Books in Brief

The Blackboard Cavalier, by John Morressy (Doubleday, $4.50). When Ernie Quinn, hero-for-lack-of-a-more-precise-designation of John Morressy’s wry Blackboard Cavalier, suspects that his first-year contract with Glen Park High will not be renewed, a helpful friend suggests he become a writer. I can’t, says Ernie (an exquisitely troubled product of the Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace generation), I didn’t go to prep school. Ernie’s ambition (he has several in the various dream worlds he inhabits) is to be a book bum, to wander around Europe, picturesquely if not picaresquely, reading the hundreds of books he has always wanted to read, an ambition that sits uneasily on his always worried conscience because of the 150 books he has amassed for book-bumdom and never been tempted to crack. Ernie runs into the usual figures in novels of this kind: the administrative types who care nothing about education; the teachers who have been beaten by the system or have opted not to buck it; the pupils who couldn’t care less. But they have never run into anything like Ernie Quinn, alias Agent C-21 of MINUTCON— Ernie’s acronym for the Ministry of Utter Confusion—and neither have you. How Ernie manages to rout the Iron Maiden (Assistant Principal, Miss Grimes) and her cohorts is a glory to behold and a joy to read and you’ll get none of the delectable details from me. Mr. Morressy can write, and he’s genuinely funny. What more can you ask from a first—or a last— novel? P. L. BUCKLEY

Feminine Forever, by Robert A. Wilson, M.D. (Evans, $5.95). Unluckily Dr. Wilson’s book (and work) deals with the study and treatment of sex hormone deficiency in females, particularly in post-menopausal ones (or, lest the sarcasm be lost, in the mere field of keeping healthy, happy women from changing into sick, miserable sexually neuter wrecks with their Change of Life). Ideally Dr. Wilson should have found a way to prevent all the classical calamities that happen to women when hormone production of their ovaries shuts down (as he has), as a fallout from, say, exotic space medicine: then his recommendations would have some chance for the rapid acceptance and implementation they deserve. As it is, there is now ranged against this pioneering medical scientist and practitioner, fortified as he is with impeccable credentials and overpoweringly suasive clinical evidence, the following hardy, infraconceptual neanderthalisms: 1) he is interfering with Nature (or God’s plan for the race); 2) women’s post-menopausal troubles are entirely imaginary (psychosomatic) ; 3) he is exposing women to physical and psychological hazards which far outweigh his putative remedies. One or the other of these opinions is clung to by hosts of women, by legions of general practitioners, clergymen, husbands and other involved but ignorant and/or complacent males. J. F. kiley

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The Blackboard Cavalier, by John Morressy (Doubleday, $4.50). When Ernie Quinn, hero-for-lack-of-a-more-precise-designation of John Morressy’s wry Blackboard Cavalier, suspects that his first-year contract with Glen Park High will not be renewed, a helpful friend suggests he become a writer. I can’t, says Ernie (an exquisitely troubled product of the Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace generation), I didn’t go to prep school. Ernie’s ambition (he has several in the various dream worlds he inhabits) is to be a book bum, to wander around Europe, picturesquely if not picaresquely, reading the hundreds of books he has always wanted to read, an ambition that sits uneasily on his always worried conscience because of the 150 books he has amassed for book-bumdom and never been tempted to crack. Ernie runs into the usual figures in novels of this kind: the administrative types who care nothing about education; the teachers who have been beaten by the system or have opted not to buck it; the pupils who couldn’t care less. But they have never run into anything like Ernie Quinn, alias Agent C-21 of MINUTCON— Ernie’s acronym for the Ministry of Utter Confusion—and neither have you. How Ernie manages to rout the Iron Maiden (Assistant Principal, Miss Grimes) and her cohorts is a glory to behold and a joy to read and you’ll get none of the delectable details from me. Mr. Morressy can write, and he’s genuinely funny. What more can you ask from a first—or a last— novel? P. L. BUCKLEY

Feminine Forever, by Robert A. Wilson, M.D. (Evans, $5.95). Unluckily Dr. Wilson’s book (and work) deals with the study and treatment of sex hormone deficiency in females, particularly in post-menopausal ones (or, lest the sarcasm be lost, in the mere field of keeping healthy, happy women from changing into sick, miserable sexually neuter wrecks with their Change of Life). Ideally Dr. Wilson should have found a way to prevent all the classical calamities that happen to women when hormone production of their ovaries shuts down (as he has), as a fallout from, say, exotic space medicine: then his recommendations would have some chance for the rapid acceptance and implementation they deserve. As it is, there is now ranged against this pioneering medical scientist and practitioner, fortified as he is with impeccable credentials and overpoweringly suasive clinical evidence, the following hardy, infraconceptual neanderthalisms: 1) he is interfering with Nature (or God’s plan for the race); 2) women’s post-menopausal troubles are entirely imaginary (psychosomatic) ; 3) he is exposing women to physical and psychological hazards which far outweigh his putative remedies. One or the other of these opinions is clung to by hosts of women, by legions of general practitioners, clergymen, husbands and other involved but ignorant and/or complacent males. J. F. kiley