Hammock Fare
Rodell, Katherine
Hammock Fare Children Are Bored on Sunday, by Jean Stafford. Harcourt, Brace. 252 pp. $3. Some Faces in the Crowd, by Budd Schulberg. Random House. 308 pp. $3. Nine Stories, by J. D....
...Doubleday...
...The Sojourner, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings...
...The wartime commander of American naval forces tells his life story in a volume which pro...
...These stories differ totally from Miss Stafford's in mood, approach, writing — everything...
...Dunham writes with humor, and his style is easy to read and understand...
...Norton...
...4.50...
...As for the novels, Desiree undoubtedly deserves her place at the top of the best seller list, for she was quite a girl, and she certainly got around...
...Desiree, by Annemarie Selinko...
...Daphne du Maurier is another writer who is equally at home in short stories or in novels...
...and yet in them, too, I feel that the author is using his very real ability in its most satisfactory form...
...It is about as elevating as Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, and it is going to leave a lot of us with some slightly confused ideas about European history, but it is thoroughly entertaining—and it is going to make a super-colossal movie...
...Some of these stories have an almost unbearable intensity—they make you want to cry, "Don't...
...in fact, I should think, perfect "summer reading...
...Annemarie Selinko's fat, cheerful historical novel is really good fun...
...Nine Stories, by J. D. Salinger...
...3.50...
...There has never been any doubt in my mind about Miss Stafford's superlative ability to handle the English language, and she writes with great sensitivity and sensibility...
...Her collection...
...Notable among these is Jean Stafford's Children Are Bored on Sundays...
...The Sojourner, by Marjorie Kin-nan Rawlings, is one of those long earthy novels about the land and the generations and man's place in the sun...
...327 pp...
...I have felt that her novels depended too much on mood and atmosphere and that they were somehow not sustained enough...
...6.75...
...From the point of view of reading that happens to be done in the summer, the prospects this year look unusually bright, for there are a number of recent books that may well stand up, not for just a season, but for years...
...These tales, too, are more varied than are those in the other compilations—although there is none of them that can, or should, be read all the way through at one sitting...
...674 pp...
...319 pp...
...Fortunately, for those who want their reading in the summer time to be good but not too concentrated, there are four collections of short stories—and all of them seem to me far more distinguished than any of the recent novels, and, in some cases, better than recent novels by the same authors...
...They are all for dipping and tasting—reading one at night, another on a rainy afternoon...
...594 pp...
...Fleet Admiral King: a naval record, by Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill...
...Salinger's style is perhaps closest to what has come to be recognized as the pure New Yorker type, but beyond that I think his observation is more acute and certainly he has a remarkable ability to awaken an emotional response in the reader...
...other schools into pedestrian application...
...3.50...
...The thing that bothered me about it, however, is that the good man is such an unmitigated dope—in much the same way that Steinbeck's hero in East o[ Eden was...
...With J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories this is not so true—unless, of course, one makes a case (which can be rather easily done) that The Catcher in the Rye was not a novel at all but a long short story, for Salinger seems to be equally at home and equally poignant in either medium...
...In the short stories this does not seem to be true, and it may be that it is in this field her real gift lies...
...Kiss Me Again, Stranger, by Daphne du Maurier...
...However, except for this carping objection, this is a pleasant, warm, and at times moving pastorale...
...The title story, however, is superbly done and has great penetration, for all of its air of sophistication and casualness...
...The style itself—one not common with philosophers ¦— is enough to recommend the book...
...I certainly feel that this is the case with Budd Schulberg, whose collection is called Some Faces in the Crowd—rather unfortunate titling, I think, in view of David Riesman's Faces in the Crowd of just last year...
...In any case, I find that these stories have far more impact and staying quality than Schulberg's last novel, The Disenchanted, had...
...I hope this doesn't indicate a small but ominous trend, for I feel that it does a great disservice to the powers of good to picture good men as so abysmally stupid...
...302 pp...
...The ineffable Sammy, of What Makes Sammy Run, was first limmed out in a short story which was later expanded, although not really enlarged, into the novel, and Sammy still remains Schulberg's most outstanding creation...
...Scribner's...
...Morrow...
...Little, Brown...
...Reviewed by Katherine Rode 11 SUMMER READING" has come to be used as a term to define a type of literature—slight, ephemeral, not requiring much mental effort...
...Kiss Me Again, Stranger, is unfortunately one which seems to be made up of a few odds and ends she happened to have lying around...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
