CATSKILL CRAFTS

A sentimental and disappointing portrait of the tribe of men and women who work with their hands. In her first nonfiction book, Smiley (Barn Blind, 1980; At Paradise Gate, 1981; Duplicate Keys, 1984) displays a fiction writer's relish for the details of craft. She is at her best when describing Howard Bartholomew chiselling an acanthus leaf on a lowboy, or Michael Buyer trimming a ceramic pot, or John Hoeko plucking a feather from a gamecock neck to make a dry fly. But except for a few vivid descriptions, her book has little to offer. It's not a study of the crafts movement in the Catskills in the 1980's nor a history of crafts in the Catskills, nor a personal narrative of the author's discovery of handiwork. What it is, Smiley writes, is "a sort of friendship quilt." This verbal "quilt" is made up of sketches of 15 artisans, with each "patch" re-creating different aspects of a craftsman's life and work: the problems of making a living as an artisan, the question of art vs. craft, the history of a particular craft, the personal life of the artists. All of these "patches" when put together are supposed to offer a "picture of the way some people are living, and earning a living, in a particular place at a particular time." Unfortunately, in this paean to the near-religious experience of handicrafts (sewing "is a kind of physically paced meditation not much different from purely spiritual meditation"), Smiley fails to give her subject an intellectual shape and indulges in some rather trite general observations. Here, Smiley's words seem ultimately little more than lengthy captions for the book's 50 photographs.