Astonishing World CL

Harrison is among our most eloquent journalists, and if there is one characteristic that informs this collection of essays and stories, most of which appeared previously in Partisan Review , the New York Times , Commonweal and other journals, it is a lyrically exclamatory love of life. It shines through her superb travel sketches of her beloved Italy, Morocco and parts of Eastern Europe (before the recent upheavals). That quality explains why she is clearly puzzled and disconcerted in her interview with Gore Vidal, who seems, for all his intelligence, a mere husk of a person in his responses to the sunlit world outside his Roman windows; why she cannot relate to the stultifyingly lifeless person that once-exquisite young gymnast Nadia Comaneci has become; and why, too, she is so enchanted with the unquenchable curosity, self-questioning and eloquence of New York governor Mario Cuomo. Harrison is excellent on a horrific sect that invades a town in Maine (she reminds us that her mother was a religious cultist), and wryly allows the promoters of a ``miracle'' shrine in Yugoslavia to metaphorically impale themselves. Only the few and brief short stories, dim reflections of the vibrant essays, are disappointments in this exhilarating, often moving collection. (July)