Word: book-of-the-month
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Nibelung Nonsense. British Historian Trevor-Roper, whose book is the August co-choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club, picks up the pieces where Gisevius drops them and reconstructs a Wagnerian drama of the suicide "love death" of Hitler and Eva Braun. His evidence, gathered from documents and survivors, is circumstantial but pretty convincing. From the Führer-bunker, deep under the Reich Chancellery garden, the war "was directed by somnambulist decisions," he says. Russian shells crashed down overhead; Berlin was almost surrounded; in G.I. slang, the doomed party leaders were getting "bunker happy." Hitler himself deteriorated rapidly...
...Verge" of Significance. Warren could think of 14 writers (half of them poets) who, he thought, were doing "good work." Book-of-the-Month Club Judge Marquand, whose job is to find books he can extol, finds that "the older writers have said about all they can be expected to say. The younger writers have something inside themselves that's new and different . . . . They aren't trying to write like Hemingway . . . . Lately things have been picking up . . . . Our literature is just on the verge of getting significant." He singled out as the best of the young writers Jean...
...main flaws are, actually, those of the novel. The main difference is that while Frederic Wakeman had a Message, and to the detriment of his novel, spelled it out in overly large letters for Book-of-the-Month Club buyers, the moviemakers have felt impelled almost to club his point home to any cretin who wanders into the theater. Despite this fact, you will find yourself in sympathy with the bright young man who makes his way in the "game" with a front compounded of sincere ties and a fetching spiel. You will find it not at all difficult...
...over the U.S. will soon be taking to passages like this. The prediction is safely made, since the authors of both these books, and their publishers, know what they are up to. Author Shellabarger's Captain from Castile sold over 1,250,000. Thomas B. Costain is the man "who gave you The Black Rose" (sales 1,344,000). Now each gives the Renaissance a lush and wordy going-over. The Moneyman, Book-of-the-Month Club special "midsummer" choice,* is 15th Century France. Prince of Foxes, Literary Guild choice for August, is 16th Century Italy...
...book trade's midsummer, or muggier-than-usual, season has begun. Mrs. Murphy, the July choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club, dutifully touted by B.-of-M.'s Bookpicker Clifton Fadiman as "compassionate" and "powerful," is a clumsy, cliche-sodden version of The Lost Weekend. The problem of the alcoholic in society is as grave as ever, 'but The Story of Mrs. Murphy swamps it with glycerine tears and marshmallow emotions...