Hanover Browsing

MR. MOTO is back, not with a bang, and if not with a whimper, at least without his old cockiness and verve. In StopoverTokyo (Little, Brown) Mr. Marquand might even have dispensed with Mr. Moto altogether, unless he couldn't bear to think of Tokyo without Mr. Moto. I am not sure I can either.

Here is a story of secret service derring-do over Communist spies who are trying to split Japan and the United States for their own nefarious purposes. The story has pace, is authentic in its backgrounds, and the ending will never do if the Hollywood boys ever take it over. Maybe the author has another version for the flicks.

At any rate, this will strain nobody's gray matter and will help keep the television from the door. Recommended especially for spy fiction addicts. Eric Ambler's TheNight Comers will also appeal to these fans.

I am indebted to Philip Booth '47, instructor in English at Wellesley and poet of real parts, for calling my attention to the University of Chicago Press translations from the Greek. One volume, Three GreekTragedies containing "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles, "Hippolytus" by Euripides and "Prometheus Bound" by Aeschylus, may be had for only $2.50. Richmond Lattimore '36 has several volumes to his credit including Greek Lyrics, 1955, The Odes ofPindar, 1947, and the Oresteia by Aeschylus, 1954, and he is represented in other volumes also issued by the Press. Chicago offers other volumes containing plays by Euripides and Sophocles, as well as a new translation of Virgil's Georgics by Professor Bovie of Barnard College. Mr. Booth believes that these books represent the best translations available of the Greek classics.

For the first time the short stories of Mark Twain are to be had in a single volume. The collection called The Complete ShortStories of Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider, includes, of course, the jumping frog story, as well as "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," and "The Mysterious Stranger," together with the yarns of pure fiction inserted by Mark Twain in his Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, and Following the Equator. Sixty stories for less than four dollars is something of a bargain.

I have just finished Low's Autobiography, published by Michael Joseph in London. The most influential cartoonist of our day has had various rough times, all of which he tells about with good humor though not without the steel shining through. The book is illustrated with some of Low's best and most famous cartoons and also with a few sketches of the great and near great. I have a collection of Low's books and I find myself looking at them over and over again. This autobiography tells the manner of man it was who drew blood so often that he was banned in several countries but now, happily, finds release in The Manchester Guardian and through a world syndicate.

I know that many of my readers are interested in modern poetry and for these Doubleday has issued in the Anchor Books R. P. Blackmur's Form & Value in ModernPoetry, containing essays on the poetry of Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Herbert Read, E. E. Cummings, D. H. Lawrence, and others.

Brendan Gill in his novel The Day theMoney Stopped has written an excellent one-act play for stage or television. The book is just about all dialogue, and all it needs is a director and a few stage directions. I couldn't argue that there is anything profound in this novelette, but it is readable, slick, and unpretentious. Boy gets the girl with or without money. High principles, really, but one wouldn't want to bet on the whole race. The hero is sure to end up in a gray flannel suit.

Alistair Maclean, a Scottish schoolmaster until he hit the jackpot with H.M.S. Ulysses, a novel to end all novels about convoys, has now turned to write a plausible story of a daring commando raid in which five men were chosen to silence the guns of Navarone. The scene is the Eastern Mediterranean; the villains the Germans; the heroes, the leader Captain Keith Mallory (another Captain Stanhope, remember, Jim?), Andrea, the indestructible Greek, a demolition expert from the United States Army, and two others. The story is expertly told, is exciting, and should prove to be another best seller. I hope so. The title: The Guns of Navarone (Doubleday).