Getting the Point Across

THERE ARE A FEW enlightened readers of The New York Times who turn straight to the first page of the second section every morning, passing up the meatier news stories in hopes of discovering one of the delectable morsels served up by Israel Shenker. With the publication of Words and Their Masters, Shenker gluttons can now gorge them-selves to their heart's content on a collection of 67 interviews and articles, all of which are concerned with some aspect of human communication.

Some of the pieces examine various methods of non-verbal communication--smiles, pauses, body language,and the semi-verbal language of the affected stammer (brought to a pitch of eloquence by the English ruling class). Shenker's quest for exotic modes of conveying meaning has led him to Italy, where he compiles a graphic lexicon of the language of gesture ("Sicilians take the Fifth by raising their chins slowly... Fondle the back of your ear and somebody's a pederast.") Venturing even further afield, he travels to the Congo for a first-hand encounter with African drum language, only to have his experimental message. "Notre Dame has the best team of all," emerge back into English as "The lady if ever she had a weak body, now she has strong one."

But for the most part Shenker is content to remain in the province of words--an area he knows like the back of his hand. He seems equally at home conversing with Nabokov and Asimov, I.F. Stone and I.B. Singer, Georges Simenon and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Perhaps he is most comfortable with writers like S.J. Perelman (the subject of three separate interviews) and Brigid Brophy, who share his penchant for groan-inducing puns and shameless plays on words. Parelman, Shenker tells us, has a myna bird, "scion of an ancient mynasty,...and wherever Perelman goes the bird is sure to go; it followed him to shul one day." (The bird, incidentally, is christened "Nixon's Vulture.")

But Shenker never lets his light touch get our of hand, and he keeps a firm grip on even the most elusive conversation (Shenker's word games tend to be infectious). Suiting his style to subject, he rises to the sublimity of Vladimir Nabokov ("Q. What struggles these days for pride of trace in your mind?"), and caters to the acidity of Gore Vidal ("Have you read any bad books lately?"). Mark Van Doren's answers "seemed to demand the topography of poetry," and so Shenker has reproduced them in verse form. Only once, in an interview with Eugene Ionesco, does he seem to be at a loss for words, and the conversation begins to take on the character of an absurdist play:

Q. Have you ever been interested in politics? What did you think of De Gaulle?

A. Who's that?

>Q. I can't answer that question.

A. I don't know him.

MOST OF THE WRITERS interviewed are more than willing to deliver their opinions and observations on politics, the state of the world, life, death, and above all, writing. Rex Stout has no trouble dashing off a new Nero Wolfe every 39 days, and Isaac Asimov writes books the way most people sneeze. But the other authors find writing a painful process, especially as they grow older and fear losing their inspiration and energy. "The metronomic quality of a columnist's life is like Chinese water torture," says an unusually morose Russell Baker. "Wednesday Thursday Sunday, Wednesday Thursday Sunday. That stretches out in front of me till I'm 65."

Age is a recurring theme, since many of the men and women interviewed are over 65. In fact, younger writers get hardly any representation at all in this collection, and the "radical innovators"--Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Eugene Ionesco--have all been around for quite a while, Surely Shenker could have made room for some new faces by omitting a few of the more trivial pieces--for instance, "Howlers," a collection of high-school malapropisms only slightly above the level of Kids Say the Darnedest Things.

Shenker's fascination with words also leads him to delve into the technical aspects of language, and he includes pieces on linguistics and lexicography, linguists and lexicographers. He covers everything from the staid Oxford English Dictionary--where, with true British resistance to modernity, no researcher is allowed near a typewriter--to the bitterly sarcastic Great Society Dictionary, a radical guide to the vocabulary of Vietnam by a professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, at the American Heritage Dictionary, and panel of experts bickers over what is acceptable English and what is not.

BUT THE HIGH SPOTS of the book are the interviews. Shenker's interviewing technique is to keep his presence to a minimum, leaving description at the barest essentials and letting his subjects speak for themselves. Many of the conversations are really just strings of quotations, supplemented only by some remarkably vivid photographs by Jill Krementz. This approach usually proves successful, thanks to the caliber of the interviewees; unlike Rex Reed, Shenker doesn't have to resort to bitchy observations to spice up vapid quotes. Inevitably, some of the conversations are not all that fascinating, and at least one--a piece on Noam Chomsky as a linguist--is downright boring, an object lesson in how words can get in the way of an explanation. But the book as a whole is remarkably rich; most of the interviews can stand rereading, and the lighter pieces in between make enjoyable breathing spaces.

In the midst of all this verbiage comes a strikingly down-to-earth quotation from Italian author Danilo Dolci: It's important to understand that words don't move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains." Words and Their Masters isn't likely to budge the Himalayas, but it does provide some insight into the major literary minds of the day. Besides, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's a pleasure to read. Shenker has proved himself a minor master of words in his own right.