Books

Six characters in search of sobriety are the major dramatis personnae of The Twelfth Step (Scribner's, $4.95), by Thomas Randall, a pseudonymous first novel of close to 600 pages filled with drunkenness, paraldehyde, loneliness, booze, despair, vice, drunkenness, abortion, seduction, drunkenness, love, rage, hate, drunkenness, booze, sickness, depravity, more booze, more drunkenness – and throughout, the heroic and anonymous (natch) work of Alcoholics Anonymous, whose 12 steps to sobriety do rescue most of the book's initially helpless sots. The writing is impassioned, wooden and unbelievable, but despite this fact the net effect on the reader – perhaps because morbid interest can sustain the attention over the duller passages – is one of growing concern and involvement. Because no harrowing detail is spared, and because the author is himself an alcoholic (in AA's book there's no such thing as an ex-alcoholic: if you've got the sickness you can arrest it permanently by never taking a drink, but you can't cure it), a true sense of the horrors and triumphs of fighting dypso-mania emerges from the volume. We have before us a list of 19 previous fictional and biographical excursions into alcoholism. None achieves the unself-pitying, unromanticized, understanding but never self-justifying insight of The Twelfth Step

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The Book of the Earth(Appleton-Century-Crofts,$12.50) is the fourth and final volume of a series edited by our own A. C. Spectorsky (when does this guy sleep?). Like its three predecessors – which concern themselves with Sea, Mountains, Sky – Earth attempts to present, in anthology form, the best writing of the ages on its topic. Like its forerunners, too, it's fat and handsome, heavily illustrated, and ranges further than the limitations of its single theme might lead one to suspect. The scope is from the classics to the moderns, from scientific inquiry to mystical rumination, from profound philosophizing to humor. The editor's annotations and commentary help to unify the whole. A nifty gifty for the fireside prosetaster.

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If it's Thurber you want, his Alarms & Diversions (Harper, $3.95) provides a treasure trough for your wallowing pleasure. This wonderfully balanced collection of his writings and drawings delivers great chunks of the master: short stories, essays, straight reporting and here and there, a serious piece. "If my other books are lost or burned," Thurber states, "this one will represent well enough what I have been up to since I came of age, roughly about 20 years ago." Readers who like to laugh and know how to think will agree that this is choice Thurber.

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In all probability, the half million and more souls who bought Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead will now devour her Atlas Shrugged (Random House, $6.95). Though the background and characters are completely different, the theme is the same – and to a rationalist it is a beguiling one: that those who believe in reality believe in themselves and live for themselves, without sacrificing to any man or asking any man to sacrifice for them; and that this is morally right. Their happiness and successful way of life is threatened only when they allow themselves to become the victims of those who would exploit them – the people who cannot or will not create for themselves and who exist only by courtesy of those who can and do. These are the ones who recognize the Communist thesis of "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." This idea is abhorrent to Miss Rand, as she makes abundantly clear in a novel that's longer than the Bible. The background is big business – Taggart Transcontinental, Rearden Steel, D'Anconia Copper. The characters are either giants or moral pygmies – the doers and creators, or the looters who batten on them. Finally there is "the destroyer," who lures away, one at a time (and no one knows whither; they simply disappear), all the creators, composers, men and women of ability who think and work for themselves. In the resulting chaos we have as exciting a denouement as any mystery fan could demand. Before then, however, we have the three loves of Dagny Taggart, each of them an individual worthy of her steel (or in this case, her Railroad, which is as fundamental a love with her). She stands with one of them to fight both the looters and the destroyer, until she is made to realize that the destroyer has always been unequivocally on her side. There is no lack of drama here – even melodrama, if you wish – and there is also sex, philosophy, a tremendous vitality, and an ethical position that makes the reader either a passionate defender or an equally passionate vilifier of this monster-sized book.

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For sheer magnificence of appearance, authority of text and completeness of coverage, we've yet to see anything even approaching The Noble Grapes and the Great Wines of France, by Andre L. Simon(McGraw-Hill, $15). We are among that segment of the American population which holds the view that you don't have to know the pedigree of every grape that goes into your glass of vino, that there's no cause to blush if you can't reel off the best years for Clos de la Commaraine, and that it's your privilege to like New York State champagnes. But we also hold that the study – and the drinking – of the noble vintages of France are richly rewarding, and we can't think of a better, handsomer guide to both than this volume.

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Three yok-studded tomes from over the waves deserve your delighted attention: cartoonist Ronald Searle's outrageously funny Merry England, Etc.(Knopf, $3.95), in which this Britisher's madly satirical pen whacks away at most every institution, manner and moral held dear by man or beast; and a grotesque gallery of guffaws awaits the reader on every page . . . British bred, too, is the pungent The Pick of Punch (Dutton,$4.95), a loony yearbook crammed, as always, with spools, take-offs, mockeries, mutterings and cartoons from the volatile brains of such Punch drunk regulars as Paul Dehn, Alex Atkinson, Claud Cockburn and, of course, Ronald Searle . . . From the Continent comes C'est La Vie: The Best of Chaval (Citadel,$2.95), the first collection of France's top cartoonist to reach our shores. Usually eschewing the crutch of a caption, Chaval's bubbling wit spills over the dikes of sanity and floods the reader with a merrily oddball look at La Vie. All or any of the three volumes would make winning Christmas gifts.