Likable Opportunist

DARIO (175 pp.) Percy Winner Harcourt Brace ($2.50)

A kind of conversational sword play between U.S. Foreign Correspondent Percy Winner and an Italian journalist named Dario Duvolti rustles throughout this urban study of a European Fascist intellectual. When Winner first met Dario in 1925 he was reminded of Count Keyserling's remark about the women of Italy--that as young girls they dream of being grandmothers. Dario, brilliant and ambitious, dreamt of being an ambassador, and was but a few rungs from the top of Mussolini's ladder when it fell in 1943. Unlike most of the climbers, however, he was not hurt. A daring young man, he dived for an A.M.G. life net, later sported a U.S. uniform while his old pals were marched off to jail. When the Americans moved out, Dario became a Communist.

Dario differs from most novels about Fascism by presenting its villain as a reasonably sympathetic character. Dario's intrigues are necessary for his own survival. His megalomania is tempered by a sense of humor. His friendship for Correspondent Winner seems genuine. Winner, in turn, is both fascinated and repelled by Dario, whose skin-deep convictions are easily accommodated to the changing temperatures of Fascist politics.

Subtitled "A Fictitious Reminiscence," the book obviously is not all fiction. Europeans will easily recognize Dario as the high-ranking Fascist journalist, Curzio Malaparte, and so will U.S. readers of Malaparte's curious autobiography Kaputt (TIME, Nov. 11). As the profile of a likable opportunist, the novel is convincing, but as a study in the dialectics of Fascism it probes no deeper than the good manners of a bad man.

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