WHO'S TO BLAME? DRAWING LIFE Surviving the Unabomber By David Gelernter Free Press 159pp $21 The weirdest things seem important in the midst of dramatic events. A Yale University professor gets blown up by a mail bomb and, while he's bleeding buckets in the hospital, his right hand in shreds and one eye left visionless, he wonders whether he'll have to cancel his afternoon appointments. As it happened, he was lucky to make it at all--doctors say he probably would have bled to death had he not immediately walked down the street to a clinic. That 1993 victim of an explosive device allegedly sent by the Unabomber was David Gelernter. He is the classic cantankerous professor--a computer scientist who hates computers, a Yale prof who rails against intellectuals. His latest effort, Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber, is really two books: first, an essay on the bombing and how Gelernter refashioned his life; then, musings on what he sees as a morally bankrupt world mixed with longings for the good old days prior to 1965, before the rise of moral relativism and feminism. It is not clear to this day why the terrorist who sent the package wanted to destroy the author. Gelernter and the FBI eventually figured that it was simply because Gelernter studied computer science--an ironic turn of fate, since the Yalie has written extensively about the dark side of technology. Ultimately, the reason doesn't matter all that much, Gelernter claims. Making no excuses for the Unabomber, whom he reviles, he accuses society itself of being complicit in the crime. ''We are the age that [is] haunted by injustice, by violence and by citizens constantly nagging one another not to be 'judgmental,''' he writes. Ours is an irresponsible society in which ''a lesbian activist gets more respect than...a homemaker.'' But the account is not simply another antiliberal screed. Gelernter, whose previous books include 1939: The Lost World of the Fair and The Muse in the Machine, writes wittily and well, frequently quoting E.B. White, the guru of the lucid essay. White's influence is clear in Gelernter's descriptions of everything from the behavior of birds at the feeder to the experience of being wheeled from operation to operation, through ''miles'' of hospital corridors with no more control ''than a log in a river.'' Drawing Life is at its best when, as White would have suggested, it describes the author's experience and refrains from theorizing about the decline of the Western world. But even if you don't believe that life changed dramatically for the worse starting in 1965, Drawing Life is an enjoyable and often surprisingly upbeat read. ''If you insert into this weird slot machine of modern life one evil act, a thousand acts of kindness tumble out,'' the author notes. Gelernter's dirty little secret is that, in spite of everything, he is an optimist at heart. BY SUSAN JACKSON RELATED ITEMS PHOTO: Cover, ``Drawing Life''

Updated Sept. 25, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use