ERNST JUENGER’S THE GLASS BEES (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $3.75 and $1.65) is a fantastic, tightly compressed novel about a down-at-the-heels cavalry officer contending with a hive of nasty little automatons. It can be taken as a comment on Germany or modern society or both, and, however it is taken, is a wonderfully provocative and successful fusion of fiction and philosophy.
If anyone but MURIEL SPARK had written THE BACHELORS (Lippincott, $3.95). it would be highly regarded for its witty style, the odd spiritualistic background, and the author’s ingenuity in making an exciting adventure story out of the misdoings of half a dozen incompetent muddleheads. But because the author has done these things before, and rather better, it is necessary to call the book second-rate Spark. Anyone who has not yet read one of Miss Spark’s peculiar novels of satirical suspense, however, can happily begin with The Bachelors and go on to such higher things as Memento Mori.
GEORG GERSTER’S SAHARA (Coward-McCann, $5.00) is a survey of the history and present condition of France’s desert territory. A Swiss journalist, Mr. Gerster traveled indefatigably from Biskra to Agadès, inquiring into water supplies, oil drillings, roads, education, police work, and agriculture. He presents his information clearly and ornaments it with legends, wild old army yarns, and interviews with lively French officials. He makes no claim to report what the indigenous inhabitants think of all the progressive doings about them, for he is frankly not equipped to parley with the Touareg.
The whittled-down travels of ALEXANDRE DUMAS continue to appear endless and endlessly amusing. This time it is his ADVENTURES IN CZARIST RUSSIA (Chilton, $3.50), where Dumas reacted furiously to everything. His observations still crackle with enthusiasm.
A VICTORIAN IN ORBIT (Doubleday, $4.95) is described as “the irreverent memoirs” of SIR CEDRIC HARDWICRE, who was assisted in the composition by James Brough. This sort of thing usually raises doubts about the writing, but in this case the wry tone is so distinctly Edwardian and the pseudo-Shavian point of view is so consistent that it seems only fair to give Sir Cedric undisputed top billing. The book has a normal quota of professional anecdotes and tributes to distinguished theatrical colleagues, but it also contains some interesting material on Sir Cedric’s idol, George Bernard Shaw, some acute observations on the state of the theater, and some exceptionally candid remarks on the mechanics of acting.
GEORGE STEINER’S THE DEATH OF TRAGEDY (Knopf, $5.00) is a diss cussion of the probable reasons for the virtual disappearance of successful plays of this type after the seventeenth century. What Steiner hato say about individual dramatists is of great interest, ranging from the inability of non-French audiences to endure Racine to the unappreciated experiments of Byron, whose plays he would like to see given a serious try on the modern stage. His case as a whole is infinitely complicated, involving excursions into finance, the class composition of audiences, and the effects of religion. Mr. Steiner describes Greek tragedy, by which he judges all tragedy, as an assertion “that the forces which shape or destroy our lives lie outside the governance of reason or justice. . . . Men’s accounts with the gods do not balance.” Christianity, assuming that divine justice will prevail in the next world if not in this one, makes the task of the tragic poet extremely difficult by reducing the immense, incomprehensible irony of the Greek universe to a temporary inconvenience.
IRVING STONE’S THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY (Doubleday, $5.95) is a novel about Michelangelo. The author went to Italy, studied old Roman and Florentine topography, beat his way through the records of the Renaissance church intrigues that bedeviled his hero, learned to cut stone, and in general did all that industry and enthusiasm could suggest. This beavering about has produced a novel which runs for six hundred pages, contains a number of things that never happened, is dry as marble dust all the way, and never for one second suggests Michelangelo or any other working artist.