Potpourri

ROBERT LEWIS TAYLOR’S new novel, A JOURNEY TO MATECUMBE (McGraw-Hill, $5.95), resembles his Travels of Jamie McPheeters in being a picaresque tale about the adventures of a young traveler with a remarkable aptitude for attracting the unexpected and the absurd. The jacket blurb points out, with pride, that Mr. Taylor’s style and hero are deliberately based on Mark Twain and Huck Finn, which is one way to prevent smart-aleck reviewers from mumbling about imitation. Stylistically, the imitation is very clever, and the story is simply a fast and funny uproar which wanders down the Mississippi in the 1870s, ultimately involving the Ku Klux Klan, a snake-oil peddler, Seminole Indians, pirate treasure, pineapples, and a hurricane, to mention only the highest of a procession of high spots.

JACQUES BARZUN, editor of THE DELIGHTS OF DETECTION (Criterion, $5.95), points out in his introduction to the book that mystery fanciers fall into two groups, those who like their mysteries novel length with plenty of room for red herrings and those who like them as short stories in which the puzzle must be kept to its bare outlines. Mr. Barzun is himself a short-story type and has edited a good collection for those who share his taste.

THE ORION BOOK OF EVOLUTION (Orion, $6.95) by JEAN ROSTAND is a summary of all the theories that preceded Darwin’s great work, very short, handsomely illustrated, and informative.

Since it concerns a Roman lawsuit, Marcus Tullius Cicero for the defense, THE GIFT OF ROME (AtlanticLittle, Brown, $4.00) by JOHN and ESTHER WAGNER must, I suppose, be counted as a historical novel. But its evocation of history is accomplished by the lightest and quickest of touches, while the problems it considers — the letter and spirit of the law, the nature of justice and truth — are still with us, and the authors have succeeded in illustrating them with characters of exceptional interest (the portrait of Cicero is a marvel) and a plot that is full of surprises.

THE BROTHERS M by TOM STACEY (Pantheon, $5.95) is another novel about the difficulties of the Europeanized African in his own country. Mr. Stacey, a British journalist, writes with much practical knowledge of Africa, and his story is always interesting. It is also, as instructive novels are likely to be, on the cold side. The unhappy Daudi and his earnest Canadian friend are not improbable as human beings, but they have been selected by the author as types that will prove his point — the basic, mutual incompatibility of European and African cultures — and, consequently, they have a perpetual resemblance to Euclidean theorems. Casual tribesmen, guides, and colonial officials, on the other hand, ring alarmingly true.

THE LOST TOWNS AND ROADS OF AMERICA (Doubleday, $4.95) should have been a better book than it is, for J. R. HUMPHREYS’ notion of crossing the country by back roads and stagnant villages is promising. The trouble seems to have been speed. Mr. Humphreys has a great deal to say about routes and superficial details, but he never comes to grips with the life that goes on behind the quaint façades, because he never stopped long enough to study it. There comes a point where one cast-iron hitching post sounds very like another.

NO SIGNPOSTS IN THE SEA (Doubleday, $2.95) is a short, austere novel by V. SACKVILLE-WEST. It is a story of civilized misunderstanding, love recognized too late, and death arriving too early, and invites untrammeled philosophizing by the reader on the ultimate triviality of worldly success. It is written in the form of a journal, kept by a British newspaperman of considerable distinction who is dying of some unidentified disease and who is therefore unable to pursue effectively the lady on whom his affections have belatedly settled. The book contains some exquisite descriptions of out-of-theway places; the lady’s real attitude is most deftly conveyed through the journalist’s misinterpretations of it; the situation itself is touching, or should be. Unfortunately, and for no reason that I can pin down and define, I found poor Edmund completely unconvincing as newspaperman, thwarted lover, and even potential corpse.