Book Notes

MARK TWAIN: MAN AND LEGEND--DeLancey Ferguson--Bobbs-Merrill($3). This biography aims "to trace in detail Mark Twain's career as a writing man, passing over lightly or ignoring, his multifarious nonliterary doings. " DeLancey Ferguson (professor of English at Western Reserve University) does an orderly tour of Mark Twain's professional career through his last lonely years, solaced by frenzied billiard games, Baconian theories, a glorified piano player, the dictation of his Autobiography. " Every character he ever wrote about, including Joan of Arc," says Ferguson, "was either drawn from the intensive experience of his first thirty years or conceived in its spirit." Ferguson is an apostle of solid sense, has no time for the "dire Freudian symbolism."

JOURNEY AMONG WARRIORS -- Eve Curie -- Doubleday, Doran ($3.50). Amonth before the U.S. went to war, Eve Curie took off for 40,000 miles of United Nations fronts, key cities, outposts. She talked to R.A.F. pilots, battle-bitten Free Frenchmen, Italian and German prisoners, Russian women, army doctors, machinists, a ballerina, Mohandas Gandhi, General Sir Archibald Wawell, Sir Stafford Cripps and Jawaharlal Nehru ( who described his career as "the popular and widely practiced profession of gaol-going"). Asked Eve Curie:" How do you react to the term Dominion Status? "Answered Nehru: " It makes me slightly seasick."

Mlle Curie keeps her account absorbing for nearly 500 pages. Her quick, supple mind makes her a detailed, sensitive, unassuming and impressive reporter on persons and places both big and small.

FREEDOM FORGOTTEN AND REMEMBERED--Helmut Kuhn--Chapel Hill ($2.50) A German officer in World War I, later lecturer on philosophy at the University of Berlin, Author Kuhn is now a member of the philosophy department at the University of North Carolina. His book is a weighty, nonpopular examination of the numerous currents of thought that prepared 1) Germany for totalitarism, 2) the democrats for forgetfulness of the true nature of freedom and the need for faith in Christian virtues. No respecter of economic, political and psychological theories which scorn "the individual conscience" Author Kuhn wants a united front of religious groups, freethinkers "and other professors of an implicit faith."

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