Millennium Deferred

NUTRO 29 (307 pp.)--Frank Harris--Rinehart ($2.75).

"What," the reporter blurted at the editor of World Picture magazine, "would you consider the greatest news story of all time?" The reporter thought he had it: a research chemist had just synthesized sunlight and seaweed into a wonder food, Nutro 29. One box of pills no bigger than a pack of cigarettes and probably just as cheap would feed a man for a month.

There it was, the millennium between thumb and forefinger, all set to pop into the world's wide mouth. But history has always had a deft way of palming the millennium till later in the show; and in Frank Norris' tricky piece of pseudohistorical vaudeville, Nutro 29, now you see it now you don't, almost before the author can say nutrono-methylsilicaphe-noxycreosalic acid.*

Cage & Chickadee. The chemist is kidnaped by Russian agents even before the big food companies steal his Nutro formula, and turn it to a fast buck with Piksnak ("why bother with that old-fashioned picnic lunch-basket") and Sportnutrine ("attached to the belt . . . in a handy metal kit") and Quik-Meal ("the two-second lunch for America's busiest executives").

By the time the chemist slips out of the bear hug, the U.S. Army, Navy and FBI are hunting him down like a lost gram of plutonium. Faced with Government control on either side of the political divide, the chemist surrenders to Big Business, and safe in a gilded cage, with a gorgeous chickadee to keep him company, he settles back to watch his pill take effect.

Like an overdose of champagne (or hemlock), it hits the underpinning of the economy first. Laboring men begin the Great Walkout -- miners, fruit pickers, dock-wallopers, bus boys; by the thousands they quit their jobs, pocket their pills, and lam out for Florida. Short crops and short fuel send other thousands after them. The greatest holiday in history is on.

Wind & Dollars. By the time it ends (with the millennium safely postponed by Government control of the pill), Author Norris has jabbed his needle left & right, high & low, popping gas pockets all over the current scene. Targets: Soviet sentimentalism, windbaggery on Capitol Hill, the dollar chase in Big Business, journalistic scurrility on a big picture magazine.

Novelist Norris. a senior editor of Newsweek, has set out to write a satire of the times, and he has not quite achieved it; satire calls for a steady hand, a rapier that can reach bone. He does show that he can wield the needle of burlesque with some of the best in the business.

-Suggestion for pronunciation: lay it on the tongue, and swallow hard.

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