Books: Short Notices: May 6, 1966

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HOME: SOCIAL ESSAYS by LeRoi Jones. 252 pages. Morrow. $4.

LeRoi Jones, 31, is no relation to the Emperor Jones. But he would like to be. He noisily nurses plans for a fascist Black Nation in Harlem; he howls destruction on all his foes, chief among whom are the Rev. Martin Luther King, the American Negro middle class, and absolutely all white men everywhere. In his 1964 play, The Toilet, Jones gave painful promise of developing gifts as a writer. In this disjointed collection of essays, the promise is flatly withdrawn. Jones clings raptly to his privileged role as victim, and has settled for a career as blackwash expert. He modestly admits to black sexual superiority: "Most American white men are trained to be fags." Insult, in fact, is his single weapon: "The American policeman is the foulest social category in the world today." "The white man, at this point in history, is the major obstruction on the path of man's progress." His solutions are disarmingly simplistic: "When those four children were killed in the Birmingham bombing [of Sept. 15, 1963], the U.S. Steel plant in that city should have been shut down by Negroes. A general strike should have been called. That city should have died, should have been killed by Negroes."

"There is only one people on the planet who can slay the white man. The people who know him best. His ex-slaves." LeRoi Jones could be accused of inciting to violence—if anyone, white or black, were still listening.

DEATH IN MIDSUMMER AND OTHER STORIES by Yukio Mishima. 181 pages. New Directions. $5.50. (Paperback $2.25.)

Bestselling Author Yukio Mishima can write no wrong—at least in his native Japan. There he has briskly blended sensation and sensibility in 16 novels, 30 plays, and 80 short stories. Nine of these have now been issued in fluid, faultless English translation. In Onnagata, a dedicated Kabuki actor who plays only feminine roles lives his onstage art offstage as well, falls in love with a nasty new-wave director. In Patriotism, a dis graced lieutenant and his wife rapturously relax in a last voluptuous night together—and discover that after such pleasures, hara-kiri hurts even harder. In the title tale, a young mother whose little son and daughter have recently drowned reluctantly realizes that her heart is not broken, impatiently longs for her own death as the only remaining event of possibly equal interest. Deft in execution, ironic in tone, the stories serviceably sustain Author Mishima's reputation as a sure and showy craftsman.