Such Darling Dodos
by .Morrow, $2.50.
Mr. Wilson’s is one of the most subtly and economically destructive talents in the short-story business. Earnest-minded souls might object that it isn’t worth creating unpleasant characters just for the purpose of sticking pins into them; but it can also be argued that sticking pins into human egotism, humbug, and assorted nastinesses is a highly edifying enterprise. At any rate, Wilson’s pinsticking is wonderfully expert and maliciously amusing. His victims, in this second brilliant colletion of short stories, include a bunch of parasitic relatives, an unctuous proselytizer, the precious editors of an encyclopedia, and a fatuously snobbish ex-officer who has come down in the world.
A few of the stories are a departure from satire one deals with the hallucination of a middle-aged woman; one is a tense picture of a childish mind and has a gruesome trick ending. Occasionally compassion creeps in.