Spring Books

THEY WENT ON TOGETHER--Robert Nathan--Knopf ($2). Through an internationalized and thereby rather vague countryside, a widow, her son, her daughter and an orphan girl flee before an invading army. Robert Nathan's sour-sweet poetic tone, his exquisite sense of timing. are as usual; as usual, too, there is the highly specialized sentimentality which makes some of Nathan's readers dubious, others devoted.

COUNTRY NOTES IN WARTIME--V. Sackvllle-West -- Doubleday, Doran . ($ I). The title & author fully predict the content: meditations, deliberately minor and pacific, tenderly written. For those who want loud talk for loud times, she explains: "My only excuse can be that the determination to preserve such beauty as remains to us is also a form of courage."

DO THESE BONES LIVE--Edward Dahlberg--Harcourt, Brace ($3). A violent blowtorch of poetic anarchy, turned on U.S. literature and such related subjects as the State, materialism, sex, war, tradition, human docility. At its worst it verges on literary hysteria; at its best it has rare eloquence, insight and daring. The book will either bore or infuriate any average law-abider.

WHERE ANGELS DARED TO TREAD --V. F. Calverton--Bobbs-Merrill ($3). Essays on 20-odd (of some 200) North American tries at Utopia which the late V. F. Calverton regarded as most significant. His report is uneven, and his data sketchy but fascinating. His evidence shows that: 1) Many Utopias succeeded until they knuckled their ideals under. 2) The most successful were religious, not scientific, communisms. 3) The destiny of most was determined by the hypnotic influence of an inspired--or maniacal--leader, and changed with his death. 4) Not one dared to meet sexual problems pointblank; even bold Oneida's "complex marriage" outlawed pleasure. 5) With few, ephemeral exceptions, Utopians feared individualists as they feared sex.

EPISODE ON WEST 8TH STREET--Jule Brousseau--Smith & Durrell ($2.50). A murky, painstaking story of a few New Yorkers: a distraught sweatshop Jew who kills his boss, an unemployed architect and his wife, a suicidal Polish girl from the Pennsylvania coal patches. Rather Greenwich-Villagesque, but definitely talented.

THE HABIT OF EMPIRE--Paul Morgan--Harper ($2). An intense mural of hardship, Indian-fighting and Catholic-imperial psychology in colonial New Mexico before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. A little stiff, but exciting and superbly written, its spare, leisured 114 pages should embarrass most space-wasting historical novelists.

THOSE TORN FROM EARTH--Frederick Hollander--Liveright ($2.50). An exceedingly likable story about some comparatively lucky German emigres, artists and entertainers in Paris, London, Tel-Aviv, Hollywood. Author Hollander does the unheard-of thing in a refugee story of making much of his action cheerful, even funny, and gets away with it.

MISS GRANBY'S SECRET OR THE BASTARD OF PINSK--Eleanor Farjeon--Simon & Schuster ($2.50). Period improvisations about An Old Lady's Past: notably her youthful diary and her wild, Daisy-Ashfordish first novel, which is printed entire. Bit by bit the whole thing is deft, neatly flavored, entertaining. In bulk it is more of one good thing than the average digestion can take.

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