My Lanny Flies over the Ocean

PRESIDENTIAL MISSION (641 pp.) Upton SinclairViking ($3.50).

Critics may scoff and historians may protest, but Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair's supercharged Rover Boy, still roves the globe. Presidential Mission is the eighth and latest volume of the breathless Lanny-discovers- the-20th-century saga, which already runs to 2 1/2 million words and seems good for at least as many million more.

Now nearing 70, Author Sinclair can still reel off his special Lanny-brand of history and hokum at comic-strip clip. "All I have to do is turn the spigot," he once explained, "and the water flows." And, though critics and historians may not like him, Lanny has a public. In Europe--and in Russia (where Sinclair is considered a major U.S. literary figure, along with William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell) the Lanny Budd volumes are becoming almost as well known as Author Sinclair's The Jungle or The Brass Check. Several of the Lanny series have already been published in ten foreign countries, including Brazil, Hungary, the U.S.S.R.

In Vol. VIII, the calendar reads 1942-43; Lanny Boy is now in his 40s, thrice married and one of the hidden heroes of a U.S. at war. His job: acting as secret agent for Franklin Roosevelt, his great, good friend ("Thanks as always, old man," says F.D.R.; "your data have been invaluable. . . . Would you like some iced tea, or something with a stick in it?").

Among others with whom Lanny is on good terms: Pierre Laval, Albert Einstein (they play Mozart sonatas for piano and violin), Winston Churchill, Harry Hopkins ("May I call you Lanny?" says Harry), OSS Chief William J. Donovan, Admiral Darlan. Lanny is also, believe it or not, friendly with Hermann Goring and Adolf Hitler.

In many respects, Lanny resembles an even more popular character in modern fiction: Superman. He excels in doing the impossible, and he is impossible as a human being. Bailing out of a reconnaissance plane over German-held Africa, he chews up his U.S. credentials, rides a camel, eventually walks straight into Hitler's den. "Will you tell me where you have been for the past two years, Herr Budd?" barks the Fiihrer. Lanny offers so neat an explanation that Hitler, in return, offers him an autographed pass to tour the Reich as he will. Lanny makes his tour, then flies back home to report to F.D.R. and to spend a few days with the third Mrs. Budd, a lady who falls into trances and gets spirit messages from the late Otto H. Kahn.

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