Dingy Storyteller

(5 of 5)

The Author. Vigorous, radical Carey McWilliams is 37. A California attorney, he has charged headlong into the knottiest problems of California labor conditions, agriculture, land policy; enraged growers by plumping for collective ownership as the answer to California's farm problems (TIME, April 1, 1940). An organizer of The John Steinbeck Committee (bitter enemy of California's Associated Farmers), McWilliams was appointed (1939) California Commissioner of Immigration and Housing by newly elected Governor Culbert L. Olson. He held the post for four years, campaigned vigorously against Republican Nominee for Governor Earl Warren. When Warren, strongly supported by the Associated Farmers, took office as Governor last January, he called in the press, announced that his first official act would be the dismissal of Commissioner McWilliams. Result: McWilliams is now at work on his most ambitious project—a study of the sociology of religion in the U.S., comparing the growth, present status and possible futures of U.S. churches.

Book Notes

WINTER'S TALES—Isak Dinesen—Random House ($2.50). Eleven simple stories about weird people (Sample: "Of a girl, perverse and perhaps a little mad, who ran after the gypsies and found relief in witnessing a decapitation"), with settings in Scandinavia, Persia, Belgium, Paris, etc. Admirers of Author Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales (TIME, April 9, 1934) will snatch at this; others may find her highly feminine, stylized prose a little overrich. One of the Book-of-the-Month Club's dual selections for June.

THE LIGHTS AROUND THE SHORE—Jerome Weldman—Simon & Schuster ($2.50). Youthful, attractive Aunt Fini had immigrated to New York from Hungary, had worked industriously for six years, hoarding her money, confiding no secrets. When she went back to Europe in the summer of 1939 she was supposed to be going to see her old parents. But Peter, the 15-year-old American nephew who accompanied her, was bewildered by her brusque, preoccupied behavior, soon found there was a man in the story, and learned enough of life to leave adolescence behind him forever. Touching as a study of a growing youth, Lights is Author Weidman's first major break away from the tough, garment-district world of I Can Get It For You Wholesale, What's In It For Me? etc. It lacks the sure, knowledgeable control of those works.

INTRODUCTION To MODERN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE—W. Somerset Maugham—The New Home Library (69c). "A selection of the most readable writing of the last 50 years," Introduction covers a wide range, gives high value at an unusually low price. Along with noted poets (Eliot, Auden, Hardy, Yeats, etc.) are examples from the lesser known (Roy Campbell, James Agee, etc.). The prose writings are also various: Churchill on Dunkirk, stories by Henry James, Eudora Welty, James Thurber, sayings by Logan Pearsall Smith, essays by Aldous Huxley and E. M. Forster, letters by John Jay Chapman, etc. Author Maugham steps in from time to time with offhand comments.

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