Carnies, Heels and Indians

THE TELEPHONE BOOTH INDIAN--A. J. Liebling--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

A. J. Liebling is one of the more proficient of The New Yorker's stylists; this is a collection of ten of his pieces. To read them at one sitting is like using a scalp vibrator for two hours on end. Taken with rest periods between, they are funny, sharp, engaging slices of Manhattan life. The two funniest:

Masters of the Midway tells about Dufour & Rogers, the Belascos of outdoor entertainment. They rule "that curious world of 60,000 outdoor show people, the 'carnies,' who travel from town to town with carnivals." Ferocious Mr. Rogers and suave Mr. Dufour work their clients after the classical manner of detective teams, one rubber-hosing, the other soft-soaping. One of the more lucrative of their develop ments is the Aboriginal Village, on which the "nut" (overhead) is small "once the concessionaire has learned the fact, unreported by anthropologists, that all primitive peoples exist by preference on a diet of hamburger steak." Still more reliable are freaks, the more nauseating the better. At Flushing their most stunning attractions were: a man who held up his socks with thumbtacks, another who could pop out his eyes like marbles, "either singly or in unison," another who lifted weights on hooks passed through his eyelids.

Once they planned "a reverent, three-dimensional presentation of Da Vinci's Last Supper, with life-sized models of the apostles, trick lighting effects and a musical background of Gregorian chants supplied by a phonograph with an electrical record-changing device," but dropped it when they failed to find a suitable Catholic organization to sponsor it. "Rogers says, without any disrespect: 'The nuns would not play ball with us.'"

The Jollity Building is a semi-fictional corner of Times Square inhabited by the scum of Broadway. In the pool hall and in Jollity Danceland, which largely support the building, Mr. Liebling is less interested than in the "Indians," the "heels" and the "tenants," who use it for their "promotions." To promote means to cheat anyone "of a dollar, or any fraction or multiple thereof." and the essence of praise in the Jollity Building is, "he has promoted some very smart people." Everyone there is busy promoting everyone else.

The Indians "hang" (loiter) in the phone booths in the lobby. Those who hit luck without losing their gains too fast to the horses or to other promoters become "heels," paying perhaps $10 a month for a cubicle on the third floor. The renting agent, Morty Ormont (French for Goldberg), knows a heel is out of business when his hat is gone. The luckiest of the heels move upstairs and become "tenants"; but sooner or later, tenants turn up in the lobby booths as Indians again. Some leading Jollity Building denizens:

P:Acid Test Ike, who manages punch-drunk fighters.

P:Maida Van Schuyler, who books shows for stag banquets, but "there isn't a dime left in this lousy business. . . . The moving pictures have spoiled it." So she is thinking of becoming a medium.

P:Lotsandlots, who promotes mythical real estate in the Jersey meadows.

P:Judge Horumph, who promotes contributions for such "little charitable organizations" as "Free Malted Milk for Unmarried Mothers."

P:Maxwell C. Bimberg, one of the more visionary, who was known as the Count de Pennies. Once he even tried to promote a railroad. Normally he dealt with varying success in racing cockroaches, Lithaqua Mineral Water (from a polluted spring on a Lithuanian's Connecticut farm), Eskimos, acquitted murderesses.

P:Paddy the Booster, who peddles ties he has stolen from haberdashers.

P: Mac the Phony Booster, who peddles sleazier ties which he claims to have stolen but which he really bought very cheap. Paddy despises Mac as a racketeer but, as the dipsomaniac bouncer at Jollity Danceland tells him, soothingly, "It takes all kinds of people to make up a great city."

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