Books

A passle of men have come along with a passle of books concerning the arts of the gullet, and the season of cold days and long nights seems a good time to report on them. Accordingly, we spent a couple of jolly weekends cooking, eating and drinking -- all in the line of work, of course -- and can report that the following merit your attention:

Frank Schoonmaker, international authority on the vintner's art, combines his expertise on this heady subject with his past experience as a travel writer to give us, in layman's lingo, a thorough exegesis of The Wines of Germany (Hastings House, $3.50), a book which can turn the veriest Coke drinker into a connoisseur, if he will but dally with it long enough. More importantly, the wine drinker who wants to know the origins, properties, quality and lore of the Teutonic nectars will find this guided tour valuably instructive, particularly the section on how to buy and store these wines. ... Patrick Gavin Duffy's bibbers' bible, The Official Mixer's Manual (Garden City, $2.50) has been revised and enlarged by James A. Beard, and a handsome, handy Baedeker of barmanship it is. Twelve hundred potions, potations and decoctions are authoritatively anatomized, and the up-to-dateness and fearlessness of this tippler's Hoyle is attested by the recipe for Martini-on-the-rocks, which calls for only a couple of dashes of Vermouth to go with the ice and gin. There's a new section on wines, too, and a vintage chart by Frank Schoonmaker.

Some years ago, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings delighted her readers with Cross Creek Cookery, a celebration of her Florida stamping ground, her garden, her cuisine and her friends, with regional recipes sprinkled throughout. Now Edward Harris Heth, previously known to most of us as a novelist, does much the same thing (and quite as felicitously) for his native Wisconsin's good earth, good neighbors and good eating. His title, The Wonderful World of Cooking (Simon & Schuster, $3.95) doesn't do this delightful chronicle of four seasons of bucolic gustation and healthy sensuality justice, but it does correctly suggest that there are solid ranks of ambrosial recipes to be sampled, quite a few to be found nowhere else. ... Peter Gray's The Mistress Cook (Oxford, $6.50) is, we suppose, a cook book by definition, but it bears about as much relationship to those useful tomes as epic poetry does to nursery rhymes. For this is a book to read for pleasure and edification, as well as straightforward instruction. Gray, besides being a distinguished scientist, is a gourmet's gourmet and a hell of a delightful writer to boot. His dissertations on menu planning in terms of flavor contrasts (pungent, smooth, dry, aromatic), his disquisitions on herbs and spices, his layman's guide to menu French, are not only delightful reading but provide basic information we've never seen expounded elsewhere. The recipes themselves are gourmet-purist masterpieces.

It is entirely possible to be a pretty good reporter and a pretty bad writer, but the reverse of this is impossible: a writer is primarily a reporter; and he is other things -- poet, wit, philosopher -- only secondarily. And so we have Truman Capote -- delicate delineator of murky, omnisexual mysticism -- reporting clearly yet comically the adventures of a Porgy and Bess troupe in the U.S.S.R. in a book that takes its title from the words of a Soviet Ministry of Culture official: "When the cannons are heard, the muses are silent; when the cannons are silent, The Muses Are Heard" (Random House, $3). We see, through Capote's eyes, a young Russian reach hungrily for an offered stack of U.S. paperbacks, only to break away, mumbling, "I have not the time"; a cast member boning up on Russian from an old Army handbook ("Awr-ga-nih-ra ra-neen-v-pa-lavih-yee: I have been wounded in the privates"); Soviet haute cuisine (Yogurt and raspberry soda); a slang-slinging Russky named Josef "Call Me Joe" Adamov ("Gimme a buzz you come to Moscow, you wanta meet some cute kids") and much more -- including Capote's fellow reporters, Leonard (New York Post) Lyons and Ira (Reader's Digest) Wolfert, who, by dint of Mr. C's merciless reporting of their words and deeds, come across like a pair of prize jackasses. It's a fascinating book.

The Day the Money Stopped (Double-day, $3.75) by Brendan Gill is the kind of plotless novel in which discerning characterizations and brittle, incisive, sophisticated dialogue constitute reader appeal in lieu of a story. A rattling of skeletons is heard as family members gather for a reading of their wealthy father's will. The wastrel son who has been cut off without a cent slugs it out with his pompous stuffed-shirt brother and in the process much of the dirty family linen is washed. There is also a pretty secretary who works for the stuffed shirt and is intrigued by the black sheep. Every sentence is polished to a high gloss, phrases are twisted and turned with admirable skill, and the mordant irony that makes stuffed-shirt righteousness seem laughable and wasteful licentiousness seem admirable is extremely amusing. The detergent effect of the dialogue makes the dirty linen sparkle indeed.

Since its publication in 1955, The Encyclopedia of Jazz (Horizon, $10) by Playboy's Jazz Editor Leonard Feather has attained the status of Scripture among those with a bent toward the Jazzological arts. Cannily, Feather and publishers have decided to issue an annual Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz (Horizon, $3.95) to take up the yearly slack and add some new features as well. The '56 Yearbook is brimming with fresh facts and figures: 150 biographies of come-lately jazzmen (the original Encyclopedia gave 1065 bios of the standard casts), a knowledgeable take-out on what's happening in Jazz, a musician's musician Poll (that tabs closely with the results of Playboy's own readers' poll, see page 19 of this issue), a listing of the best LPs of the year, and much, much more absorbing, swinging information. You'll be hearing from this hip, versatile musicologist in the upcoming pages of Playboy.