SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 1952
THE DAILY TAR HEEL
PAGE THRE3
A
B
ook JL eaves
Sea A La Mode
"Great Shipwrecks And Casta- sickening eruptions, breaking the
Practically Everybody & Freud
The following two reviews are
about books which are riot fresh
on the market, but which are sel
dom on the bookseller's shelves
because of the tremendous de
mand for them. We thought they
would, and we know thev have
entertained many college students
throughout the country. Their
qualities do not rest only in the
university set, but are presently
being read and praised by all.
Cuppy Knows His Stuff .
"The Decline and Fall of Prac
tically Everybody by Will Cuppy,
1950, Henry Holt and Company,
New York. $3.00. ' ." "'
If you are tired of studying
old musty history books, pick up
"The Decline and Fall of Prac
tically Everybody" and take your
history in much lighter doses. Will
Cuppy's last book, edited by Fred
Feldkamp after Cuppy's death, is
a bird's eye .view of some of the
most prominent figures in history.
The famous and infamous details
of the "Great" from Hatshepsut
to Miles Standish are included, in
a style which reminds us of Thur
ber. Written in a dry and subtle vein
by the author of "How to Tell
Your Friends from Apes,' the
book definitely puts these histori
cal figures in a different light from
that which we learned back in
freshman history
For instanrp. w.2 Iiiarn " that
"Charles V of Spain died in 1558,
leaving four clocks, sixteen watch
es, fourteen feather bolsters, thirty-seven
pillows, a small box for
carrying preserved lsmon peel,
four bezoar stones for curing the
plague, six mules, a small one
eyed horse, twenty-seven pairs of
spectacles, som oM buttons, and
Philip II.
Louis XIVr we dcover, was
known as Louis le , Roi Soleil,
Louis the Show-OXf. "Extremely
dull as a child, he gradually de
veloped this characteristic into a
system." Cuppy continues,
"Among his hobbiss were women,
invading the Low Countries, an
nexing Alsace and Lorraine sur
rendering Alsace and Lorraine,
and revoking the Edict of Nantes."
The little pieces are written in
a pseudo-academic .tone, with a
tongue-in-cheek humor that is
fresh and appealing. Particularly
chuckle-worthy are the innumer
able footnotes and the illustrations
by the inimitable William Steig.
'Cuppy obviously knew his ma
terial and puts the spotlight on
. the shibboleths of the past in his
"Historv Confidential," turning
out some of the neatest, most hil
arious work we've read in a long
time.
A Saiix alire
"Hopalong - Freud and Other
Modern Literary Characters," by
Ira Wallach, 1951, Henry Schu
man. New York.
' An English major, or practically
anyone else for that matter, will
. get many snickers from this bit
of well - taken satire aimed di
rectly at contemporary writers.
Vr "Wallach, the author of "How
Td Be ; Deliriously Happy, leads
off with "Out1 of the Frying Pah
and Into1 the ' Soup," a master
piece on Hemingway's "Over, the
River tind lhta 'the Trees." The
hero is a 60-year-old private first
class who drinks his Citronella
08 straight and true. "You like
Toulouse-Lautrec? he asked the
driver. V don't like to lose ' ahy
lodV" 'said the driver." etc., etc.
The- author follows Sipivith
IrAff tin fttnrisn QbOUlTtho' 00-
ways ' edited, by canaries jn eider,
Harper & Brothers Publishers,
New York. 1952. $3.00. 23& pp.
For NROTC students and ad
venturous dreamers of the roman
tic era- If vou are tired of being
cadent south, science fiction, the drowned by class work perhaps
detective story and the joke book. you can taste the salty brine
me Keeper of the Gelded Uni- which almost captured these stor-
corn is an historical romance ies and claimed them for Nep-
wnicn breathes life into a little- tune and his daughters
Known episode in English his- A storm gathers and the sun is
tory. Old Robin, keeper of the quickly extinguished. The wind
inn, tells- us about the hero, War- picks up and the sea heaves with
ren oi Hastings, "'Tis said he was
born a foundling and raised in the great asset to every family's book
court of the Due DAmbert who shelf. Students would probably
lacked a son. The streets of Lon- have to reach deep in their pock-
don are paved with the hearts 1 ets for this one, but it is a two.
he has brbken, cemented by the volume history of America and
blood he has spilled. But he is worth the dough if you've got it;
ever a friend to the poor, and a
sworn enemy to Guise, the Earl
of Essence!" Warren of Hastings
proceeds to take place in several
conspiracies, guards the Queen's
jewels, kills Guise and just gen
erally saves England.
"Hopalong-Freud" is written in
the vein of the sophisticated dram
as and pokes good fun at T. S.
Eliot's "The Cocktail Party." In
cluded in the cast are Robert
Castleton - Castleton, Jennifer
Bromley-Bromley, Gloria Castle-
ton-Castleton and Gregory Brom
ley-Bromley.
The collection is entertaining,
and, although the average reader
might be a little in the dark at
times, anyone with a good back
ground in modern literature will
have a lot o ffun.
V J.
JJR.
oaken three-master to splinters.
One man survives and here is his
story.
This is almost the case with
every tense narrative in this col
lection of Charles Neider's. The
records of these tales of the sea
range from 1540 and a sailor iso
lated on a desert island off the
coast of Peril to the tragic ex
periences of explorer Robert Fal
con Scott who crashed through
Anarctic waters in 1912. Savages
and loneliness walk the pages , of
this -compilation of woe.
In fGreat shipwrecks And Cast
aways" the trueL- facts as taken
I from seaman's journals and the
captain's logs are brought 'before
the reader. Excellently edited, the
presentation of the material il
lustrates the thought and life of
the time during which it was
written. .
It has not been modernized or
glamorized, but the harrowing
moments recorded by those who
experienced them speak for themselves.
Oharles Neider is not new to
the writing profession. His stor
ies and essays which appear in
some of the country's most popu
lar magazines have been read and
appreciated for several years now.
Neiderr in addition to being on
the staff of the New Yorker, and
later being affiliated with the" Of
fice o2 War Information, has had
published two volumes of col
lected works: "Short Novels of
the Masters" and "Great Short
Stories from the World of Litera
ture" plus two other critical
works.
-
Life Pictured
In America
"Life in America" (in two vol
umes) by Marshall B. Davidson.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Bos
ton. In association with the Met
ropolitan Museum of Art. 1951.
1076 pp. $20.00.
"Life in America" was last
year's winner of the finest publi
cation award, the Corey-Thomas
Award for distinguished and crea
tive publishing.
This pictorial and verbal his
tory of America containing over
twelve thousand pictures and two
hundred fifty thousand words
catches America from the time
Europeans "turned their eyes to
the West and put their ships to
sea until the last floor of the
United Nations building was com
pleted in New York.
This saga, untouched by Hol-
lywood' influence, is a dynamic
as a western flick preview. It de
rives its force not from any man
ufactured lingo of the author, but
(pnprates its nower with the
growth of this nation.
Excellent engravings picturing i
the old west and the slow migra
tion of a new cultural group des
tined for the Pacific coast and
photographs, lithographs, and
paintings are contained in these
two fine volumes. For the individ- j
uals who would push it aside say
ing "there ain't no pitchers," well,
there is, and theys good ones too.
"Life in America would be a
For Pity's Soke!
A little sentiment is sometimes
expressed on a newspaper and
this is about that time. Poor Buck
ley, Jr. We had thought of re
viewing God And Man At Yale
for this week's literary page, but
then when we looked at some of
the reviews done by national mag
azines and read the book finding
that the ' darts thrown at poor
Buckley Vere well founded,, we
decided that he wa3 already look
ing too'rnuch.like a flogged span
ie'li ' . V'.. -
"SomepeoP
will an
for lau
He's far too sophisticated to be amused by
slap-stick comedy! From the minute the curtain
went up, be knew that you just can't judge
cigarette mildness by one fast puff or a single, swift
sniff. Those capers may fool a frosh but
he's been around and he knows! From coast-to-coast,
millions of smokers agree: There's but one -'
true test d cigarette- $nddness,! ' -j.jf
It's the sensible test r. ; ' theSO-liay ' Camel .
Mildness Test, which jimply asks you! to try Camels
as your steady smoke," on a day-after-day,
pack-after-pack basis. No'snjudgrkenti! Once ;
you ve tried Camels for 30f days: in ypur fT-Zone
(T for Throat. T.for Taste), you'll scie why . v.
After all the Mildness Tests.
ft ff
Campus Interviews on Cigarette Tests
No. 32...TFIK1G inci :
t