Word: ruark
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...author-husband Stuart Cloete had completed a ten-month cross-continent trek researching his recent book, The African Giant (TIME, Oct. 3). The tone of The Nylon Safari is prevailingly lighthearted, the pace is readably headlong, and there is notably little spilling of blood or guts. Indeed, the Hemingway-Ruark axis of hairy-chested literary Tarzans may be somewhat miffed at the casual kiss-off Tiny Cloete gives their favorite outdoor sport. The whole safari business, U.S.-born Author Cloete strongly suggests, is about as rugged nowadays as camping out with a Boy Scout troop. From the time the Cloetes...
...business which talks poor almost from habit, there was little to be heard but complacency. For once, some of the gravy was trickling down to the bookstores. The book clubs were booming, Hollywood was paying fancy prices for books again ($300,000 for Robert Ruark's Something of Value, $250,000 for MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville, a $1,000,000 deal for Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar). High-priced, quality paperbacks were having the year of their lives...
Something of Value, by Robert Ruark, was probably the most tastelessly written book of the year (unless it was Norman Mailer's The Deer Park). Around a hackneyed story, and leaning heavily on the writings of others about the Mau Mau troubles in Kenya, Columnist Ruark turned a determinedly lurid story into a top bestseller...
...Real Problem. Cloete's observations of the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya make writers like Robert Ruark (Something of Value) sound like Tarzan fans...
...Hemingway imitator who has made two or three safaris to Africa in the last few years, Author Ruark has obviously heard a lot of talk over the campfires and hotel bars. He has also looked over the published authorities - one of his characters quotes whole pages from Negley Farson's Last Chance in Africa. Every thing that he reports may well have happened. But the real tragedy of black-white fratricide in Africa is hopelessly drowned in gore. Something of Value is a novel without taste or distinction...