THREE DAYS AS THE CROW FLIES

A painter, gallery owner, poet and debut novelist, Simmons gives us a not entirely convincing portrait of New York's East Village 1980s bohemian culture. The protagonist, Crow Shade, a black cocaine addict, steals three paintings and a book manuscript produced by a friend in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and attempts to sell them in the Village, passing them off as his own work. In the process he meets an assortment of unusual characters, ranging from bag ladies to Andy Warhol. He becomes particularly close to Candy, a gorgeous, streetwise Puerto Rican store clerk, who, we later discover, conveniently happens to have a master's degree in art history and appraisal. Another friend, Bones, appears to be a penniless hippie, but turns to his middle-class family when the going gets rough; he has art world connections, too. Crow's most important mentor is Melissa, a Louisiana conjure woman who is also an intellectual, artist and owner of an apartment building. When she meets him, Melissa has some doubts whether Crow is the artist and writer he claims to be. She challenges him to improvise some poetry, which he does instinctively and brilliantly, to his great surprise. Later, he manages to get the three stolen paintings into a well-attended art show. The gallery owner wants more canvases, so Crow intuitively paints three outstanding pieces guided by "forces." Crow's sudden discovery of his poetic and artistic gifts, Melissa's all-knowing and all-powerful persona and the plethora of idealized characters, coincidences and amazing revelations make this work difficult to take seriously, in spite of its colorful and entertaining depiction of the East Village in its glory days. (June)