Word: chapters
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
There is a strong military cast to Soka Gakkai: ten families constitute a squad; six squads a company; ten companies a local district; and 30 districts a regional chapter that is directly responsible to headquarters, which is governed by a Supreme Commander with six appointed aides. The faith is propagated through weekly meetings of squad members, where there are long group discussions of the personal problems of members and how to overcome them...
...book has 96 pages and 47 chapters, but more than half the space is blank. Chapter 47 is titled "Lord Chesterfield's Last Letter to His Son," and consists entirely of this message: "Dear Junior-Get lost-Dad." But as book stores closed last week, 42,500 copies had been sold, and Jack Douglas' My Brother Was an Only Child (Dutton; $2.50) made the bestseller lists for the ninth straight week...
Sick? The Douglas humor more often than not is of the "sick" variety-or, as a colleague put it, "his jokes need Blue Cross." One chapter is called "India, or Put the Cobra Back in the Basket, Mother -There'll Be No Show Tonight." Another begins: "Early this morning, somewhere in between my orange juice and my No. 1 concubine, I got to thinking about Toynbee Doob . . . He had an extra pinkie on each hand. When Toynbee drank tea he was the politest bastard in the county...