Books: Poo/j-man

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Pooh-mar AUTOBIOGRAPHY — A. A. Milne — Dutton ($3).

Proverbially, every humorist is at heart a melancholy satirist. Not so Alan Alexander Milne. "It is assumed too readily," he protests, "that a writer who makes his readers laugh would really prefer to make them cry. . . ." Much of the charm of Milne's Autobiography comes from his honest admission that entertainment was his aim.

Author Milne further objects to the lopsided fate that lets his plays (Mr. Pim Passes By, etc.), novels and essays (which he prefers) be forgotten and has made children's classics of When We Were Very Young and Winnie-the-Pooh. Sick & tired of his short-pants reputation, he sticks out his tongue at the tots and says rudely: "I am not inordinately fond of or interested in children; their appeal to me is a physical appeal such as the young of other animals make."

Nevertheless his autobiography shows a marked kinship between Author Milne and Christopher Robin, his famed creature. Youngest and cutest of the three sons of John Vine Milne, owner and Headmaster of Henley House School, little Alan, thumb in mouth, could read at two, entered Westminster School at eleven, ceased being a prodigy the next year when he caught up to his older brother Ken.

Already singled out by Punch while he was editing the Cambridge Granta, young Milne had long since displayed his talents in such schoolboy light verse as:

Perhaps you would fancy an 'Ode to an Eider-duck'

Telling his praises with never a pause:

How he was born a duck, lived—yes, and died a duck,

Hampered by Nature's inscrutable laws.

It is no accident that Author Milne writes more charmingly about sliding down the bannister, his aquarium, bicycle tours, school days at Henley House than about his later career as assistant editor of Punch (1906-14), officer in World War I, successful playwright and novelist. "When I read the biography of a well-known man," he confesses, "I find that it is the first half of it which holds my attention. I watch with fascinated surprise the baby, finger in mouth, grow into the politician, tongue in cheek; but I find nothing either fascinating or surprising in the discovery that the cynicism of the politician has matured into the pomposity of the Cabinet Minister. It was inevitable."