Lost Touch

NOTES FROM A SEA DIARY: HEMINGWAY ALL THE WAY by Nelson Algren. 254 pages. Putnam. $4.95.

The publisher's idea was for Algren to write a meandering essay on Hemingway while taking a freighter trip to Asia, and for him to pad it out with descriptions of Oriental ports. "An essay on Ernest Hemingway was a labor to which I felt compelled," explains Algren. "Everyone else was acting so compulsively, I had to do something compulsive, too, or I wouldn't get invited to any more parties."

Algren feels that Hemingway's honor has been savaged by highbrow critics, who have claimed that Hemingway was merely a lucky oaf who wrote with his muscles and was suspiciously fond of assassinating lions. Algren's efforts to disprove the charges are compulsive, all right, but painfully ineffective.

As for local color, the man who touched the shabby lives of Chicago's dead-enders with such gentleness has this to say about Bombay: "A girl put her head in the window and howled, 'Bly-eye-nd brother! Blye-eye-nd brother!' She wasn't lying. When I put my head out the window I saw him. He wasn't just blind: he was the Blindest. He didn't even have to roll his eyes to show he was blinder than anybody. Somebody had left his irises out. 'Get him contact lenses,' I advised, and gave her a nickel. I would have made it a dime but I didn't want to corrupt her." Parts of this book appeared first in Cavalier, Dial, Dude and Gent.

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