Books

In The Waist-High Culture (Harper, $4), Thomas Griffith is a man concerned about the squeeze play which is turning American life into a sandwich of uniform mediocrity. "We are in danger of becoming a vibrating and mediocre people. Who can say of us that goodness and generosity inevitably triumph? That talent prevails and honesty pays? Who would say that quality is in any phase of our culture outracing the spreading debasement? Have we sold our souls for a mess of pottage that goes snap, crackle and pop? . . . We have left the dissemination of culture in the hands of those who feel no ultimate duty beyond profit . . ." While Mr. Griffith stabs away at much-worn windmills–the poverty of television, our laggard stance in the deadly race with Russia, the dollar obsession, our refusal to understand foreign nations–he is no cliché-lover, and the book shines with hard thinking and careful writing. Unlike lesser men who have stood on the same soapbox, he offers no three-, six- or ten-point program for the sure cure of all our ills, since of course no such panacea is possible. He writes as one who can denounce the notion that all men are created equal as a piece of fatuous nonsense and at the same time demonstrate an abiding, love-like respect for all humanity. Waist-High is a book that should leave a mark on the land.

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A mermaid, a metal dragon, a man with a literal hole in his head, Pablo Picasso in person: this is only a partial cast of the characters who inhabit Ray Bradbury's latest collection, A Medicine for Melancholy (Doubleday, $3.75). Menace, humor and gentle whimsey walk side by side in what well may be the best batch of Bradbury to date. The medicine for melancholy, if you're curious, is simply sex. Two of the niftiest yarns first saw public print in Playboy.

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The sixth bag of Peanuts from cartoonist Charles M. Schulz offers, shelled and salted, further episodes in the little lives of blanket-queer Linus, fiendish Lucy, bantam Beethoven buff Schroeder, stoic Charlie Brown and uncanine canine Snoopy who, after being offered "a whole piece of popcorn," responds with four panels of "Chomp Chomp Chomp Crunch Crunch Chomp Chomp Crunch," inspiring the observation: "If it were anyone else, I'd think it was careful chewing–with him I know it's sarcasm!" All goes to show that You're Out of Your Mind, Charlie Brown! (Rinehart, $1).

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Richard Lewisohn's A History of Sexual Customs (Harper, $5.95) is an exhaustive, intelligent probe into the acts and attitudes that have attended man's most constant activity since the beginning of time. It is also a penetrating socio-politico-religious take-out on the ups and downs of male-female dominance and the gradual emergence of woman from chattel to chippie to chairman of the board. Fascinating facts abound: for instance, Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad in the Eighth Century, holds the world's record for concubines – some 400 odd, under one minaret. Never does Dr. Lewisohn offer moralizing or dusty-dry preachments; instead he takes the lack of the fascinated observer. Don't look for sensationalism, just solidly good scholarship and an eminently readable rundown on the most famous three-letter word in history. Thirty-two pages of photos and 16 line drawings are included.

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With The Optimist (Little, Brown, $4.50), Herbert Gold moves into the front rank of today's novelists.'He's chosen a theme germane to our culture: what he calls "the American blues of success – of getting, taking, holding, keeping and not feeling the good of desire – the stomach-trouble, allergy, angina blues," To project this theme, he counterposes two crucial periods in the life of his hero, Burr Fuller: his ebullient youth as a college student and GI, and a time in his manhood when he's made to recognize his moral bankruptcy. We first meet Burr at 17 – an eager, ambitious near-extrovert, who's convinced he'll get everything he desires. As a college sophomore, "scalded with first love and first ideas," his outlook is unchanged. We hear it in his shallow arguments with his somber, inner-directed friend. Mike Murray: see it in his callow rushing of socially approved, narcissistic, technically virgin Laura – in the way he sexually uses, then rejects, a simple-hearted "townie." Typically, a base betrayal by his fraternity brothers teaches him nothing; nor does the greater betrayal of the war, in which his dreams of glory fade into the many faces of death. When we next see him, at 35, he seems to have it made. He's a rising lawyer, a two-car, two-kid, wife-in-analysis (Laura, of course), picture-window suburbanite – and now a Congressional candidate. But during the hectic weeks of the campaign, events relentlessly force him to face himself. He struggles to avoid it, and the tortuous trajectory of these struggles constitutes the novel's climax. The author has piercingly anatomized what might be called the "dis-organization man" – the man who sees all the perils of other-directedness, but is sure that he-can escape them, that he can be both powerful and uncorrupted. Gold's compassionate insight and accomplished craftsmanship transcend the schematism and bring it all violently to life. Most important, in Burr Fuller he has created a character who is perhaps less typical than George B. Babbitt, but no less significant, and who, like him, may well come to stand as the image of an era. Pivotal portions of the book originally appeared in Playboy.