The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 132

(EDO EX Tales of Science In a New Key Gold on Love, TV 1 ADONIS, ATTIS, OSIRIS. By Sir J. G. Fraser. University Books; 638 pages; 110.

Reviewed by Daniel J. Langton WHILE LIVING in San Francisco, I used to go to Paul Elder's classics section to visit "The Golden Bough." There it sat, all 13 magnificent volumes, handily placed by The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, and I read it by the yard. It was too, expensive to buy, but it was so mudh Mine I would have raised a fuss if they had sold it Now University Books, the proud publishers of "La-bas" and Waite's "Ka-ballah," has brought out Part IV, complete with beautiful plates that the original lacked. It is to the high literature (Daniel J. Langton, presently residing in Nice, France, has been published in The Nation, Poetry and Paris Review.) of our century what Sig-mund Freud is to the great common mind.

Only Gibbon's thick tapestry and woven beauty can touch Fraser's, and Fraser's subject and theme are more interesting, not just in degree, but in kind. Fraser's reputation has plummeted since the social scientists, whatever they are, decided "The Golden Bough" isn't science, whatever that is. Well, "King Lear" is poor history. Read this book on the cyclical death and regeneration of God, and find for yourself why it has deeply affected the tone of this century's literature. MMmwiMM-h i i niirtiwiWfnifitiiW'iniiiifr Poems for Pennies And Pilgrim's Way By Don Wegars TTERBERT GOLD, one of San Francisco's better writers, lives above the Broadway Tunnel In a bare stucco and wood apartment with an unobstructed view of the city and Bay Bridge.

At 38, he's still what the critics call a young writer, and, like many young -writers, he writes a great deal about love. Gold says he's interested in love "because it's one of the few areas of life in which Americans can make individual decisions these days. They can decide to get married, get a divorce, have an affair but there's not much they can do about the hydrogen bomb, or disarmament. And most people can't even make the decision on where they live and what they do for a living. The freedom to make decisions is vanishing, and love can't stand up under the weight it's being asked to take.

For instance, a man who finds the bomb frustrating takes it out by fighting with his wife." Gold is getting wide attention. Hollywood is trying to put his novel. "The Man Who Was Not With It," on the screen, possibly with John Kerr as Bud. A play, "Love and Like" (from the title of his short story collection), is under option in New York, and he hopes to see it on the stage this year. He has just finished a new and is working on a second play, "The Make-Out People." "Literature," he says, "is becoming a consumer product.

You can see this on the campus, where young girls no longer chase the football stars they chase the editor of the literary magazine. And people who at one time would have had the Saturday Evening Post on their coffee tables now subscribe to The Hudson Review. All this proves, I think, is that a lot of people have gone to college recently." Gold hopes that his next book, "The Age of Happy Problems," will be well received. "It's a collection of essays," he says, "and I want to show that the novelist and short story writer can talk about the world outside of fiction. It's due in March.

The title came in a funny way. I was trying TV writing for The Seven Lively Arts' a while back, and the network people kept saying to me, 'No, Mr. Gold, I don't think you understand what we want We want happy stories about happy people with happy problems. So there's the title. If these people were to do Oedipus, they wouldn't have him blind.

He'd just have a minor eye infection, and they'd cure it with boric acid." GOLDEN MOUNTAIN Press, a subsidiary of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights, is out with its winter catalogue The latest publications are "but never mind poems etc 1946-50," by tram combs (50 cents), "Ballads of Blood," by Richard McBrlde (50 cents) and "Berlin," by Ferlinghetti (only 15 cents). They are Heroes, Hooligans And Hallucinations HERBERT GOLD People with hoppy problems attractively put together, contain what District Attorneys like to call "provocative matter," and are described by the publishers as "works for fun and experiment available only in limited quantities at certain unspecified times. Order at your own risk." BOOKENDS: Eleanor Prosser, an associate professor of English at San Jose State College, has had "Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays" published recently by the Stanford University Press. The book is described as a re-evaluation of the medieval drama, which evidently was a mystery even then. "Sun," the monthly 35 cent poetry journal edited by Tracy Thompson (1060 Bush St.) is in its third issue, featuring (among others) local poets Ron Wbyte, Jack Anderson and Allie Hilder.

"When Protestants Worship," by George Hedley (professor and chaplain at Mills College in Oakland), is a new issue in the Abingdon Press' "Faith for. Life" series. It covers the background of the Protestant movement and "shows the faith's indebtedness to the Jews and early Christians." The Ford Foundation has published a free booklet (obtainable from the Foundation) dealing with its work in India. It. has 52 pages of text and photographs called "Roots of Change." Salinger's Franny, in the story named after her, mentions that she's been reading "The Way of a PUgrim." Harper, on the alert, saw enough interest in Salinger and his characters to reissue the story of an unknown, 19th century Russian pilgrim, and the Episcopal Book Club has it for a winter offering.

William Brandon of Monterey is the author of "The American Heritage Book of Indians" which the editors of American Heritage issued recently. It surveys the Indians of this hemisphere in 140,000 "words and many illustrations. Reviewed by James Sandoe THE GRAVE OF HEROES. By James Cross. Gold Medal; 214 pages; 50 cents.

ALL EARTH, said Pericles, is the grave of heroes. Author Cross, in his most ambitious and skillful book to date, gives us some account of the later life and death of the legendary Galan, fugitive from Franco's Spain and later fugitive from a corrupt little Caribbean republic. Concern for Galan involves an American correspondent in Paris in a peppering of peril, while a good many others, innocently or corruptly involved, die bloodily. The book keeps us well pinned to lethal treachery. THE GOLDEN HOOLIGAN.

By Thomas B. Dewey. Dell Original; 170 pages; 35 cents. PETE SCHOFIELD, a Los Angeles private eye, is equipped with a handsome (James Sando it the regular mystery reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune.) if understandably jealous wife, and has a case which involves the border, dope-running and a succession of suspects who seem to be pointing weapons at Pete. The effect is long on action but has few surprises.

I WAS MURDERED. By G. M. Wilson. Walker 192 pages; $2.35.

MISS WILSON'S book is essentially a detective story but the author has felt free to invoke extra-sensory perception. The correct Miss Purdy, a crime writer, takes a remote cottage and finds herself intrigued with the cottage and with its possessing spirit She employs her brisk wits to discover why she is beset by supernatural pressures. The answer is plausible enough (with a neat pock of surprise). A very prettily wound charm. 3 Big Stores With EVERYTHING IN EOOXS! aiBOOKS Inc.w 154 twy, t.

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