Scott Carrier runs to the edge of a high, dry place and observes: "Here it is, Reality; but the reality of what?" The answer comes back as the echo of laughter in the hills. Haunting and wonderful.

Scott Carrier's collection of essays, Running After Antelope alternates sections about travel's to Cambodia, time spent interviewing the mentally ill, and beatnik hitchhiking adventures with brief, intercalary chapters, indexed by year, which describe his passion for animal of the title. Carrier is consumed by the idea of being able to run with these creatures, to track them and perhaps outrun them eventually. On several occasions we meet Scott's brother, a scientist who studies the respiratory systems of mammals. Their relationship is often engaging, as is Scott's relationship to the antelope themselves. Indeed, the author's voice, so easy to read along with after hearing it so many times on NPR, dominates the landscape to such a degree that the reader never really gets a clear view of the vistas, natural and metaphorical, that he attempts to exposit in these brief essay. As individual works, the essays are like existential snapshots of a hell always just below the surface. The best essay in the collection, The Test, describes Carrier's time as a field interviewer for the mentally ill. He meets several, decidedly disturbed individuals - a man who tells Carrier that he can read his mind with the help of a crystal he carries, a woman who was put on medication because she claims sex with angels, and an eighty year old man who responds to every question with a plaintive "I can't remember". Carrier's job plunges further into the heart of darkness when he decides to take the test himself, only to discover, half way through, that the results aren't going to be good. As starling, even heartbreaking, as this essay is, the fact that it is followed later on by a rather lighthearted, Charles Kuraltesque piece about hitching a ride across country with an aspiring art dealer - who incidentally, believes his brother to be a genius of the art world; I wonder if Carrier considered making a stronger parallel with his own brother - and then by two pieces of travel journalism in which Carrier, promisingly enough, rents a motorcycle to transverse the countryside, and then, after getting lost on his way back to the palatial hotel, promptly returns it. The rudiments of Carrier's dark vision of things not quite in their proper place (especially the author himself) do make themselves known from time to time, event these weaker essays. The problem is that the reader's focus is split between the narrator's neurosis (and it is a fascinating one) and the decidedly journalistic intent in many of these essays. The divide never seems to converge at any point, despite the contextual format which leads the reader to believe otherwise. The lack of tonal cohesion between the various pieces, though distracting, should not dissuade a good, long sitting with Carrier's book, however. The precision of his prose style, which sometimes boarders on the baroque, has been honed by years freelancing for public radio. As such, the writing is meant to stimulate the mind's eye. In an early essay, Carrier describes the quite, natural splendor of his Utah:

There are little birds in the trees, and big birds on the rock walls of the canyon - red rock walls in the shadow of the afternoon sun. A dirt road comes around and down and crosses over the stream, and in the pool below road a pale snake slides silent into the water and swims to the other side, holding something rather large in its mouth.

Assonance aside, these sorts of passages, brief and almost haiku-like, crop up throughout the book and provide the necessary calm and elegance to counter Carrier's dark and often morbid musings. It is strange that Scott Carrier, the brooding, almost transient voice so often heard amongst the wacky and the cranky on This American Life, should become a representative belle letterist for this new century. However, the hodgepodge of modes that make up Running After Antelope - memoir, travel essay, nature writing - seems a perfect fit for the era of the translucent computer and gourmet fast-food. Appetites change and morph throughout even a single sitting of reading. To this end, Scott Carrier's short collection of flawed but very often beautiful and haunting essays should provoke even the most distracted of readers.

I have always liked Scott Carrier the most of all of the producers on "This American Life". Something about his voice, writing style, and introspection. I found this book to be a non-fiction Jesus' Son, maybe lacking the manic moments that Denis Johnson pens but the sadness, naiveté, and poetic prose is all there.

"The Carrier" by Holden Scott, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

A Fast Moving Book mixing modern gene therapy with the modern concern for the upcoming plague.

The author, Scott Holden, combines a fairly deep knowledge of modern genetic laboratories with a story of politics in the university setting. His main character is a genius Ph. D. candidate (Jack Collier) from New Jersey who ignores the jealousies on the university campus (Harvard of all places) until his advisor, Professor Dutton springs a rather large conspiracy on Jack. Jack Collier is expelled for plagiarism, while it is Dutton who had done the real plagiarism. In hopes of a Nobel Prize, Dutton steals Jack's work, which was intended as a cure for cancer. In stealing Jack's discovery, Prof. Dutton inadvertently changes the cure into a killer. Jack carries the killer/cure across the United States, while being pursued by FBI agents, one of whom is a psycho and another a Ph.D. in Biology. This is an interesting sub-plot all on its own.

The book is well written, but some discrepancies crept in: I do not think that the Boston Police Department has legal authority in Cambridge, where Harvard is located. The references to the BPD should have been to Cambridge Police. On p. 209, the editor permitted "stewardess" to be used, when today's correct usage is "flight attendant". On p. 191, the verb "affects" was used when the noun, "effects" was required. All of this is minor compared to the fast-moving story combining many modern themes.

Jack Collier has a brilliant idea that will not only attain him his Ph.D. from Harvard, but cure cancer. However, his faculty advisor Dr. Dutton steals the ideal of training Strep A bacteria to eat tumors leaving Jack expelled for plagiarism and feeling heartbroken.

Jack flees Harvard to seek his former girlfriend who is dying from cancer. However, unbeknownst to Jack he has become infected with his cure, turning him into a modern day but deadlier Typhoid Mary. He kills anyone who comes in physical contact with him. With the FBI wanting to stop Jack before others die, while others want Jack dead before he reveals the truth, he continues his trek cross country to try to save a life.

THE CARRIER is an exciting, fast-paced medical thriller that falls a bit short of being a classic horror tale. The story line moves so fast that readers will finish it quickly, but feel very little towards the characters in the process. Even though this tale is not quite what it could have been, any one skeptical about Holden Scott's talent will realize he is a major player who needs to know speed kills interesting plots, even one that is still fun to read.

Harriet Klausner

After you read this book, you will probably never want to use a public toilet again! When Holden Scott first started writing as Ben Mezrich, there was an obvious talent there that somehow seemed to elude critical or public acclaim. However, since changing his name and writing "Skeptic," seems his fate is a little more promising.
"The Carrier" is a by the numbers chase thriller, which has some interesting scenarios, and some truly frightening scenes (reference to the above mentioned public toilet scene..yipes!). However, so many "coincidences" occur and agent Thomas Moon is so over the top that you have to grimace at some of the cliches Scott uses. However, this is an effectively creepy and involving book, one that flows nicely and gives us another one of Mezrich/Scott's typical young medical heroes who is caught up in the bureaucratic/evil world of modern science. You can't help but admire Jack and his quest to save his beloved Angie from cancer; and you can't help but hate Michael Dutton, who cruelly steals Jack's "miracle."
A nice, engaging read and one that I recommend; it's fun.