Word: busches
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CALIFORNIA STREET, by Niven Busch (377 pp.; Simon & Schusfer; $4.50), suggests that a subject too long neglected by writers' conferences is epigraphman-ship. Nothing subdues a reader more thoroughly than a cowcatcher of another author's prose or poetry, bolted to the front of a book or chapter. And no novelist now working is better equipped to conduct a seminar on the technique than Niven (Duel in the Sun) Busch. His current novel, about a moneyed San Francisco clan, has ten epigraphs-one at the beginning of each chapter. A Latin proverb assures doubters that the author...
...epigraphs can be embarrassing, especially if they are better than the prose that follows. Busch rashly prefaces a chapter that deals with a child's illegitimacy with Ring Lardner's grand old gag about the bumpkin who remarks, on learning that his friend was born out of wedlock, "That's mighty pretty country around there." Lardner's act is hard to follow, and by comparison, Busch's novel is as solemn as a convocation of bishops. Its most egregious epigraphy comes before the climactic scene. The book's central figure, a bombastic newspaper publisher...
...Author Busch blows lengthily but achieves only a slight turbulence. Anchylus Saxe, his publisher, is a routinely drawn old thunderer. His women, drunk or sober, are the four-martini kind-it would take that many snorts at a cocktail party to make them endurable. But for old newspaper hands who happen on the book, there is at least one reward-the characterization of a press lord so noble that he allows his own gossip columnist to malign a much-loved member of his family, because, by God, the facts are right...
...settled in Philadelphia, where Jaime attended Curtis Institute of Music and studied with famed Teacher Ivan Galamian. In his rare public appearances Jaime astounded critics with his virtuoso technique and sweetly purling tone (TIME, May 21, 1956). "If you closed your eyes," wrote one critic, "it could have been Busch and Serkin...
...Nouveau is just beginning its vogue. New York's Musum of Modern Art plans an enormous exhibit of the school this summer and similar shows elsewhere will surely follow. Aside from the pleasant but confusing inclusion of Munch and Lautrec, the Busch-Reisinger's well-chosen exhibit gives one a full picture of the Art Nouveau--its frequent failures as well as its undeniable successes...