Books: Egomaniacs

FORGIVE US OUR VIRTUES — Vardis Fisher—Caxton ($2.50).

Vardis Fisher's candid, uneven, sometimes powerful tetralogy (In Tragic Life, Passions Spin the Plot, We Are Betrayed, No Villain Need Be) reminded critics of Rousseau, Zola, Dostoyevsky, Dreiser, D. H. Lawrence (but not, oddly enough, of Thomas Wolfe). This four-decker autobiographical chronicle told the tormented story of Vardis Fisher's fight to free himself from acute egomania and puritan repressions.

Forgive Us Our Virtues, a long novel of 150,000 words, follows the same theme, but on a larger scale, and with greater clinical candor. And...