Books: Nation Into Exile

ROAD OF AGES—Robert Nathan—Knopf ($2.50).

Time was when Robert Nathan toyed gently and amiably with his congenital melancholia. Always a writer who preferred fantasy to strict realism, he once put his deepest convictions into the mouths of dancing dogs, unwed mice and such philosophical creatures as Isaiah, the stoic horse of The Woodcutter's House. When he was not bringing wisdom out of the mouths of baby tumblebugs and suckling pigs, he was engaged in mild satires on religion (The Bishop's Wife, There Is Another Heaven). But Depression, if it did not quite succeed in...