Books in Brief

Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, by J. Edgar Hoover (Holt, $5.00). Mr. Hoover gives us the story of Communist power and influence in the United States. The book is, as he says, “in almost primer form”—a simple, declarative history of a conspiracy which Hoover, unlike so many today, still considers “a clear and present danger.” And that is the most important point in this most important book: that the Communist threat is not to be measured in numbers, and therefore the threat has not lessened simply because Party membership has. Open membership is for parades and petitions and other frills which are, at this point, quite unnecessary. Why parade for a summit conference? The Liberals will get one. Why petition for the release of convicted Reds? The Court will do it gratis. In any case, the real threat has always been the hidden apparatus which has never been broken or fully exposed and which, we must therefore presume, continues to operate under the direct control of the Soviet government. If anything, it must be working even better in this era of complacency about it. Mr. Hoover is a measured man. It is not a coincidence that he has chosen this moment to write such a book. For it has not been the Communists who have been driven out of government, but the anti-Communists. J. P. MCFADDEN

We’ll to the Woods No More, by Edouard Dujardin (New Directions, $3.00). Tossed off in 1887 by a Parisian music critic, this brief, slight sketch about an amorous young dandy and the actress who gently eludes his advances one April evening is, in itself, barely more than diverting. What has established its place in international literary history, and earned it an English translation as well as an interesting preface by Leon Edel, is the casual fact that James Joyce was stimulated by its interior monologue technique as early as 1902, when he was still incubating the revolutionary narrative methods of Ulysses. From this acorn encounter, therefore, grew not only the mighty oak of Joyce’s own oeuvre, but the rather less impressive grove of graduate-student-saplings who now appear determined to make a living out of “Joyce studies” for the balance of the century. An odd, dreary, and wholly undeserved progeny for poor M. Dujardin’s original seed to have begotten. r. phelps

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Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, by J. Edgar Hoover (Holt, $5.00). Mr. Hoover gives us the story of Communist power and influence in the United States. The book is, as he says, “in almost primer form”—a simple, declarative history of a conspiracy which Hoover, unlike so many today, still considers “a clear and present danger.” And that is the most important point in this most important book: that the Communist threat is not to be measured in numbers, and therefore the threat has not lessened simply because Party membership has. Open membership is for parades and petitions and other frills which are, at this point, quite unnecessary. Why parade for a summit conference? The Liberals will get one. Why petition for the release of convicted Reds? The Court will do it gratis. In any case, the real threat has always been the hidden apparatus which has never been broken or fully exposed and which, we must therefore presume, continues to operate under the direct control of the Soviet government. If anything, it must be working even better in this era of complacency about it. Mr. Hoover is a measured man. It is not a coincidence that he has chosen this moment to write such a book. For it has not been the Communists who have been driven out of government, but the anti-Communists. J. P. MCFADDEN

We’ll to the Woods No More, by Edouard Dujardin (New Directions, $3.00). Tossed off in 1887 by a Parisian music critic, this brief, slight sketch about an amorous young dandy and the actress who gently eludes his advances one April evening is, in itself, barely more than diverting. What has established its place in international literary history, and earned it an English translation as well as an interesting preface by Leon Edel, is the casual fact that James Joyce was stimulated by its interior monologue technique as early as 1902, when he was still incubating the revolutionary narrative methods of Ulysses. From this acorn encounter, therefore, grew not only the mighty oak of Joyce’s own oeuvre, but the rather less impressive grove of graduate-student-saplings who now appear determined to make a living out of “Joyce studies” for the balance of the century. An odd, dreary, and wholly undeserved progeny for poor M. Dujardin’s original seed to have begotten. r. phelps