing so generous In Its observations. Her essay on Benjamin Is a wonderful example of how she gets Inside an artist 's temperament, the one on Syberberg's Our Hitler dazzles in the way it gets Inside a cinematic imagination. And 'Approaching Artaud," so thoughtful and comprehensive-Sontag seems to have thought about the artist for years-is probably the best American essay on Artaud. Only the essay on Canetti stands apart from the others-it's not that It Is any less accomplished, only that Sontag, the aesthete, doesn't love the man and his mind: he simply lacks aesthetic sensibility. When she writes best she is filled with passion or anger, and this essay lacks either emotion. Under the Sign of Saturn is full of the intellectual rigor that makes Sontag one of the few provocative essayists writing today in the U.S., and one so ful of feeling for life and art, and their sensual coming together. Bonnie Marranca Subculture:The Meaning of Style. Dick Hebdige. Methuen, 195 pp., $6.50 (paper), $13.50 (cloth). Hebdige turns a provocative area of study into a dull academic summary of observations on youth subculture of post-war Britain. The tempting "style as bricolage" section collapses under the weight of quotations by Levi-Strauss, Jarry, Umberto Eco, Breton, Reverdy, Lautreamont, Max Ernst , and Annette Michelson, in less than five pages-all of these poor surrealists and semioticlans/structurallsts dragged in to make a few simple points. Hebdige is always the outsider looking Into the world of social deviance , with one eye on his subject, the other on his comfortable historical reference points. BGM 123 By Popular Demand: Plays and Other Works The San Francisco.Mime Troupe. San Francisco Mime Troupe, Inc., 302 pp, $8.00 (paper). Covering the period from 1970 through 1980, the San Francisco Mime Troupe's collection of works, including four major plays collectively written, four "actos," or shorter plays, music and some 120 photos and drawings are reproduced in very high quality. There Is no real commentary, just five pages of introductory materials, and texts of The Dragon Lady's Revenge, False Promises/Nos Enganaron, and Frijoles, or Beans to You. The playwrighting, crossed between burlesque and agit-prop, holds up Axtremely well to the light of the times In both its content and form. Much of its style and success are due to the expertise of group writer Joan Holden whose association with the troupe dates to the late 1960s. The volume serves as an added and necessary document to the radical theatre repertory of plays. Mark Amitin Plays In Process. Editor James Leverett and TCG. Literary Services Dept., Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 355 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017. $100/yr. (20 1980.81 titles) plus $25 (7 1979-80 titles). Plays in Process Is a new script publication project set up by TCG, with the financial backing of the NEA and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, to stimulate further productions of new plays first presented In the regional theatres. It represents the right kind of work that a national service organization can do in this area. Each year some 20 new works will appear in print, although the first full year of the service yielded just seven. Available by subscription only, the service is limited to nonprofit professional theatres, universities, and other noncommercial organizations. Individuals and commercial sources are clearly cut out of the action. TCG will only consider scripts that have been nominated from its constituency ofmore than 170 theatres and an editorial board of theatre professionals makes the final selections. In Its 1979-80 series PIP printed Fantod: A Victorian Reverie by Amlin Gray and Tom Cole...