Books in Brief

Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way, by Nelson Algren (Putnam, $4.95). This bit of unfortunate flotsam reads, now like Tom Trashmouth’s Adventures at Sea, now like the gauzy effusions of a would-be Burton Holmes, and now like something Robert Benchley might have discarded as a bad start—all of which brings up the

question, Whom does Nelson think he is? One from Column A, two from Column B, and he’s just good old bleary, balding, middle-aged Nelson, the Edgar Guest of the seamy side—and Kowloon and Calcutta and all them other romantical places on the road to Mandalay are just so many more workie bars on North Clark street when you get right down to the guts-guts-guts of it all. The hungover travelogue is bad enough, but must our Nelson keep hauling in Hemingway — whom only he Understands and whom he therefore defends noisily against all the gibbering graduate students of Christendom? A few good jabs at Leslie Fiedler and other such (written, no doubt when Nelson was high on Mother-sill’s), but they’re lost among the booze, broads and boredom. Yankee, Go Home! c. h. simonds

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Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way, by Nelson Algren (Putnam, $4.95). This bit of unfortunate flotsam reads, now like Tom Trashmouth’s Adventures at Sea, now like the gauzy effusions of a would-be Burton Holmes, and now like something Robert Benchley might have discarded as a bad start—all of which brings up the

question, Whom does Nelson think he is? One from Column A, two from Column B, and he’s just good old bleary, balding, middle-aged Nelson, the Edgar Guest of the seamy side—and Kowloon and Calcutta and all them other romantical places on the road to Mandalay are just so many more workie bars on North Clark street when you get right down to the guts-guts-guts of it all. The hungover travelogue is bad enough, but must our Nelson keep hauling in Hemingway — whom only he Understands and whom he therefore defends noisily against all the gibbering graduate students of Christendom? A few good jabs at Leslie Fiedler and other such (written, no doubt when Nelson was high on Mother-sill’s), but they’re lost among the booze, broads and boredom. Yankee, Go Home! c. h. simonds