Gardens of Gravel and Sand (Stone Bridge Press), ISBN 1-880656-43-4, $19.95, soft cover, 96 pages, by Leonard Koren

And it is, indeed, just that. In only 96 pages, Mr. Koren offers a small, provocative, and reformist treatise, complete with a photographic collection, on the renowned Japanese rock gardens, which typically feature a dry landscape. They are often associated with Zen.

Yet the author claims they are not Zen, and throughout the book seeks to explode certain myths and misconceptions regarding such gardens and Japanese aesthetics in general. Credited with philosophical wisdom, the author feels their genuine origins are murky, and their intentions are ambiguous but immediate. Mr. Koren's books feature strong opinions about Japanese artistic subjects, some of which don't match commonly held conclusions, and which not every reader well-versed in Japanese art is going to agree with. That said, Gardens of Gravel and Sand does the world a favor by not tacking the word "Zen" onto yet another book . . . just to try to sell an extra copy or two. The marketplace in the last few years has been virtually inundated with books using Zen in their title, many of which have nothing to do with Zen or even Buddhism. And the author, who's lived extensively in Japan and been trained as an artist and architect, makes a decent case for his refusal to attribute the origins of Japanese rock gardens to Zen--despite the fact that such dry landscapes are often found on the grounds of Zen temples. This is accomplished by not merely citing his own opinions, but also those of other authorities.

And here we have a bit of a problem. The book contains a number of text notes; some of them are lengthy and most are interesting as well as integral to the author's presentation. They're in the back of the book, requiring the reader to flip back and forth on a regular basis. This isn't a problem in books that have very short and, in certain instances, largely inconsequential notes. In those cases, I usually just ignore the notes. But that isn't the situation here, where the text notes are used to vitally support Mr. Koren's arguments. Given this fact, perhaps another arrangement and/or location of the notes might have been better.