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Sunday, October 13. 1%3 BOOKS I Wheeling & Dealing * In The Poker World THE CINCINNATI KID. By Richard Jessup. Little, Brown. 152 Pages, with appendix. f 3.95. By J. A. C. DUNN Like an icepick, the Kid gets straight to the viscera and stays there. The Kid is, by most stand ards, still a relative kid; but he came up hard. At 26 he is ready to meet The Man. “From thirteen to sixteen he began to feel the cards. They became more than just instru ments of making money for the movies or a new pair of shoes, which was a very common de vice used by all of his friends. Out of these quiet, very desper ate little penny games in alleys and on the decks of abandoned barges, on wintry street comers, the raw shoeshine boys’ poker began to grow and he began to grow with it and when he had grown old enough, he began to hope there was away open for him; and once he had discovered his feel for cards was real and genuine, an urgency began to rise in him and gain strength.” Unless some idiot ballyhoos him to death, Mr. Jessup will very probably develop even further the same "feeling,” but for words. You hope an urgency to do so is rising in him and gain ing strength. You wouldn’t do either party the disservice of calling him another Hemingway. Who needs one, to begin with; and Mr. Jessup does not quite have Mr. Hemingway’s effortless abruptness in any case. But he has something else. “The Cincinnati Kid” is “The Hustler” of the stud poker world, and let Mr. Jessup try to deny that. But it doesn’t matter. The story is much the same: the new young genius tangles in a mara thon poker game with the old hoary king of the deck, and the girl gets rubbed raw in the re sulting friction. The book is so visual that you find yourself cast ing the movie version, in some instances with the same people who played in “The Hustler”: Lutherans Hold Dinner Tuesday The annual Fall Fellowship Dinner of the Northern District of the Lutheran Church Women of North Carolina Synod will be held Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Augs burg Lutheran Church in Win ston-Salem. Dr. Mark Depp will be the guest speaker. A program of music will be pre sented by the Lutheran Church Women of Christ and Epiphany Lutheran Churches of Winston- Salem. Among those expected to at tend will be Mrs. Paul Stout, President of the Lutheran Church Women of North Carolina Synod, and Mrs. D. E. Perryman, Dis trict Chairman. EmYTHWe M BOOKS THE BOOK EXCHANGE What’s Going on at the Intimate Gore and Crime I In Old Book Corner | This week and lor the next two weeks The Intimate is going to offer a truly astonishing col lection of books on crime and the law. Beginning with 18th Century im prints. and running to the recent post, this gory eoßeetion consists of books and panyhlets, many illustrated, and all contemporary accounts of murders, trials for treason, and other grim evidences of man’s tahamonity to man-nad We think you'll enjoy looking over this collection—and we know that if you’re looking for an ab solutely unique Christmas gift for a lawyer friend, or 41 writer, this is a goed bet for yea. Drawings Hold Over The collection of luprednctbap of great drawings which we put out last week was sack a rearing sow THE INTIMATE BOOKSHOP 119 East Franklin Street Open Til 10 P.M. ■ v WF V RICHARD JESSUP George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, the group. But when you get to the end, the story doesn’t really make any difference. There is very little of it, and the important thing is something very personal. It probably varies from person to person, but, like a n icepick, you know it when it’s in you. Your reaction will depend on where you have been stuck. Some people, non-poker buffs likely, will feel its long-range, emotion ally cancerous poignancy in the throat. Young people oriented to youth will take it square on the chin, or in the heart. Poker devotees will simply salivate all over every page. In the end you feel as though you have just spent several months in a gray tinted sort of subterranean world whose inhabitants are almost pathologically shy, who spend their days in an atmosphere of constant secret calculation, and who are known by names like Pig, Yeller, Big Nig, Old Lady Fingers, Die Shooters, Wildwood Jones. It all sounds reminiscent of Damon Runyon, but somehow it also sounds very real. It may well be. Mr. Jessup was once a * dealer in a Harlem gambling house. i Mr. Jessup’s writing is like a > halyard in a high wind: taut and lean. He does not let the pace of his story break away, but he does not need hurrying either. He , seems to be one of those unusual people who knows when to use the King’s English, and when to use a colloquialism. He is also 1 sensitive to how much people say at one time when they speak. His novelistic carpentry is craft ily deliberate, but his craftsman • ship is invisible. And how re freshing it is to find someone who doesn’t end a book by run ning out of story twenty pages before the end and plunging for refuge into a river of slop. rcess that we wired off ter more, and will hold the display over for another week. As we write this, the new supply Is still somewhere ob the road, and we’re keeping oar fingers crossed! If you haven’t looked these over, don’t miss them. We think they are the biggest dollar’s worth we’ve seen lately and you folks seem to agree with us. Miser OhH-Obai... Hottest titles on am own private best seller list are JOY IN THU MORNING, by Betty Smith (our* are autographed copies), SECURI TY, the little fhrffy bit hy the author of PEANUTS, and THE GROUP, Maiy McCarthy’s sensa lloml ncm fiovcL (Ed hooks are pouring hi at a faster rate than ever before. Dis tinguished coDectioas will be pat oat aa teat as we can process them, hut la the meantime there is what you might call a canstaat gentle rain of nice minor titles onto the 17c and 71c ahthms. Come troawsii haul fog and aha. Fitzgerald’s Biographer At UNC In Search Os Thomas Wolfe By W. H. SCARBOROUGH Andrew Turnbull has an af finity for monumental tasks. He has been in Chapel Hill for the past week working at one he intends to become the de finitive biographer of Thomas Wolfe. . The Wolfe scent has been in his nostrils for a year-and-a half now, and Mr. Turnbull ex pects to be following it for an other three years at least. Un der the circumstances one might expect his enthusiasm to Hag or at least to be of low intensi ty. If anything, Mr. Turnbull’s joy for the chase seems to be growing. For one thing he is now a veteran biographer; his life of the late F. Scott Fitzgerald has won praise and made for him a reputation as a meticulous scholar, a writer capable of blending drama, color and ac curacy into a literary genre all too often characterized by drab factuality. He has waded into the moun tain of legend and myth sur rounding Wolfe in hopes of find ing a man who at some point stood distinctly separate from his fiction. He has a theory that Wolfe the man is every bit as fascinating as Wolfe the illu sion and that no coherent, realistic picture of this man exists. To that extent he is a true biographer as opposed to a lit erary historian; he treats his subject almost novelistically in his writing, but the writing is based on cold fact derived largely from non-literary sources. He is re-creating Wolfe, not from Wolfe’s autobiographical novels, but from people who knew him— from thousands of scraps of personal reminiscence, from letters, from any source of di rect contact with the men. He hopes the end result will be a portrait as near life as it can get without actually breathing. In Chapel Hill Mr. Turnbull has been going through the large mound of Wolfe materials in the North Carolina Collection of the University Library for hints and leads. He has also been (seeking out and inter viewing people in the area who knew Wolfe, whether they knew him well and were friends with him for years, or knew him on ly slightly and had only one encounter with him. Already he has tracked Wolfe through Harvard Univer sity, where his unpublished manuscripts are lodged; he has been to Asheville, and to Eu rope where the few faint traces of his visits there have not been obliterated by war and time. Although Wolfe died 25 years ago, the Wolfe spoor is still heavy in the land. This means for Mr. Turnbull a tremendous ly complicated job of gather ing and digesting unnumbered, often unrelated bits of informa tion. Sometime within the next two years they will begin to coalesce into an entity. Mr. Turnbull took a couple of hours off from his labors last week to talk about them and biography as he conceives it. He has, he admits, been strug- Through The Ages With Cut-Out Patterns CRUSADES AND CRINO LINES. By Ishbel Rots. Har per and Row. S7t Pages. fijOO. By JOAN BISSELL Take Saratoga in the sum mer of 1840: it is the mecca for ’’pohticiano, dandies, office hold era, office seekers, fortune hunt era, anxious mothers with love ly daughters.” In short, it is tee resort. Place a fashion eon •ekHis girt of fourteen in this setting, and you have Ellen (Nell) Louise Curtis, destined to revolutionize the fasiiion world. Watching the ladies stroll or ride in carriages through Sara toga’s streets. Nell would mem orize the cut of their bonnets. After returning home, she would copy them, many of which had been made in Paris for the wives of wealthy plantation own ers who summered in Saratoga. By the age of eighteen, Nell had made arrangements to re ceive special training from the local milliner. She subsequent ly added dressmaking and de signing to her talents. In the 1850’s Nell moved to New York to test her skill on discerning ladies who would be highly critical of anything less than the beet end the best still came from Paris. Thus, Ishbel Ross lays the groundwork for Nell to meet William Jennings Demorest, a widower who was intensely in terested in fashions and mer chandising and who had already had some degree of success in selling women’s cloaks. Demo THE CHAPEL HILL WEEKLY gling with Wolfe. “How do you write a biography of an auto biographical writer you’ve nev er known,” he asked with a hint of rueul amusement. Then he told how; “I’m try ing to draw that fine line be tween Wolfe the person arid the projection of himself he gave in his novels. I want to do this by bringing out the people around him. You can’t do this by ‘let ting Tom say it.’ If you do, you get this fine mist of Wolfe over everything. I want to ind out what, the smaller man was really like.” One of the persons around Wolfe. Maxwell Perkins, who was Wolfe’s close friend and editor for most of his produc tive life, actually set Mr. Turn bull on the project. Mr. Turn bull had thought seriously about a biography of Perkins, who played literary godfather to many of the literary giants of the twenties and thirties. “But you can t hang a whole book on Perkins his life was too meager, he was too sub servient to the writers he edit ed.” In away Mr. Turnbull will do a biography of Perkins with in the biography of Wol.e. and Wolfe, who depended on Perk ins so much, will be the win dow. “I first read Wolfe in 1943. He is not an adolescent writer. ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ con tinues to be the book of Amer ican adolescence, but Wolfe's range went way beyond that; he could capture sickness and death and loneliness as no oth er writer. I'm sympathetic to a lot of the things people use to pan him. He was interested in life, and this was the import ant thing, not the structure of his novels. To apply the" stand ards of Henry James or of Flau bert is unfair. The novel was his best form, but he spilled out of that even. He is essen tially like Whitman in that.” Wolfe and Fitzgerald were polar opposites in most respects, but they seem to respond to similar treatment. Wolfe* by his own admission was a “putter inner” who attempted to cap ture life by recording as much of it as possible; Fitzgerald tended to be something of a "leaver-outer,” who exercised careful selection of material. "I welcome the difference,” Mr. Turnbull said. Mr. Turn bull became a biographer by a circuitous route to say the least. He was born in Baltimore under such circumstances that Fitz gerald became a neighbor dur ing his boyhood. But he had no thought of using his knowledge of the novelist until decades lat er. He took an undergraduate degree in English and French at Princeton, then served in World War II in the Navy. Picking up the academic skein again, he took a doctorate in European history from Har vard, worked in Europe for a few years and became a teach er in humanities at Massachu setts Institute of Technology. “But I had always been in terested in writing of some sort,” he said. “I was interested in a broad- rest’s work with ladies’ fash ions brought him into contact with Nell. Their marriage mark ed the beginning of a profitable association: what Nell could de sign, Demorest could market. A natural promoter, Demorest recognized the advertising ad vantages in publishing one's own fashion magazine. Conse quently, <Madame Demorest’s ‘‘Mirror of Fashions” appeared in 1860, Both Mr. and Mrs. Demorest wrote articles for their publication, but the most important contributor and staff member was Mrs. June Croly, affectionately known as Jenny June. Like Mr. Demoresit, Jenny June valued the power of words for promoting sales of concrete objects as weH as philosophies: she couk} write glowingly of fte Demorest weighted hoops which kept milady’s skirts bal aned, never allowing them to sway too far backward or for ward; she could also write scathingly about women who failed to assume their wi'ely du ties, married men who behaved as though they were still sin gle. and young ladies who felt that life owed them a knight in armor. (Small wonder that as tee magazine’s circulation in creased. Jenny June found her desk covered with letters, some condemning, sane praising, and some requesting advice.) Bote Mm. Demorest and Jen ny June advocated jobs for women and regretted that many females married simply be cause they had no other means of support. That women could hold responsible positions and ’ "r _ 1 jfj c : ,v :< \ ■ - 1 ' -' r ’ *.• -.• . :/ ... if Biographer Andrew Turnbull ... In UNC’s North Carolina Room er kind of writing than in specialized academic writing. I was a historian by temperament and training. In casting around for something I could write about, I thought of Fitzgerald, and wrote a little reminiscence of him. The New Yorker ac cepted it right off and published it in 1956. I got really excited and did a second reminiscence, and the New Yorker took it too. “I had always wanted to do a biography of Fitzgerald, but either I was not old enough or literate enough, or then Arthur Mizener was already working on one of him.” Still, Fitzgerald stayed with him, although Mizener’s “The Far Side of Paradise,” Budd Sehulberg’s fictionalized ac count and Sheila Graham’s “Be loved Infidel” all came out in the years he was pondering the problem. Finally, one day, he simply walked off the streets of New York and into the office of Har old Ober, Fitzgerald’s agent and long-standing friend. Mr. Turn bull sold Mr. Ober on the idea, and Mr. Ober secured the co- ODeration of both Scribner’s and Fitzgerald’s daughter. During the ensuing four years Mr. Turnbull interviewed 450 peo ple who had known Fitzgerald, and wrote to several hundred others. At the same time he earn their own way hod been demonstrated by Mrs. Demorest, Jenny June, and their contem poraries: Mrs. Vincenzo Botta, once secretary to Henry Clay, now a lecturer and writer; Kate Field, a columnist for the Tribune; Mrs. Mary Livermore, editor of “The Agitator” and “The Woman’s Journal:” Eliz abeth Blackwell end Mary Ja cobi, physicians; and Susan King, realtor. Through Susan King and Mrs. Demorest, the Mandarin Tea Company was founded to pro vide a means whereby indigent women could support them selves: only financially handi capped ladies were allowed to sell the “superb Mandarin Tea,” which, of course, was highly touted in the “Mirror of Fash ions.” To read "Crusades and Crin olines” is to read about the fashions and the prominent peo ple who wore them from 1840 to 1898: President Tylers bride to-be who wore “walking dress es” from Lamberts and recom mended that store via a printed placard that hung casually from her wrist, as one might have carried a reticule; the Empress Eugenie whose gowns set the style for the season; Mrs. Tom Thumb, bride of P. T. Barn urn’s 1 midget, whose wedding gown and trousseau were designed by Mrs. Demorest, The Demorests’ magazine be came a potpourri of essays, an t nouncements. advertisements, and any other information that tee staff regarded as beiug of Interest to the family, forth 6 read everything Fitzgerald had published and as many of the Fitzgerald papers and letters as he could lay hands on. “By the end of it, I was saturated with Fitzgerald.” “I was really reading Fitz gerald for the first time, I’d never really read him before I got onto his biography, but my interest remained on the man, and I didn’t stop for critical analyses of his writing. The in terest, the unknown lay in his character.” The book itself is actually that portion of an iceberg above wat er. Beneath it lies 80 per cent of the total bulk: research, “an endless pursuing of endless bits of information.” If one accepts Mr. Turnbull’s notions about biography, it should be read for pleasure as well as for knowledge. “It should have some of the attributes of fiction color, character, emotion. Insofar os I can, I try to bring that in.” Mr. Turnbull does not know what the fruit of his labors on Wolfe will be, but it is altogeth er possible that he will provide us with the first view of him in which it is not necessary to look through Wolfe’s own eyes. If Mr. Turnbull sticks to his self-imposed schedule, that view will be available sometime in 1966. magazine was often read by the male as well as the female members of the family. In a single issue one might find colorful pictures of the latest gowns, corsets, cloaks, and bonnets; an essay by Thom as Hardy or Louisa May Al cott; a poem by Edgar Allen Poe; the lyrics to some pop ular songs; dance lessons; so cial notes; and pictures of Mr. Demorest’s watch guard, “to foil pickpockets who attempt to Relieve gentlemen of their pock et watches.” No issue was complete with out a dress pattern. Printed on sheer paper, these patterns were the brainchild of Mrs. Dem orest and the manifestation of Mr. Demorest’s mathematical ability. He had figured out the proper proportions for “sized” patterns, and these were intro duced in the late 1850’s when the sewing machine was win ning widespread acclaim. (Al though Butterick latex entered the field, the Demorests were the acknowledged inventors of the printed paper patterns.) By having fashion “spotters" in Paris, Mrs. Demorest obtained the latest information about styles, complete with drawings of the season’s outfits. Mr. Dem orest then designed the paper patterns which delighted the seemtresses who, despite their distance from a fashion center, could outfit their prominent cus tomers in “the latest thing from Paris." Reading about the Demorests, one learns about the New York of this era, for an account of The Complex Art Os Ghost- Writing By JIM BISHOP He’s an old friend and he stop ed at the house to talk books. His name is Gerold Frank, a tall, bland, bald man of 55 who looks like a roll-on deodorant in a Brooks suit. Frank wrote the Lil lian Roth book, “I’ll Cry Tomor row;” the Diana Barrymore book, “Too Much Too Soon;’’ the Sheilah Graham book, “Beloved Infidel:” and Zsa Zsa Gabor’s “My Story.” Frank has written others, but these four sold 6,000,000 copies. We sat at the bar sipping cof fee and listening to the soft zither music of Ruth Welcome, and he kept jiggling an unlighted cigarette between his lips. I offered a light, but he said no thanks, he has been living on unlighted cigarettes for years. Never smokes; just jiggles until it falls apart. This is a sensitive, sentimen tal man. Once, when he worked for the Associated Press, he took a roll of their ticker machine pa per, and wrote a 60-foot single - spaced letter to Lillian Cogen of Cleveland. She read twenty feet ol it and fell asleep. In the morn ing, the maid came in and swept forty feet of it into the garbage can. He married Miss Cogen and now', 31 years later, they have two married children and he writes about the heartaches of other people, Lillian Roth and Mike Connolly had had a whack at “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” when Gerold Frank was called in to write it again. It was a good break for all concerned, because Gerold found out that if he open ed the sessions by uttering the magic words: “There must be no secrets between us. You must tell me everything,” that the ladies smiled shyly and told every thing. Well, almost. There is more to it than that. Frank has empathy. He loves peo ple. Innately, he, too, is shy and he lives wild, garish lives through his subjects. He doesn't forget them when the book is done. It must be ten years since he wrote “I’ll Cry Tomorrow,” but, a year and a half ago. when Lillian Roth opened in “1 Can Get It For You Wholesale,” who sat in Sardi's waiting for the morning papers? Who read the reviews to her, and became misty-eyed when they turned out to be good? The Jack Paar of the writers, that's who. Once, when Miss Roth was deep in alcoholic despair, she rented a room in a tall hotel and tried to jump out the window. She tried three times, and fell to the floor. “My God,” she sobbed, “I failed at this too.” She always keeps small dogs. “They are the only thing more helpless than herself,” Mr. Frank says. He has personal feelings about all of his women. He feels, for example, that Diana Barrymore saw herself as an ugly, bow-leg ged, yellow-skinned daughter of a handsome man. When she drank, she walked leaning forward like a child on six-inch heels. She en joyed taunting her husband about other men. Why? She enjoyed vio lence because, when she was lit tle, after violence came love. “I am convinced,” Gerold says, “that Diana was not a true al coholic and she wasn’t on pills. Yet, the night she died she was their activities reflects the commercial and cultural growth of the city: they heard Jenny Lind sing; they visited the Crys tal Palace, modeled after the one in London; they discussed the gold crisis confronting Presi dent Grant; they dined at Del monico’s; they saw Sarah Bern hardt make her American de but; they helped establish the first woman’s club in New York, the Sorosis Club; they witness ed the development of such companies as Brooks Brothers, Lord and Taylor, Gorham, and Sloane. Ishbel Ross has presented history through her biography of' two fashion designers. She has shown how the fashion world was affected by the Panic of 1857 .and how the Demorests noted the decrease in the num ber of fashionable ladies who were able to change their ward robe with the seasons. The Civil War saw few “Southern ladies shopping in New York, and the Demorests were hard put to supply the Northern women with black mourning garments: it seemed that everyone on the street had lost someone in the war; the black mourning cloak was übiquitous. For all its emphasis on ladies’ (rear, Miss Ross’s book has larger merits. It would be both fair and descriptive to call it the first instance of his tory re-created by cut-out pat tern —a graphic recreation of the flavor of a time too near the present yet to have been ex plored, but remote enough to excite curiosity. taking antabuse to stop drinking, seconal to sleep, dexedrine to stay awake and she was drinking gin.” He delivered the eulogy at her funeral. Sheilah Graham writes a Hol lywood newspaper column, but asked Frank to write her biogra phy. Her great love was the novel ist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and their now-and-then romance became a big part of the look. Miss Graham was a London orphan. Gerold crossed his legs over two addi tional bar stools and said he thinks of her as the little match girl who dreamed of fame and glory and literally forced them to come true. In away. Gerold was the ghost ly boy friend of these women, without kitchen privileges. When Miss Graham told him about a Sunday morning scene with Scott Fitzgerald, the writer went to the spot, high in the Hollywood Hills, and sat there with the lady on a Sunday morning. When Miss Bar rymore said that she had a lov er to whom she ran at the top of a bridge, arms outfung, Frank stood at the top of the bridge and re-enacted it. Zsa Zsa Gabor, a Hungarian, heard the speech about “tell me all” and she burst into laughter. “No woman." she said, "tell all. Not all.” Her name was Sari, but her daughter couldn’t pronounce it. ii came out Zsa Zsa.” We have all been afflicted with baby talk ever since. Gerold thinks of Miss Gabor, not as a glamorous woman, but as a humming dynamo. She is here, there, everywhere, all at the same time. Writing her bio graphy Frank found, was like riding a diamond-studded carou sel sidesaddle. “She is always a step ahead of other women,” he said, wrenching another cold cigarette. “Just before sack dres ses came into Style Zsa Zsa wore sack dresses. When wigs became popular, Gabor was ready to quit wearing them.” In one afternoon and evening, according to Gerold, Miss Gabor will rehearse a song, answer 20 phone calls, tell part of her life story, water the garden, read press clippings from Spain, Hun gary, France and the U. S., take the dogs to the doctor, undress, bathe, dress, appear on TV and show up at a night club looking dewy fresh. His favorite book is a new one called “The Deed,” It’s about two Israelis who assissinated Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in Egypt. They were kids and they went to the gallows singing “Hati kvah.” The Egyptian hangman broke down weeping. Gerold Frank almost chokes talking about it. He has heart. And tenacity. I was afraid to ask if he’d given up looking for the remaining 40 feet of that letter. Committee Will Fill Board Seat The Orange Democratic Exe cutive Committee will elect a member to the County Board of Education at a called meeting on Oct. 22. Die election is being held to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Charles Walker. Mr. Walker has moved to Edge combe County. The Executive Committee will meet at 8 p.m. at the County Courthouse in Hillsboro. The in terim appointment will last until the next general election. Use the Weekly’s Classified Ad section for best results. 9 CURRENT BEST SELLERS Fiction 1. The Group . , . McCarthy 2. The Shoes of the Fish erman . . . West 3. Caravans . . . Michener Non-flctkm 1. The American Way of Death . . . Mitford I J. F. K.: The Man and the Myth . . . Lasky 3. The Fire Next Time . . . Baldwin WILLS BOOK STORE Skon Mowtey, Ifcarodey Friday eights til 9 Page 5-B