Books: Angry Man's Romance

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For Oliver Wiswell he dictated 2,500,000 words. They were taken down by his secretary-niece, dark-eyed Marjorie Mosser. Niece Mosser looks like the portrait of Grandmother Tibbets that hangs in the Rocky Pasture living room. When she came to work for him, Roberts warned her, "Before I'm through with a book, you'll think I'm the worst stinker that ever lived. But you'll never be fired." She has lived through three books, Trending into Maine, March to Quebec and Wiswell, has also (at Gourmet Roberts' suggestion) written one of her own —a recipe book called Good Maine Food. Third member of the Roberts household is small, wellread, tranquil Mrs. Roberts, who used to do the secretarial work Niece Mosser does now.

When Roberts is working, he works all day, sometimes relaxes at a movie while Secretary Mosser types his notes. One movie at which he did not relax: M.G.M.'s Northwest Passage. Says Roberts. "They cut the guts out of it, they gummed up the characters and balled up the plot." He is determined not to sell Wiswell to the movies. "It will be a good insurance policy for Mrs. Roberts," says he, "and it will be just as good ten or 20 years from now."

Roberts expects to go on writing historical novels. "I like this stuff," he confesses. He likes the sameness of historical types over the ages, claims Caesar's and Washington's legionnaires were the same types, has discovered that soldiers of the American Revolution said "buddy" and "okay"and used modern obscenities.Critics call his work romance, but Roberts' real interest is to tell what he thinks really happened. Says Kenneth Roberts: "All novels are historical, unless you just want to write about yourself. "