The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 65

SECTION I passix; snow TIIK COUnilTi-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 21, 1956. nooKS Iff 1P IF IS SHORT Saroyan Zcsl for Zany People 4. 'ft fin si and Boston and there are financial problems, and guess who solves them: Twink. The prose style of this novel will remind you of the Baby Ray Reader. The child narrator would have to use simple sentences, but it seems to me the stress should be on her innocence and the fresh, frank insights of childhood.

Instead her viewpoint is precocious, sophisticated; only her words are simple. The author's exuberance and his tender feeling for Twink (really his own daughter) lends grace to the story. Still, I find it less amusing than most of his fiction. His range is all the way from the delightful play, "The Time of Your Life," and the moving, tragic novel, "The Laughing Matter," to the awful song, "Come On-A My House." The story of Mama Girl is almost in the class with that song. Saroyan's personality is irresistible.

His antic capers, his love of life and people particularly the zany ones and his childish candor all add up to a delightful character. Even reading about him from a distance makes one fond of him. He treasures honesty above everything else and will not mind if a reader says that his latest novel is trivial. Since he is planning to do creative work for another 20 years, let us hope that he will give us some more novels like "The Human A Review by Jennie Furyrar Gardner MAMA I IOVE YOUi By William Saroyan. 245 pp.

Bottom Atlantic Littlo, Brown. $375. MAMA GIRL is 33 years old and has red hair. She also has a 9-year-old daughter called Twink, only sometimes she calls her Frog and sometimes Dandelion. Especially when she is sad.

She is sad lots of times because she is divorced. She wants very much to become an actress, and one night, when the sitter doesn't show up and she can't go to the party in California, she and Twink take a plane to New York, because New York is where the theater is. In just such a style as this author Saroyan goes on to tell of the adventures of Twink and her mother in N'ew York. Here is a sample describing the automat in the author's words: "After a few minutes one of the girls poured vegetable and then chicken rice into two bowls. She placed a small packet of salt crackers beside each bowl and then she got two dishes of chocolate ice cream, and then Mama Girl dropped money into a glass cage with a handle beside it, and the girl there looked at the money and then she pulled the handle down and the money dropped into a metal box and disappeared." Twink helps Mama get into a play and there are tryouts in Philadelphia SHRIFT Confederate Imprints: A Checklist Based Principally on Th Collection of The Boston Athenaeum.

By Marjorie Lyle With an Introduction by Walter Muir Whitehill. The Boston Athenaeum. (Two Volumes) $15. Mr. Walter Whitehill, director of the Boston Athenaeum, and his associates have included in th new list of Confederate imprints not only the comprehensIv Athenaeum holdings built on the collection made in 1865 by Dr.

Algernon Coolidge and Francis Parkman, they have also included items located at the Library of Congress, Emory L'niversity, Duks University, the Huntington Library and several other institutions having outstanding Confederate collections. The two volumes resulting from this undertaking are a most useful and attractive work. In all, more than 5,000 titles are listed and located, ranging from official national and state publications, such as laws, journals, and proclamations, to unofficial works such as newspapers, novels, textbooks, almanacs, Bibles, hymnbooks, sermons, tracts and sheet music. Specialists in Confederate history will find the work indispensable; and all who have a particular attachment to this glamorous period will find in the pages of these two volumes much interesting and useful information. New Lives For Old: Cultural Transformation-Manus, 1928-1953.

By Margaret Mead. Morrow Co. $6.73. Margaret Mead wrote of the primitive culture of the Manus in "Growing Up in New Guinea." Her new book is the record of the impact of contemporary culture upon a Stone Age people. An anthropologist has here had the rare opportunity to study and report on a people during a 25 year period of change, adaptation and transition.

My Friend Ike: By Marty Snyder with Glenn D. Kittler. F. Fell Co. $3.50.

This is the story of the friendship between Eisenhower and his former mess sergeant. It is an association that began during maneuvers in Louisiana in 1941, carried through the war years at Allied Supreme Headquarters abroad, was rekindled during the presidential campaign of 1952, and which still persists today. As often befalls the author swollen with hero worship, Snyder fails in what is an obvious attempt at a really fresh, intimate portrayal of Ike. The excitement and tension of the war years, the Eisenhower-Snyder family discussions at Morningside Heights, the numerous behind-the-scenes recollections of the 1952 campaign, reveal little that the public does not already know about Ike the man, the general, the candidate, the president. Election year curiosity may save the volume from almost immediata oblivion.

The Theme Is Freedom: By John Dos Passos. Dodd, Mead. $3.50. These selections are made from the author's writings over the past thirty years. They are accompanied by brief comments, a kind of hindsight appraisal that tells much about Dos Passos maturing judgment over the years.

Much of the impact of these pieces will be lost on younger readers. But those of us whose experience includes Sacco and Vanzetti, the bloody trouble in the Kentucky coal counties in 1932 and the Spanish Civil War will feel shock at the recall. John Dos Passos always wrote vividly and with deep feeling. His original thoughts and his after-thoughts about Communism are well worth reading. A disturbing, nostalgia book.

Notos on The Diggings of Many Years "Hunting Scene From The Tomb of Userhet, Thebes," painted by Joseph Lmdon Smith, author of "Tombs, Temples and Ancient Art" (349 pp. I'nwersity of Oklahoma Press. $5), thows only one side of his diverse personality. One of the foremost of American archaeologists, Mr. Smith could, as this volume attests, write easily, personally and not didactically.

He died only a few years ago at the advanced age of 86. This book, compiled from notes on the work of many years, on archaeology from early Egypt through Greece, Persia, the Far East, and rip to the Mayans, is edited by the wife of the author. The information is vast but not overwhelming. There are nearly 50 illustrations. Pen Notes by Composer Berlioz Homilctics I5y Dr.

Jordan .4 Review by A. IT. Header BEYOND DESPAIR; By G. Ray Jordan. 16 pp.

Matmillnn. $2.50. "BEYOND DEM'AIR" is the 15th book by Dr. 0. Ray Jordan, who was Week preacher this year for the Council of Churches.

Dr. Jordan is rrofosor of rrcathinu at the Candler of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta. The subtitle of this volume, "When religion Becomes Heal," gives the key to the main purpose of these 13 chapters. Real darkness must be met by real lisht. Earnest people today bowed and baffled by the manifest darkness within the "horrible pit" into which the human family has fallen.

The only defense against and deliverance from this genuine darkness is an experience of the genuine light of Goil to guide, an appropriable wisdom of God to inform, and the healing love of God to redeem. This book the good news that there is that Lght, that wisdom and that love for those who seek it with all their heart. The message of these sermons gives needed balance to much of the popular writings of this day concerning religious living. Dr. Jordan's emphasis is on the "God-help" rather than the "self help." God's peace comes according as the seeker commits himself in faith to God's purposes and plans rather than to the seeker's own desiring.

God's Edens have their gates open to man, but the entrance is on God's terms and not man's. Angelic guardians protect man's right to enter, but they cany flaming swords to protect God's right to draw up the rules of the road. And no conflict is quite so sparingly destructive as the wounds of flaming swords upon those who insinuate unhallowed feet within sacred precincts. No man deserves the peace of God who has not made peace with God's holy intentions. Dr.

Jordan presents his message in a manner mindful of newspaper style. lis language is forceful and vividly clear; his apt illustrations are drawn from a wide field. Both preacher and layman will read this book with high profit. This book is for the serious. "There is no Coueism here," hut there is a pointing to those virtues that bring both confidence and strengthening to those who in singleness of heart give themselves courageously to Him who is "our only hope and never-failing strength." Uncertain Talent, Effective Style W.

K. STEW ART CO. tiane exhibits an almost faultless ear for the nuances, the things said and left unsaid in human communication. Mr. Fairbairn has studied his Hemingway well.

His writing has the simple-to-simple-minded cadences which we find in the best to the worst of the master. Whether or not he can use this taut and disciplined style to say something in a more extended and meaningful book than the present vignette (the expression of a considerable talent) remains to be seen. fallen into the habit of indulging in conversation, laying aside their instruments to give unhampered attention to the speaker. Each "Evening" is given over to the discussions, anecdotes, and so on. It is all characteristic of the imaginative flights of fancy that are so spontaneously natural to Berlioz.

His brilliance with the pen was as unquenchable a3 his brilliance in composition, and everyone familiar with his "Memoirs" and his letters will welcome this new treasure trove. For the uninitiated, it is a wonderful introduction. As for Mr. Barzun's translation, it seems impossible to find a flaw. Without falling into vernacular and phrases which are quickly outmoded, he has managed to keep the informal, conversational quality that enlivens everything that Berlioz wrote.

The caustic irony, the impassioned intensity, the casual asides and uncompromising statements all water marks of Berlioz the writer seem utterly natural in Barzun's English. It is gratifying to remember that there are still other books of Berlioz, waiting to be known. A Review by Fanny EVENINGS WITH THE ORCHESTRA: ty He-tor Berlioz. Transloted, with on Introduction end Notes, by Jacques Bariun. 376 pp, Alfr.d A.

Knopf, J6. AT LONG LAST the music of Berlioz is becoming well-known, admired and valued as it should be. A large measure of this recognition is due to Jacques Barzun, thanks to his two-volume "Berlioz and The Romantic Century," published in 1950, and to the activities of the Berlioz Society. Now the literary works of Berlioz are to become known, and at the request of the Berlioz Society, Barzun has translated the famous "Soirees de l'Orchcstre," calling it "Evenings With The Orchestra." Berlioz, sending his manuscript to a publisher in 1852, described the book as containing "short stories, anecdotes, romances, squibs, critiques and discussions, in which music is treated only episodically and not theoretically," thus making It clear that the book was intended for everyone and not only for the initiated few. lie invented an opera house in provincial France as the setting fpr his "Evenings." During the performance of any dull opera certain members of the orchestra, seated in the pit, had The Ranch Life Of Dntlc, Wife A Rrrieie hy Mary Bingham A MAN WORLD: By Douglat Fairbairn.

153 pp. Simon Schuitsr. S3. DOUGLAS FAIRBAIRX'S first novel is a long short story about a 17-year-old American boy who is working in the galley of an American yacht in Cannes. He falls in love with a French girl whose aunt is grooming her against her will to become a "business girl" in her night spot.

Foxie, the boy, tries to smuggle her aboard the yacht to take her to America. She is discovered and taken off. He goes home and is sent to a good preparatory school by the ship's captain. When last seen he is working hard for a scholarship and is making a determined (but not altogether successful) effort to put out of his mind the whole business of Christiane, the yacht. Cannes, and his coming of age there.

This is the simple skeleton of the story, unremarkable except for its spare, off-hand, extremely effective style and its dramatic condensed form. The relationship between Christiane and the boy is built up with such economy and reticence that one can hardly account for its impact. The dialogue between the crew members, between the habitues of the wharf-side cafes, between Foxie and Chris A Review by Joy Rain GUESTWARD HOI; By Dennii-Hooton. pp. Vanguard Prii.

$3.50. 270 BOOKS RECEIVED STERtING GUIDE TO SUMMER JOBS: By Doug Andtrion. Starling. $2.50. THE BIESSINGS OF IIBERTY.

By Zecharlah Chofe, Jr. llppincott. $5. THE AIR FORCE: A Panorama of Th Nafion't Youngest Service. By Arnold Brophy.

Gilbert Presi. Distributed by Julian Mesiner. $5. COIN COtlECTORS' HANDBOOK: By Fred Reinfeld. Sterling.

$2 53. SONG OF AMERICA: An Autobiography. The fascinating narrative of on Armenian immigrant and the inspiring meaning he found in the American way of life. By George Mardikian. McGraw-Hill.

$4 50. TO THE GREAT SOUTHERN SEAi By William A. Robinson, Harcourt, Brace. $5. WORLD AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION MANUAL: By C.

H. Gibbs Smith and I. E. Bradford. John de Graff Co.

$3.50. TOWARD REUNION IN PHILOSOPHY: By Morton While. Harvard University Press. $5.75. THE INQUISITIVE PHYSICIAN: The Life and Times of George Richards Minor.

By Francis M. Rackemann. Harvard University Press. $5. THE ROMAN MIND: Studies In The History of Thought From Cicero to Marcus Aurelius.

By M. I. Clarke. Harvard University Press. $3.75.

THE DARK VIRGIN: The Book of Our tarty of Guadalupe. Edited by Donald Demarest ond Coley Taylor. Coley Taylor, Inc. $5. THE U.

S. A IN COtOR: By the Editors of Holiday. Doubleday. $7.50. Flesh-Creeping Talc of Horror Recent and Readable 1) Andersonville by MacKinley Kantor A novel of historical importance telling tha grim and tragic story of the Confederate prison at Anderson Station, Georgia.

Mr. Kantor spent 25 years of research in preparing this very great story of American and Confederate history. $5.00 2) THE FATAL DECISION'S The battles of Britain Moscow El A 1 a i Stalingrad France 1944 The Ardennes, each told by the defeated German general who made or carried out the command decisions that led to the absolute military defeat of the Third Reich. Illustrated with 5 maps. $1.00 3) JOHN FILSOV OF KENTL'CKE by John Walton The brief and tragic career of John Filson his life and writings and an exact replica of his rare map of Kentucky.

The map is included in a case attached to the inside back cover of the book. $4.00 4) YOUTH, The Yean From Ten to Sixteen by Arnold Gesel, M.D. If you have lately locked horns with a sulky young man, if your 11-year-old daughter is planning to become a veterinarian or your 16-year-old son wants nothing for his birthday but a driver's license read this newest Dr. Gesel book to help and guide the anxious family. If you know what to expect, your worries can be replaced by constructive measures.

$5.95 A Rericw by Helena Lrfrny C.aperlon UNDER THE UNQUIET SPIRIT: By Morgurit SUtn. fly SEGAL mm iil 1 II I VVPI-' i-. mi THOUGH THERE is no Auntie Mame of current fame in this latest Patrick Dennis offering, a lightheart-ed story indiscreetly confided to Dennis by Barbara Hooton, there are more colorful characters corralled between the pages than one reader could catch with a lariat. Displaying considerably greater pioneering spirit than the average sophisticated New Yorker, Bill Hooton recently astounded the bright status quo by stowing his caustically reluctant wife and few belongings into a second-hand station wagon and taking off for an impetuously purchased dude ranch in New Mexico. As told by witty Barbara Hooton to Patrick Dennis, nary a commonplace individual ever sets foot on the ranch.

Be he wrangler, cook, guest or friend and almost everyone turns out to be a friend, no matter through what fires of testing he goes he is a character in one way or another. While the irrepressible neophyte owners and managers of Rancho del Monte have had more than their share of troubles, each crisis is one of high hilarity as seen through Hooton-Dennis hindsight. The beauty of the Southwest and the personality lar-Kesse of the kind of people who mostly inhabit it' win over not only Bill llooton's wife but any reader who icariously moves in with her and her transient employees and guests. the book, and Mr. Kantor was against the major change suggestion a merging of two characters into one.

Now, however, he seems to be coming around, since Mr. Wald has explained that compression is essential for good movie fare. Mr. Wald, incidentally, says he has made a study of what distinguishes a long-selling book and, accordingly, which long-selling hooks make for long selling movies. Novels with the "theme of survival" get Mr.

Wald's top vote while those with "a search for security" as their theme rate next highest. When he read "Andersonville," he felt assured of its success as cinema. He feels equally certain about the book he has bought for filming next year The Last Hurrah. And Mr. Hemingway's being in Peru undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that that country is the location of the movie shooting of his The Old Man and The Sea.

Whether movies are better than ever or not, is still debatable, but these forthcoming ones have fine literary antecedents. CHESTER BOWLES exposes tha real 253 pp. Doubledoy Co. 3 75. THIS IS a flesh-creeping tale, and almost equal in horror to Henry James' "The Turn of The Screw Certainly it is not a book to read in bed, while anticipating a normal night's rest, rhlegmatic indeed would be the reader who in the midst of it could turn out the beside lamp and sink into quiet sleep.

Events in the story appear to stem from a legend in the Lewes family, concerning a witch-ancestor who in former generations was executed and buried at the crossroads with a stake through her heart, according to an unpleasant custom of a century ago. Even the possession of such a forebear does not seem sufficient cause, however, to have promoted the eerie strangeness permeating Arnold Lewes' entire family. But perhaps their fanatical obsession to possess him body and soul can be taken as a part of their witch inheritance. The suspense element is very well done, and the reader is baffled as he is caught in an inexplicable and uncanny pattern which deals with the supernatural. It is difficult to decide whether this horrifying family, probing into spiritualism and the occult, is unbalanced because of this preoccupation, or whether their mania causes them to attempt to fathom the dangerous unknown.

The shockingly hideous climax reveals that Arnold Lewes, in spite of his good looks and charm, is a manic-depressive and paranoiac. This rather puts his ancestress, the witch, to rout. Perhaps she flew away on a broom stick at the moment he was confined to a padded cell, where, for a long time, he had certainly belonged. ISO i. ttl t.

I a w. K. itewarr ce. Louisville 3, Ky, I I but unrecognized political Please aend the followlrn beokas Numbtr I Name Addreae Issue of 1956 in American I City Politics in a Amt. inc.

c.o.o.n Revolutionary World From jacket of "The Singing Wiidernesj," reviewed below. Professional Guides Wilderness Travels A Review by Rruee McCreary THE SINGING WILDERNESS: By Sigurd F. Olson. 245 pp. Alfred A.

Knopf. 4. WITH AX ALMOST Thoreau-like quality, Mr. Olson has written a series of unconnected episodes in his travels in the remote United States-Canadian country above Lake Superior. Were it not for the beauty of his writing, the adventures themselves would be interesting; add page after page of indescribable word pictures and the result is pure poetic prose.

Many lovely black-and-white illustrations by Francis Lee Jaqucs make this volume a delight to own and read. The author is a professional wilderness guide. A trip under his leadership surely would he a memorable experience if his writing is any key to his personality. W. K.

STEWART CO. $2 25 et all bookstore HARVARD UNIVIRtITT Kill Incorporated 550 S. 4th St. JU 44148 MARGARET TRUMAN 5 SOMETIME AGO in these columns we observed that we knew more bright but busy people who were always about to finish War and Peace but had never quite made it. Now that the film version of the Tolstoy novel is furthcoming, the Paramount people who are releasing the picture are getting a bit worried because the book has such un-tenacious readers.

Or perhaps they're pleased hoping that now no one will try to finish the book but plan to see the film instead. At any rate, a questionnaire has been sent to book editors by someone connected with the film. It asks first, "Did you finish reading 'War and Peace'? then more timorously, "Did you start?" and then desperately, "Have you planned to read it sometime?" finally, almost hopelessly, "Is it a book in which you are nut interested?" Evidently expecting most people to answer affirmatively to the first or at least to the second question, the questionnaire then wonders if the reader remembers the novel as: "a) a complex story of Pierre, of Andrey, of Natasha their loves, hates, passions" or "b) a panoramic novel of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia" or "c) a philosophy from one of the world's great thinkers." Answers to this question will undoubtedly influence the tvpe of art used to advertise the filma majority of "c)" answers will result in billboards displaying upturned faces regarding the heavens, while more "a)" answers will feature embracing couples. The final question attempts to ferret, out just what, you, the polled, most wish to find in the movie of the most-begun of all books: are you looking for "stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer" or for "action and excitement, the thunder and Jury of battles" or for "a viewpoint that is something new for the screen." Tolstoy does seem to be the neglected man in this one. Doesn't anyone anticipate the movie for his efforts? Oh, well, those "action and excitement, thunder and fury of battles" writers can't expect too much.

Anyway, we reason it will take most book editors longer to decide on answers to such questions than it has taken to finish leading the book. NEWS OF AUTHORS comes from widely scattered points these days Ernest Hemingway is in Peru, Mac-Kinlay Kantor in Paris, James T. Far-rell in Australia. None of the three is vacationing, however. Mr.

Farrell is on a lecture tour under the auspices of the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom. After leaving the country "down tinder," he will continue westward around the worl making only one long stopover in Israel. MacKinlay Kantor, in Europe on a Government assignment, has been kept in communication with the United States. Transatlantic phones have been busy between the author and movie producer Wald in their preparations for the movie Andersonville. Certain departures are to be made from OWN STORY On Town THE BRITISH NEW TOWNS POLICY: By Lloyd Rodwin.

251 pp. Harvord University Pr.si. S7.50. LATEST in the famous Harvard City Hanning Studies, this detailed document by M.I.T. professor and land economist is by far the best American report on current British new-town planning.

Rodwin's book is a combina. tion of case histories, and brilliant analysis of the cross-currents, compro. miscs and results of planning laws. G.C. 5.

inivenir "Her memoirs plainly reveal that hers is an educated heart Margaret Truman emerges as an American woman of no mean stature and considerable strength." N. Y. Times Book Review Bi MARGARET TRUMAN with Margaret Cousins lllus. with photo. JUST HJtUSHEDI A BOOK A Key to Glamour A Reference to Ballet NONTRAVELIN'G authors are busy, too.

James Jones is in the last phase of his second novel, which promises to be even longer than F'rom Here to Eternity. Three-fourths of the manuscript is now ready and the rest is expected any day, says Scribner's. Frank Rooney, whose recently published The Heel of Spring is considered to be of the same distinguished caliber as his 1954-published The Courts of Memory, has just received a double portion of honors. Not only was he awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing in fiction, but at the Joint Annual Ceremonial of the National Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Letters a grant of $1,000 was bestowed on him in "recognition of his creative work in literature." John Van Druten has taken time out from playwrighting to author The Vicarious Years, which is on Scribner's summer list. Described as an "autobiographical novel," it explores the author's boyhood and adolescence.

And another notable playwright is showing evidence of his other talents. Tennessee Williams' first volume of verse, In The Winter of Cities, was published last week and includes all the poems written up to now which he wishes to preserve. There are light poems in this book, and others which are debonaire and sweet. There are some which are almost unbearable in their intensity and power. AH are personal and they share the imagination, the darting awareness, the incandescent vitality that have heightened poetic passages in Williams' plays.

New Directions, who published "In The Winter of Cities," will bring out another Tennesse Williams first, next month. His first original screen play, Uaby Doll, which will be released in September. The characters are based on some of those in two one-act plays of Mr. Williams' from his collection entitled 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. f.

I i Ik A Revine by William Ilah'nh THE NEW BORZOI BOOK OF BALLETS: By Roialyn Krolov.r. 323 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. S6.

THIS IS AN entirely new book designed to replace the original "Borzoi Book of Ballets" (1946) now going out of print. The new book features 57 ballets in the current repertoires of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and a few of the leading Sadler's Wells ballets. The ballets are thoroughly dealt with stories, history, music, choreography, casts, sets, costumes and performances. In a valuable appendix, the author also lists all of the ballets ever performed in the United States by major ballet companies, plus information such as date of premiere, first American performance, etc. The book is illustrated with a gallery of interesting ballet photographs.

"The New Borzoi Book of Ballets" is a key to a glamorous world and a good reference work at the same time. It should be welcomed by our ballet audience which has now grown from a small cult to a vast nationwide public. YOUR PRAYERS ARE ALWAYS ANSWERED by Alexander Lake Here is a rare collection of twenty-fivs true stories, each one showing in a positive manner how prayer has been answered. Each moving story will put a song in your heart and convince you of the value of prayer in your personal life. Written with simplicity, power, and under- standing, it will reveal the power of God both to thos who believe in prayer and those who have never cultivator the prayer habit.

Reading this book will be an event in the life of every Christian. Price $2.95 Mail Orders filled Promptly BAPTIST HOOK STORE 317-319 Guthrie St. Louisville 2, Ky. Phono WA 7453 I .1 -si I A scene from the New York City Ballet presentation of "Illuminations" an illustration from "The New Borzoi Book of Ballets," which is reviewed at right. heteWkiJleWerJsSeeVes.