BY PHOEBE ADAMS
THE FAVOURITE (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $4.50), the latest book by FRANçOISE MALLET-JORIS, is an unusual historical novel. Set at the court of Louis XIII, it contains not a single duel and not a dollop of poison. It does contain, however, an intrigue of exceptional psychological subtlety — an attempt to remove from court, by legal and even kindly methods, the rather prissy younggentlewoman who has become the friend and confidante of the King. The object of the plotters is to induce Louise de La Fayette to enter a nunnery, not because she is willfully dangerous but because her lack of greed, ambition, and malice makes her monstrous in a society entirely governed by these qualities. The surface of the story is largely boudoir frippery involving dressmakers bills, recalcitrant coiffures, and picturesque visits to the poor, who have been washed and rehearsed for the occasion. Beneath the glitter lurks a cold, ironic horror. Miss Mallet-Joris does not admire the human race, but she makes a fine story of its misdeeds.
BROM WEBER, associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota, has edited AN ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN HUMOR (Crowell, $8.75). Historically, it is as comprehensive a collection as anyone could ask for, beginning with a pawky seventeenthcentury clergyman and ending with Bernard Malamud. It is large, well intentioned, and so solemn in its devotion to duty that it includes a number of items, like E. A. Robinson’s “Richard Cory,” of very dubious comic intent.
In THE WORLD OF ICE (Knopf, $6.95) JAMES LINDSAY DYSON, professor of geology and geography at Lafayette College, has assembled and reported, in pleasantly nontechnical language, everything about glaciers and ice sheets, past and present, that a reasonable person can possibly want to know. The book is illustrated with handsome photographs.
VERA PANOVA’S A SUMMER TO REMEMBER (Yoseloff, $3.95) arrives in the wake of the Russian motion picture based upon it. It’s a charminglittle book, acute and unsentimental, about a small boy, his dealings with friends and relatives, and his delighted acquisition of an ideal stepfather. Little Serioja’s view of the world as his own large, interesting, but unfortunately somewhat uncontrollable property is deftly maintained throughout the book, which contrives, without any detectable literary artfulness, to be both very funny and very touching. No translator is mentioned, but the style is British.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC’S VOYAGES TO THE MOON AND THE SUN (Orion, $6.00) makes a belated appearance in English thanks to Richard Aldington, who has translated these neglected oddities, providing notes and an introductory essay which reveals Cyrano as a man very far from Rostand’s romantic Gascon. The voyages themselves are sprinkled with amusing bits of satire, for the moon and the sun were not what Cyrano really had his eye on.
WILLIAM HAZLITT (Harvard University Press, $10.00) by HERSCHEL BAKER, professor of English at Harvard University, can best be described as a laborsaving device for readers who have no interest in early nineteenth-century English literature but feel obliged to learn something about it. The book is a stout and sturdy biography, demonstrating that Mr. Baker has read every word ever written by or about the brilliant boor, his friends, his enemies. and the eighteenth-century liberal philosophers from whom Hazlitt derived many of his ideas. All this material has been paraphrased and digested by Mr. Baker. My only objection to the result is that the original works of Godwin, Lamb, Keats, and company are readily available and considerably livelier.
TIM DINSDALE, aeronautical engineer and photographer, became interested in the Loch Ness monster in a very casual way, but once started, he pursued the question with such persistence and ingenuity that he ended by writing LOCH NESS MONSTER (Chilton, $4.50). This book, with an introduction by Ivan T. Sanderson, describes Mr. Dinsdale’s campaign to corner the monster and photograph it, or possibly them, thereby settling the problem for good. If this sort of thing is carried much further, the world is going to be pitifully devoid of mysterious monsters, and booksellers, magazine publishers, and conversationalists will have to scratch for interesting subject matter.