New World Writing

The New American Library, $50.

The first issue of New World Writing demonstrated that, priced at 50 cents, a collection of serious writing with an accent on youth and a voice or two from the avant-garde could sell well over a hundred thousand copies. The second number of what is to be a continuing project has now appeared. Its most impressive offering is an extract from a novel in progress by Dylan Thomas which, though a bit untidy, hints at great brilliance. The short story by James Jones is unimpressive; Shirley Jackson and Norman Mailer do better. There is some promising fiction by relative newcomers — James Baldwin, Osborn Duke, Samuel Selvon. Picasso’s play, “Desire Trapped by the Tail,” is freakish, but it was sound editing to let us have a look at it. The extract from The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet is far too brief to give any idea of whether, as some claim, he is a genius. Among the poets are Peter Viereck, Harvey Breit, Roy Fuller, and Eugenio Montale. Auden’s essay on Grimm and Andersen is first-rate, and there is an amusing, subtle, and altogether devastating critique of Henry Miller by Alwyn Lee.