July 1, 1965
The Player King
The Player King by Earl Rovit. Harcourt, Brace and World, $5.95. Mr. Rovit uses an epigraph from Saint-Sinion: “He told us the most troublesome thing was that Monsieur le Prince […]
July 1, 1965
On the Spoor of the Beatnik
Dark Passages by Barbara Charlesworth. The University of Wisconsin Press, $5.00. There is something both ludicrous and faintly dispiriting in the prospect of the doomed writers of the 1890s—Yeats’s “tragic […]
July 1, 1965
Children of Violence
Children of Violence by Doris Lessing. Simon and Schuster, $7.50. I have had eight weeks’ experience of matrimony. And do I regret the step I have taken? No, though I […]
July 1, 1965
Castle Keep
Castle Keep by William Eastlake. Simon and Schuster, $5.95. “If you can let me have ten of your best men, I can retake the whorehouse,” says Private First Class Alistair […]
July 1, 1965
The Problems of Fictional Theater
The Dickens Theatre: A Reassessment Of The Novels by Robert Garis. Oxford University Press, $5.60. What Mr. Garis has to say about Dickens in this remarkable book is comparatively easy […]
July 1, 1965
In the Soup
Tree and Leaf by J. R. R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin Company, $4.00. “What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we?” (The Return of the King). The Ring […]
July 1, 1965
The Passionate Pilgrim
Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music by Wilfrid Mellers. Alfred A. Knopf, $6.95. The object of Wilfrid Mellers’ transatlantic journey is […]
July 1, 1965
Critic of the Hour
Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey by Steven Marcus. Basic Books, $5.95. Dickens did not suffer critical fools gladly. He felt that all great writers were bitten and stung by the […]
July 1, 1965
The Ballad of the Flim-Flam
The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man by Guy Owen. The Macmillan Company, $4.95. This is a vulgar, sentimental, witless novel, an unblushing imitation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—but jazzed […]
July 1, 1965
The Motorcycle
The Motorcycle by André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Translated by Richard Howard. Grove Press, $3.95. In these days of often exacerbated eroticism in fiction, it may not seem a very promising […]
July 1, 1965
Out of the Oldest Continent
Poetry In Australia. Vol. I, From the Ballads to Brennan, chosen by T. Inglis Moore. $5.50. Vol. II, Modern Australian Verse, chosen by Douglas Stewart. $5.00. University of California Press. […]
July 1, 1965
A Tremendous Drama
The Letters Of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Volume I, 1820-1839. Edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey. Oxford University Press, $20.20. It should be stated at the outset that […]