Tuesday, December 7, NBA Store, 666 Fifth Ave. at 52nd St., 3:30
Tuesday, December 14, Borders, 2 Penn Plaza, 6:00
Thursday, December 16, Books & Greetings, New Jersey, 7:00
www.triumphbooks.com
One of the best guards in NBA history and the all-time greatest Knickerbocker, Walt (Clyde) Frazier was the definition of cool during the 1970s, high-stylin’ on and off the court then as well as now, currently serving as the team’s longtime color analyst. Back in 1974, following the second Knicks championship in four years, Clyde wrote ROCKIN’ STEADY: A GUIDE TO BASKETBALL & COOL with New York Times sportswriter Ira Berkow, covering such topics as “Offense,” “Defense,” “Cool,” and “A General Guide to Looking Good, and Other Matters.” The book was out of print for many years, but Triumph has finally brought it back in all its original glory, along with a new preface by Berkow and a new afterword from Frazier, called “Leave Your Own Footprint,” in which he discusses, among other things, his shocking trade to Cleveland in 1977 and the difficulties of the move from the city that he virtually owned: “Didn’t want to get that canary-yellow suit soiled, for one thing, and for another, it wasn’t easy packing those Clyde hats without getting them mashed. But I managed.” Frazier will be dishing and swishing, wheeling and dealing, and believing and achieving at the NBA Store in Midtown on December 7 at 3:30, the Borders at Penn Plaza on December 14 at 6:00, and Books & Greetings in Northvale, New Jersey, on December 16 at 7:00.
Japanese novelist Kôbô Abe and director Hiroshi Teshigahara collaborated on five films together, including the marvelously existential WOMAN OF THE DUNES in 1964 and THE FACE OF ANOTHER two years later. In THE FACE OF ANOTHER, Tatsuya Nakadai (THE HUMAN CONDITION, KILL!) stars as Okuyama, a man whose face has virtually disintegrated in a laboratory accident. He spends the first part of the film with his head wrapped in bandages, a la the Invisible Man, as he talks about identity, self-worth, and monsters with his wife (Machiko Kyo), who seems to be growing more and more disinterested in him. Then Okuyama visits a psychiatrist (Mikijirô Hira) who is able to create a new face for him, one that would allow him to go out in public and just become part of the madding crowd again. But his doctor begins to wonder, as does Okuyama, whether the mask has actually taken control of his life, making him as helpless as he was before. Abe’s remarkable novel is one long letter from Okuyama to his wife, filled with utterly brilliant, spectacularly detailed examinations of what defines a person and his or her value in society. Abe wrote the film’s screenplay, which tinkers with the time line and creates more situations in which Okuyama interacts with people; although that makes sense cinematically, much of Okuyama’s interior narrative, the building turmoil inside him, gets lost. Teshigahara once again uses black and white, incorporating odd cuts, zooms, and freeze frames, amid some truly groovy sets, particularly the doctor’s trippy office, and Tōru Takemitsu’s score is ominously groovy as well. As a counterpart to Okuyama, the film also follows a young woman (Miki Irie) with one side of her face severely scarred; she covers it with her hair and is not afraid to be seen in public, while Okuyama must hide behind a mask. But as Abe points out in both the book and the film, everyone hides behind a mask of one kind or another. 
