Review #1: For Asheville TRIBUNE  [08-28-2002]
 

Let's agree from the start to call Will Haynie's first book CELLPHONE BLINKS ROAM for short. This brief, airy romp touches many bases. Geographically, the bases are pretty much all in the two Carolinas.

First, about that  very long title. It suggests that the book is about the internet, emailing, web pages and all that cyber stuff. And it is, now and then. Will Haynie, sometime columnist for newspapers in Asheville and Hendersonville, NC and a talk show host to boot, humorously takes the fear away from internet chatrooms and the like by recalling for beginners his own early experiences.

But commentary on the internet quickly morphs into genuine futurism: what our age of communication is likely to evolve into. For one thing, the world wide web may save money. Distance learning via the internet can cut out the need to buy ever more luxurious school houses and school buses. The private home will become both office away from office for moms and dads as well as time-saving schools for little Dick and Jane. Their cribs will be across the hall from Mom's cherished workplace.

Remember Shannon Faulkner and her 24 hours as the first woman to join the cadet corps at the Citadel, the state military academy in Charleston, SC? Will is the fifth generation of Haynie men to have studied there. His treatment of the feminization of both the Citadel and Virginia's VMI may well be the sharpest, best researched short account in the marketplace of those adventures in education, feminism and power politics.

If trying to figure out what makes North Carolina different from South Carolina is your thing, turn to CELLPHONE BLINKS ROAM and learn with confidence about accents, barbecue and--above all--atittudes. If South Carolina is Hegel's thesis, North Carolina with great chutzpah skips over Hegel's antithesis (could that be California or New York?) and jumps straight to synthesis: i.e., everything which South Carolina both affirms and denies.

Color Will Haynie flamboyantly conservative on the spectrum of American political values. Government should keep an ultra light hand on the economy (building, for instance, interstate highways but not individual driveways) while trying to conserve a society in which it is notably more pleasant to try to be good than to try to be bad. There are some good short political sermons scattered about CELLPHONE BLINKS ROAM.

This book is a hoot. I am not enough of a computer person to be sure. But my guess is that Chapter 6 "Thermatic Compression" is one big tongue in cheek tall tale from beginning to end. In cold weather need we really type email more slowly? Wrap our computer cables with duct tape? To make up your own mind read Will Haynie's thoroughly delightful first book. May there be many more!

-OOO

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When My Cellphone Blinks ROAM, Do I have a Call from Italy? Commentary by Will Haynie. Alexander NC, WorldComm. 2002. paper. 128 pages. $12.00
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