Books in Brief

In a Few Hands: Monopoly Power in America, by Estes Kefauver (Pantheon, $4.95). Subtitle notwithstanding, this book has little to do with monopoly power. Rather it is concerned with the effects of non-price forms of competition (auto styling, food packaging, etc.). Through examples, the late Senator and Dr. Irene Till (who transformed the first draft into this volume) build their claim that non-price competition is quite common. Even with its far from perfect reasoning, the case is convincing. Much of the work serves merely to state the obvious, devoting page after page, for example, to elaborating the point that large corporations hold a tremendous advantage over small business. The next step (more correctly, leap) is one which argues that since private enterprise has grown “big” it can therefore no longer be “private.” r. a. roth

Cabot Wright Begins, by James Purdy (Farrar, Straus, $4.95). An ugly parable of Cabot Wright’s discovery, after a career of strenuous overmasculinity, that he is profoundly empty and unfulfilled by it, prompting him and the other paper-thin characters to lengthy speeches about the unsatisfactoriness of heterosexuality in America. James Purdy’s reputation as a writer of special distinction seems to be a complete hoax, and he handles his delicate, pathetic theme with every degree of falseness, clumsiness and bad taste. Besides marriage, which seems to strike him as the principal social evil of the day, he dislikes everything else in America too, and he denounces everything in sight with the same shrill bitterness and fundamental stupidity. He actually has the nerve to devote several chapters to saying how much he despises publishers who create great literary successes out of unliterary trash. Anthropologically interesting; but not pleasant to read; and most of the many other recent books treating the same attitudes are better than this one. f. clinton

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In a Few Hands: Monopoly Power in America, by Estes Kefauver (Pantheon, $4.95). Subtitle notwithstanding, this book has little to do with monopoly power. Rather it is concerned with the effects of non-price forms of competition (auto styling, food packaging, etc.). Through examples, the late Senator and Dr. Irene Till (who transformed the first draft into this volume) build their claim that non-price competition is quite common. Even with its far from perfect reasoning, the case is convincing. Much of the work serves merely to state the obvious, devoting page after page, for example, to elaborating the point that large corporations hold a tremendous advantage over small business. The next step (more correctly, leap) is one which argues that since private enterprise has grown “big” it can therefore no longer be “private.” r. a. roth

Cabot Wright Begins, by James Purdy (Farrar, Straus, $4.95). An ugly parable of Cabot Wright’s discovery, after a career of strenuous overmasculinity, that he is profoundly empty and unfulfilled by it, prompting him and the other paper-thin characters to lengthy speeches about the unsatisfactoriness of heterosexuality in America. James Purdy’s reputation as a writer of special distinction seems to be a complete hoax, and he handles his delicate, pathetic theme with every degree of falseness, clumsiness and bad taste. Besides marriage, which seems to strike him as the principal social evil of the day, he dislikes everything else in America too, and he denounces everything in sight with the same shrill bitterness and fundamental stupidity. He actually has the nerve to devote several chapters to saying how much he despises publishers who create great literary successes out of unliterary trash. Anthropologically interesting; but not pleasant to read; and most of the many other recent books treating the same attitudes are better than this one. f. clinton