Books: Short Notices: Jun. 9, 1967

WHEN SHE WAS GOOD by Philip Roth. 306 pages. Random House. $4.95.

Obtuse, self-pitying, domineering, obsessive, hypocritical, opinionated, exacting, intolerant, selfish, malevolent, deluded, manic—in fact, just about every pejorative word in the language could be applied to Lucy Nelson. She is a young woman who would try a reader's patience in a short story; in a lengthy novel she can scarcely be borne.

The real case against Lucy is not that she is "unsympathetic"—some of the greatest characters in fiction are—but that she is theatrically unsatisfying and an ear-jarring bore. Saddest of all, Philip Roth's second novel starts beautifully, with a fine evocation of the Wisconsin mood and climate and the skillful and sympathetic drawing of Willard Carroll, an assistant postmaster, one of the few "good" men in contemporary fiction. But then Lucy, Carroll's granddaughter, takes over in a truly venomous fashion, and the book strives embarrassingly to become a Midwestern Madame Bovary. It is bewildering that a writer as gifted as Roth could devote so much effort to so trivial a heroine; the high promise of his 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus is still unfulfilled.

FAREWELL TO TEXAS by William O. Douglas. 242 pages. McGraw-Hill. $6.95.

For the fourth time, the grizzled old Texan from the Big Thicket was hauled up before the court for making moonshine. Since the judge knew that the old man made whisky only for his own use, he spoke gently. "George, the commercial distillers put out a real good product these days, and they sell it at a reasonable price. I know you don't have much money, but it would be far better for you simply to buy a bottle every now and then than to keep on making this stuff and keep on getting caught."

"I dunno," said the moonshiner.

"Of course I'm right," the judge said. "I'll prove it. How much do you drink?"

"A half-gallon a day for me," said the old man, "and then there's the family."

Such folksy Texas tales are a delightful leavening in this book, squeezed in between recipes for red corncob jelly and descriptions of what it is like to shoot the narrow, roaring rapids on the Rio Grande. After 20 books (Beyond the High Himalayas, A Wilderness Bill of Rights), Author Douglas has proved that he is a more beguiling travel writer and a far more gifted naturalist than one expects from an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. This account of his meanderings through the wilderness areas of Texas has one major flaw: the Justice gives such a fascinating picture of the glories of the bayous and the wonders of the baygalls that one almost ignores the author's plea for a sound conservationist program.

THE CONVERTS by Rex Warner. 337 pages. Atlantic-Little Brown. $5.95.

When Augustine quit Carthage for Rome to pursue his career as a teacher of rhetoric, he took along his mistress Lucilla and their young son and left his pious mother at the church. Mother had been hoping for his conversion to Christianity. It was a sharp stroke in the struggle between sensual and spiritual forces within the young African intellectual. Still, the flesh had won only a battle—it lost the war.