The Alleys of Marrakesh
Potpourri
by .Atlantic-Little, Brown, $3.75.
Mr. Mayne is an Englishman who went to Morocco to write a novel and immerse himself in a culture that seemed to him more satisfying than the European way of life. A sensitive, good-humored, and witty observer, he has given us a picturesque and diverting account of the year he spent in the native quarter of Marrakesh. His diligent efforts to learn Arabic soon enabled him to achieve communication. The friends he made are a captivating bunch — ‘Abdeslem, the charcoal seller, victim of the evil eye; ‘Aysha, the affectionate ex-prostitute who gave parties at which her guests’ mint tea was spiked with drugs; Idrees, a simsar or fixer who would negotiate a deal in anything; and other raffish type’s. Mr. Mayne’s book is full of comic conversations; amusing and bizarre incidents; the sights and sounds and smells of Marrakesh. It has a sharp and pleasing flavor that is all its own.
i: six nonlectures by e. e. cumming. Harvard University Press, $3.00.
Six marvelously unconventional lectures delivered at Harvard. Loosely speaking, they constitute an aesthetic self-portrait and a definition of Mr. Cummings’s “stance" as a writer. Full of originality, high spirits, and aphoristic dicta, they express a credo of intense individualism. The central motifs are the importance of feeling ("You’ve got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being”) and “the eternal fight of selfhood against mobism.”Mr. Cummings pokes fun at censorship, Puritanism, the Reader’s Digest. He quotes from his works and from the great poets — Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth. He appears to be having a fine time and so did I.