WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART.

Peter Viertel '41. Garden City: Doubleday,1953. 344 PP. $3.95.

The dust jacket tells the story.

"Peter Verrill, a screen writer who wanted to be a novelist, was summoned to London by Director John Wilson to doctor the final version of The Trader," reads the cover description of Peter Viertel's third and most recent novel, White Hunter, Black Heart.

And on the back of the dust jacket one reads this bit of biographical information about the author: "Peter Viertel, a screen writer who has become a successful novelist, was chosen by Director John Huston to doctor the final version of The African Queen."

The plot deals primarily with the relationship between the two men - Peter Verrill (or Viertel?), a sensitive, imaginative and highly unrealistic writer, and Director John Wilson (or Huston?), a highly complex and gifted individual with a talent for saying and doing the wrong things at the right moment. The conflict between the two men deepens as Director John Wilson becomes obsessed with the big-game hunting fever which seizes him as the company moves into the African shooting locations for the film.

The novel is both interesting and readable. Here and there are occasional flashes of perception and wisdom presented in a prose style that marks Mr. Viertel as an author of promise. Other passages and incidents bear the unmistakable slickness of Hollywood scripts.

One has a feeling that perhaps Mr. Viertel is dealing with situations and characters which are too recent, and that in attempting to "doctor" them he has spoiled what otherwise might have been a novel of some stature and meaning. Nonetheless, White Hunter, BlackHeart presents an entertaining and I imagine fairly accurate idea of the difficulties faced by an American film company attempting to make a picture under foreign conditions.