Random Notes

■ October Titles: Daniel Schorr’s account of the circumstances leading to his leaking of the Pike Report on the CIA and his refusal to reveal his sources to the House ethics committee is to be found in Clearing the Air (Houghton Mifflin, $11.95). Fouling the air is more like it. . . . Marizon Marzolf’s Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (Hastings House, $12.95) recounts the contributions of women to a trade that has historically been off bounds to ladies, even as it is becoming off bounds to gentlemen (see supra).

W. Jackson Bate’s immense critical biography, Samuel Johnson (Harcourt Brace, $19.95), devotes as much attention to the Doctor’s writings as to his conversation, so brilliantly preserved by Boswell. . . . Aleksandr Gladkov, recently deceased, was a playwright who knew Boris Pasternak intimately and transferred their conversations to his journals. Consequently his book on the Russian writer—Meetings with Pasternak: A Memoir (Harcourt Brace, $8.95), translated and edited by Max Hayward— is cast in the form of a diary. … In Literature and Opera (Oxford, $15.95), Gary Schmidgall tackles the fascinating subject of how composers and their librettists have reworked literary texts for the operatic stage. . . . The Callas Legacy (Scribner’s, $12.50) by John Ardoin is more a work of musical criticism than a biography of Miss Callas. . . . Joseph Wechsberg’s new musical biography is Schubert: His Life, His Works, His Time (Rizzoli, $15 to Dec. 1, $18.50 thereafter). Wechsberg is an old-fashioned musicologist, which is to say that he writes less like a political scientist and more like a croyante Social Registerite who believes in doing her part for The Arts.

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■ October Titles: Daniel Schorr’s account of the circumstances leading to his leaking of the Pike Report on the CIA and his refusal to reveal his sources to the House ethics committee is to be found in Clearing the Air (Houghton Mifflin, $11.95). Fouling the air is more like it. . . . Marizon Marzolf’s Up from the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (Hastings House, $12.95) recounts the contributions of women to a trade that has historically been off bounds to ladies, even as it is becoming off bounds to gentlemen (see supra).

W. Jackson Bate’s immense critical biography, Samuel Johnson (Harcourt Brace, $19.95), devotes as much attention to the Doctor’s writings as to his conversation, so brilliantly preserved by Boswell. . . . Aleksandr Gladkov, recently deceased, was a playwright who knew Boris Pasternak intimately and transferred their conversations to his journals. Consequently his book on the Russian writer—Meetings with Pasternak: A Memoir (Harcourt Brace, $8.95), translated and edited by Max Hayward— is cast in the form of a diary. … In Literature and Opera (Oxford, $15.95), Gary Schmidgall tackles the fascinating subject of how composers and their librettists have reworked literary texts for the operatic stage. . . . The Callas Legacy (Scribner’s, $12.50) by John Ardoin is more a work of musical criticism than a biography of Miss Callas. . . . Joseph Wechsberg’s new musical biography is Schubert: His Life, His Works, His Time (Rizzoli, $15 to Dec. 1, $18.50 thereafter). Wechsberg is an old-fashioned musicologist, which is to say that he writes less like a political scientist and more like a croyante Social Registerite who believes in doing her part for The Arts.