Transylvanus

WINNING A WIFE--Peter Neagoe-- Coward-McCann ($2.50).

Three years ago a book of short stories by Peter Neagoe, called Storm, was banned by the U. S. Customs on the ground of obscenity. Last year his first novel, Easter Sun, got a good hand from critics. By last week Author Neagoe was better known in the U. S. than most of his Rumanian compatriots. Earthy but not obscure, Peter Neagoe writes of barnyard happenings but not with the leer of the city-dweller. A Transylvanian Sylvanus, he tells with country gusto the chronicles of his sly, lustful, saintly and simple fellow-peasants.

None of these 20 stories was translated. Author Neagoe writes in English, which he studied to good purpose in. his years in the U. S. Author Neagoe's sturdy language fits his Rumanian senses well but seems awkwardly foreign when he writes of the U. S. One story ("Gavrila's Confession") is as good as anything in the Decameron, has the same flavor of good-natured tolerance: a peasant wife, caught misbehaving by her husband, persuades him he is possessed by an evil imagination, makes him go to the priest to confess the whole thing.

Author Neagoe does not display his simple peasants as curiosities; he believes in them, backs their earthiness to outlast such monuments as Manhattan: "In your subways, where now rumble steel cars jammed with people, will lie in lazy putrefaction rolling water, green and slimy. But somewhere dust-covered volumes will hold the glory of the marvel city, one and all, while the scorpions here shall crawl from their hiding, presaging rain to a simple folk who have no barometers. For simple folk never perish. Never ! They hide away from the crushing march of your progress. They are the wheat kernels of humanity, and the salt of the earth."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.