Television, Cinema, Books: Jun. 27, 1969

(3 of 4)

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS. When he wrote Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth had something more in mind than a story of young love in Jewish suburbia. That, however, is the sum total of this film adaptation, directed by Larry Peerce and nicely acted by Richard Benjamin and a newcomer named Ali MacGraw.

THE FIXER. A persecuted Jewish handyman in turn-of-the-century Russia battles his fate with an intensity that makes this John Frankenheimer film a harrowing and moving experience. Alan Bates (in the title role), Dirk Bogarde and Ian Holm perform their difficult assignments with fierce passion.

THE ROUND UP and THE RED AND THE WHITE are two Hungarian movies that share a common loathing for war and a barely controlled hatred for its perpetrators. Miklos Jancso has created two bitter and handsome films.

BOOKS

Best Reading

WHAT I'M GOING TO DO, I THINK, by L. Woiwode. A young couple, expecting a baby, embarks on a seemingly idyllic honeymoon in the Michigan woods and discovers terrors in paradise. A remarkable first novel.

THE ECONOMY OF CITIES, by Jane Jacobs.

Operating as curmudgeon and gadfly, but with a love of cities that overshadows mere statistics, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities explores the financial aspects of growth and decay in urban centers.

THE RUINED MAP, by Kobo Abé. In this psychological whodunit by one of Japan's finest novelists (The Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another), a detective turns a search for a missing husband into a metaphysical quest for his own identity.

ADA, by Vladimir Nabokov. A long, lyric fairy tale about time, memory and the 83-year-long love affair of a half-sister and a halfbrother, by the finest living writer of English fiction.

THE LONDON NOVELS OF COLIN MaclNNES (CITY OF SPADES, ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, MR. LOVE AND JUSTICE). Icy observations and poetic perceptions of the back alleys and subcultures in that pungent city on the Thames.

PICTURES OF FIDELMAN, by Bernard Malamud. Yet another schlemiel, but this one is canonized by Malamud's compassionate talent.

THE GUNFIGHTER, by Joseph G. Rosa. A balanced wide-screen view of the often unbalanced men who infested the Wild West.

BULLET PARK, by John Cheever. In his usual setting of uncomfortably comfortable suburbia, Cheever stages the struggle of two men—one mild and monogamous, the other tormented and libertine—over the fate of a boy.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Through flashbacks to the catastrophic Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, this agonizing, funny and rueful fable has much to say about human cruelty and indifference.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Love Machine, Susann (2 last week)

2. Portnoy's Complaint, Roth (1)

3. The Godfather, Puzo (3)

4. Ada, Nabokov (4)

5. Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut (9)

6. The Salzburg Connection, Maclnnes (5)

7. Bullet Park, Cheever (7)

8. Except for Me and Thee, West (6)

9. Airport, Hailey (8)

10. The Vines of Yarrabee, Eden

NONFICTION

1. Ernest Hemingway, Baker (1)

2. Jennie, Martin (4)

3. The Peter Principle, Peter and Hull (3)

4. Between Parent and Teenager, Ginott (2)

5. Miss Craig's 21-Day Shape-Up Program for Men and Women, Craig (6)