BACK WHERE I CAME FROM

By A.J. Liebling '24, pp. 303. SheridanHouse. $2.50.

Make no mistake about it, Back WhereI Came From is a grand book, crammed with life and color, running over the top and spilling out at the sides. It was high time that the tide of regional books, which in recent years has washed us up altogether too many islands off the Maine coast, rolled us in something about the sweetest region of them all—New York City. Mr. Liebling has done exactly that.

"People I know in New York," he says, "are incessantly on the point of going back where they came from to write a book, or of staying on and writing a book about back where they came from It is all pretty hard on me because I have no place to go back to. I was born in an apartment house at Ninety-third Street and Lexington Avenue, about three miles from where I now live."

Mr. Liebling can't expect us to feel grieved over that. It is our good luck that he was born exactly where he was and that he hasn't moved far since. Out of his own backyard, so to speak, and the several adjacent yards that go to make up New York, he has put together one of the most entertaining books that your reviewer has come across in years. It is a reporter's book; one might almost call it an interviewer's book. With an expert and roving eye for character and an easy ear for idiom, Mr. Liebling proceeds to interview various and assorted aspects of Manhattan, persons and places, off the beaten track. Some of his pictures are detailed, others are instant flashes; always they are alive, sometimes hilariously so. The total result is something to get enthusiastic about.

Here is Manuel Bierman, winner of the city wide pinochle tournament, who describes himself in the classic phrase "Bierman sits cool-blooded." Here is Hymie Katz, the night club opener. Here is the I. 8c Y. cigar store at Forty-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue, with its advertising signs brushed ever so lightly by the tip of the Muse's wing: "My name is Izzy, I'm always busy, Making I. & Y. cigars." Here is Clara Bow, back from Europe, delivering herself of an immortal report on her travels: "The French and Germans are practically civilized so it is not much fun traveling there." Here are sporting clubs and "earnest prizefighters who take their runs around the reservoir"; Morris Bimstein, professional second, who has served in 15,000 battles since 1917; great prizering figures of other days; and pieces of esoterica like The Clutch, "the most amusing fellow around Stillman's, in the opinion of the habitues He grabs strangers' hands and crushes them until the strangers fall to their knees and scream."

Here are old sea-dogs of the tugboats and the Hudson River runs—Tom Wilson, for instance, senior tugboat master of the harbor. " 'I am 74 years old,' he roars, 'and I can jump out of that window and jump right back again When they put me together they put me together right. .... Every hair drove in with a nail.' "

A chapter called "People in Trouble" strikes a deeper note, in part a more somber note, although this chapter is not lacking in rich figures like M. Maurice who "used to dream the results of prizefights and elections in advance, and mail his predictions to newspapers." "'I am 127 per cent correct,' he announced. 'That is because oftentimes, on one dream I make three prophecies.' "

There is a magnificent section on "Regional Cooking" which contains my favorite bit in the whole book, the account of the decrepit beach restaurant where customers were unwanted. "Three or four waiters, old acrid fellows, would be standing in the farthest corner of the vast room, talking and laughing bitterly, and looking over at the people at the table." It was one of these waiters who when reproached for not having reported his customer's order to the kitchen at all, replied "Tell them it's a two-mile walk to the kitchen and back."

And that's not the half of it. Mr. Liebling, I am very much afraid, has written a book that is going to draw me to New York as no World's Fair is likely to do. But read it and find out for yourself. Only you can't have my copy. I'm not lending it. I'm afraid I won't get it back.