IT'S A LONG WAY TO HEAVEN

by AbnerDean '31. Farrar & Rinehart, N.Y., 1945,141 pages, $3.50.

Those who knew Ab Epstein at Dartmouth will remember him as a serious but gay fellow whose talented hand produced with apparent ease the most devastating satire for Jacko. Since college, under the name of Abner Dean, this same talent has won the outer world and, today, stands brightly in the front rank of cartooning. It's a long way toHeaven is a delightful parade of pictorial fantasy, a nether-world carnival of bodies, all sorts of bodies, nobodies and busybodies. Fat or lean, round or square, these bodies, nude as a baby's brow, are in fearful frolic. They behave improbably in a landscape of odd rocks and tangled roots. They are fully as goofy as humans and almost as sane.

The book, therefore, is excellent satire aimed directly at you and me. It is intelligent and witty, imaginative and sly. It is very good Abner Dean.

Unfortunately, the fine satire is somewhat marred by the publisher's sophomoric blurb which tries hard to excite controversy and to present Mr. Dean as a nine-days-wonder. Nor is the introduction by Philip Wylie a happy one for it reads like a modernist sermon on sin and sex. It implies that Mr. Dean is the inventor of the psychological cartoon with no mention of Abner's good friends Steig, Thurber, Partch and Steinberg. It does not occur to Mr. Wylie that these drawings are spoofing morality and psychology as well as lampooning poor humans.

Mr. Maloney of The New York Times has the ideal phrase for It's a long way toHeaven. He calls it a "for-goodness-sake book."