Books in Brief

Incognito, by Petru Dumitriu (Macmillan, $5.95). This book will speak profoundly to certain men, perhaps only a few, but it will be one of the books, like the philosophy of Descartes, or the Gospel of St. John or Les Misèrables, that nourish an abiding inward vision of the whole universe. What it will be for the rest of the world—a name, a bit of glory, something people will, alas, be forced to read in school, a point of departure for many critical articles—is incidental. But it will be all these things. Already it has entered literary history and comes to us with such golden commendation from the leading critics of France that we cannot believe they are serious. They are. It is a book about war, incest, the earth, freedom, the relations of man to man, the search for identity, the poetry of daily life, the terrible reality of God. Some of the war scenes are better than Tolstoy or Hemingway. But in the midst of them, and of his grim portrayals of the infinitely bleak atmosphere of bureaucratic Communism, Dumitriu portrays the soul. He is one of the few modern writers who is keenly alive to the mystery of Good as well as the mystery of Evil and explores it truthfully.

F. CLINTON

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Incognito, by Petru Dumitriu (Macmillan, $5.95). This book will speak profoundly to certain men, perhaps only a few, but it will be one of the books, like the philosophy of Descartes, or the Gospel of St. John or Les Misèrables, that nourish an abiding inward vision of the whole universe. What it will be for the rest of the world—a name, a bit of glory, something people will, alas, be forced to read in school, a point of departure for many critical articles—is incidental. But it will be all these things. Already it has entered literary history and comes to us with such golden commendation from the leading critics of France that we cannot believe they are serious. They are. It is a book about war, incest, the earth, freedom, the relations of man to man, the search for identity, the poetry of daily life, the terrible reality of God. Some of the war scenes are better than Tolstoy or Hemingway. But in the midst of them, and of his grim portrayals of the infinitely bleak atmosphere of bureaucratic Communism, Dumitriu portrays the soul. He is one of the few modern writers who is keenly alive to the mystery of Good as well as the mystery of Evil and explores it truthfully.

F. CLINTON