Television: Aug. 29, 1969

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EASY RIDER. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda cruise around the country on their choppers looking for the meaning of it all. If the self-pity becomes rather too heavy at times, Hopper (who also directed) has captured some telling bits of Americana on film and extracted a performance from Jack Nicholson that is a model of intuition and sensitivity.

TRUE GRIT. John Wayne, at 62, has the time of his long screen life in this cornball western comedy about a stubborn old marshal (Wayne) who joins forces with a headstrong teen-age girl (Kim Darby) to bring some murderers to justice. The Duke's performance proves that his nickname has never been more apt.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY. A slick package about being lonely and loveless in New York is directed by John Schlesinger in fashion-magazine style, but the acting of Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight gives the film a sense of poignancy and reality.

MARRY ME, MARRY ME. Claude Berri (The Two of Us) wrote and directed this wistful comedy about the trials of courtship in a French Jewish family.

LAUGHTER IN THE DARK. Nicol Williamson plays a heartsick member of the English aristocracy yearning for the love of a movie usherette (Anna Karina) in this skillful adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel.

THE DEVIL BY THE TAIL. Another slight and savage comedy by Philippe de Broca, Devil follows a Gallic seducer (Yves Montand) on his rounds. Montand could well become the new Bogart if he weren't already so good as the old Montand.

BOOKS

Best Reading

COLLECTED ESSAYS, by Graham Greene. In retrospective notes and criticism, the prolific novelist drives home the same obsessive point: "Human nature is not black and white but black and grey."

PAIRING OFF, by Julian Moynahan. The book masquerades as a novel but is more like having a nonstop non sequitur Irish storyteller around—which may on occasion be more welcome than well-made fiction.

SIAM MIAMI, by Morris Renek. The trials of a pretty pop singer who tries to sell herself and save herself at the same time. Astoundingly, she manages both.

THE YEAR OF THE WHALE, by Victor B. Scheffer. The most awesome of mammals has been left alone by literary men almost since Moby Dick. Now Dr. Scheffer, a scientist working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, writes of the whale's life cycle with a mixture of fact and feeling that invokes Melville's memory.

ALLEN GINSBERG IN AMERICA, by Jane Kramer. Earnest, articulate and somehow despairingly sanguine, Allen Ginsberg has evolved from a minor poet to a major cult figure—a kind of one-man air ferry between bohemian and Brahmin traditions. Wisely, perhaps, Author Kramer concentrates on the life rather than the works.

MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST, by Peter Kropotkin. The absorbing autobiography of a 19th century Russian prince turned anarchist who paid for his ideals in stretches of penury and imprisonment.

THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 1968, by Theodore H. White. White is just as diligent as he was when recounting the victories of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. But this time his protagonist lacks the flamboyance to fire up White's romantic mind, and as a result a slight pall hangs over much of the book.