ZIGZAG

A discursive memoir from Canadian filmmaker and writer Houston (Confessions of an Igloo Dweller, 1996) of his post-Inuit years, mostly a thin gruel of name-dropping and social climbing. Houston had secured his reputation as the man who brought Inuit art to the world marketplace and as an artist of high Arctic images, when, in 1962, he was invited to join the Steuben Glass Company in New York City as a design director. Next thing he knew, he was hobnobbing with the swells in the social whirl. But these events get such glancing treatment, as does his purchase of farmhouses in Rhode Island and Connecticut and the designs he creates for Steuben, that it is difficult to suppress a yawn as Houston flits from one rich-and-famous moment to another: there was that trifling embarrassment with Bill Blass at Grace Mirabella’s party, and the time Howard Payne from the National Geographic Society called him to design the society’s centennial award, and the tarpon fishing at Boca Grande with Arthur Houghton when LBJ kept dropping by. Houston pretends to be just a rube among the giants, but that doesn’t wash, nor does it excuse his witless stories, such as the time, ho ho, when he thought the Chicken Delight delivery man was saying “checkin’ d‘lights,” to which he replies: “Beat it, will you? Our lights are fine. One more ring out of you and I’ll call the cops!” Mostly, it’s all one charmed existence, recounted like the ticks of a metronome—on safari with the Explorers Club, getting a personal tour of the cave paintings of France and Spain, salmon fishing at his little hideaway in the Queen Charlotte Islands, then off up the Orinoco for a touch of adventure—but the experiences are never treated with the kind of appreciation that gives them meaning and elevates them above trophies. Houston’s remembrances, drained of context and maundering, hold as much fascination as seeing your neighbor’s vacation photos for the third time. (48 b&w illustrations)