Hicks' Town

SMALL TOWN (276 pp.) -- Granville Hicks--Macmillan ($3).

People in & around New York's Rensselaer County know Granville Hicks as that nosey writing feller who lives on a farm (without farming it) over to Grafton township (pop. 627). Onetime college professor and repentant Communist, Hicks, 45, has been a year-round resident of Grafton .since 1935, and would probably deny that he sticks his nose into anything. But he notes with satisfaction that he, an "intellectual," belongs to the P.T.A. and the volunteer fire department, that he is secretary of the fire district, director of the Community League, editor of the town bulletin, and trustee of School District 1.

In Small Town he talks about a place called Roxborough ("I have employed only the flimsiest of disguises"). Like a surgeon-sociologist, Author Hicks takes Roxborough apart, examining its community workings and its problems. He reviews its history (dull), its people (average), its public spirit (strictly limited), its politics (strictly Republican).

Both a local report and a social sermon, Small Town is most revealing when it is most parochial, when Author Hicks neglects the issues of the world at large to write about his fight for a town firehouse, about current attitudes in the schoolroom or garage.

In the end Hicks is not too clear about what a resident intellectual should do to improve matters, nor too cheerful about Roxborough's prospects, with or without intellectual aid. But he still likes the place, even if the place doesn't altogether like him. "I cannot understand why anyone wants to live in New York or Chicago or Washington or San Francisco."

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