Books in Brief

Exile and the Kingdom, by Albert Camus (Knopf, $3.50). Half a dozen parable-tales about Camus’ favorite character, Modern Man, a fellow who seems to have gone outside himself one day and come back to find the door inexplicably locked, since when he has bravely insisted that although he knows the Kingdom of Heaven is inside, he can’t find his key. Camus writes a trim, unfussy prose, which translates well, and his own sincerity is unquestionable. But I sometimes wonder if even his best works (The Fall, The Myth of Sisyphus) aren’t going to look like no more than period pieces of “Twentieth-Century Blues” in a few decades. For his honest, but somewhat jejune preoccupation with Man’s spiritual exile may seem no more than at-titudinous to people who have discovered that getting inside oneself, believing in God, and behaving accordingly, are not easy, but on the other hand, are no harder today than they ever were. r. becket

The Rise of Khrushchev, by Myron Rush (Public Affairs, $3.25). By patient textual analysis, Mr. Rush Shows how the most exquisite verbal modulations are made to express vast displacements in the structure of Soviet power. Tracing Khrushchev’s ascent by inspecting Soviet documents and speeches, Rush describes the realities reflected when Khrushchev’s title of “First secretary” of the Communist Party painfully acquires, not two, but one capital letter; and so forth. The situation at first seems preposterous: one pictures an arena full of ape-like gladiators, armed with cesta, circling each other, seeking occasion to land blows of annihilation; outside, observers report the results to the curious public through enigmatic words, written in sand with the tip of a feather. Reflection suggests, however, that the method is fitting for men whose disease originated in a sickness of words, and who corrupt language that they may corrupt men. c. logan

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Exile and the Kingdom, by Albert Camus (Knopf, $3.50). Half a dozen parable-tales about Camus’ favorite character, Modern Man, a fellow who seems to have gone outside himself one day and come back to find the door inexplicably locked, since when he has bravely insisted that although he knows the Kingdom of Heaven is inside, he can’t find his key. Camus writes a trim, unfussy prose, which translates well, and his own sincerity is unquestionable. But I sometimes wonder if even his best works (The Fall, The Myth of Sisyphus) aren’t going to look like no more than period pieces of “Twentieth-Century Blues” in a few decades. For his honest, but somewhat jejune preoccupation with Man’s spiritual exile may seem no more than at-titudinous to people who have discovered that getting inside oneself, believing in God, and behaving accordingly, are not easy, but on the other hand, are no harder today than they ever were. r. becket

The Rise of Khrushchev, by Myron Rush (Public Affairs, $3.25). By patient textual analysis, Mr. Rush Shows how the most exquisite verbal modulations are made to express vast displacements in the structure of Soviet power. Tracing Khrushchev’s ascent by inspecting Soviet documents and speeches, Rush describes the realities reflected when Khrushchev’s title of “First secretary” of the Communist Party painfully acquires, not two, but one capital letter; and so forth. The situation at first seems preposterous: one pictures an arena full of ape-like gladiators, armed with cesta, circling each other, seeking occasion to land blows of annihilation; outside, observers report the results to the curious public through enigmatic words, written in sand with the tip of a feather. Reflection suggests, however, that the method is fitting for men whose disease originated in a sickness of words, and who corrupt language that they may corrupt men. c. logan