A GRACEFUL CELEBRATION OF INDONESIA'S `PRIMITIVE ENTERTAINMENTS' AN EMPIRE OF THE EAST: TRAVELS IN INDONESIA BY NORMAN LEWIS, HENRY HOLT, $25, 237 PP. THE SECRET LIFE OF THE SEINE BY MORT ROSENBLUM, ADDISON WESLEY, $21, 287 PP. SEEING VIETNAM: ENCOUNTERS OF THE ROAD AND HEART BY SUSAN BROWNMILLER, HARPERCOLLINS, $22, 225 P. ALBATROSS: THE TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN'S SURVIVAL AT SEA BY DEBORAH SCALING KILEY AND MEG NOONAN, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, $19.95, 210 PP. THE JAZZ AND BLUES LOVER'S GUIDE TO THE U.S. BY CHRISTIANE BIRD, ADDISON WESLEY, $15, 408 PP.: [STATEWIDE Edition]

Abstract

In Indonesia, getting to the beautiful places is increasingly a race against time. The government's convoluted attempt to transform many of its 13,677 islands and hundreds of diverse cultures into some sort of homogenized mass-tourism mecca is destroying the very thing that attracts most visitors to the islands - the sheer mind-boggling array of what [NORMAN LEWIS] calls "primitive scenes and entertainments."

In search of those entertainments, Lewis set out for some of the least known pockets of Indonesia: northern Sumatra, East Timor and Irian Jaya, the Indonesian portion of New Guinea. He finds them in abundance, as this gracefully written travelogue makes clear.

[MORT ROSENBLUM] is an Associated Press correspondent who spent the last seven or eight years living on a houseboat docked on the Seine. In his boat, he's journeyed up and down the river. The Seine, Rosenblum found, "was predictable until you tried to predict it. If you looked, there was always a secret."