ROBERT FROMAN’S THE NERVE OF SOME ANIMALS (Lippincott, $4.95) is an unpretentious collection of stories about the unexpected doings of various beasts. The stories are remarkable because true, and the author has solved, with admirable firmness of mind, the problem of what to do with the fine episode that, unfortunately, didn’t happen. He first tells it, and then, after the reader has enjoyed it, confides that it is a lie. He also includes a couple of items, like the bear in the bunkhouse, that may have started as plain fact but have pretty clearly been improved by years of retelling. This is perfectly proper. It would be a crime to tamper with that bear, who has been polished to a high and hilarious gloss.
FOKINE (Little, Brown, $7.50), subtitled Memoirs of a Ballet Master, is simultaneously the autobiography of the great choreographer and a history of the creation of modern ballet, which could hardly exist as it does today without the inventiveness and determination of MICHEL FOKINE. The text has been extracted by Vitale Fokine from the jumble of his father’s papers, cut and arranged and edited, with the help of Anatole Chujoy, into a consecutive narrative, and it emerges as a truly exciting account of a devoted artist in action. Possibly because much of the material was not written with publication in mind, the book has none of that overpoliteness which is the curse of theatrical memoirs. Fokine was a hot-blooded warrior in the cause of artistic correctness, and he refights old battles on every page. He was also a generous enemy and could respect the abilities of his foes even while denouncing the uses to which they were put.
HENRY MILLER’S under-thecounter classic TROPIC OF CANCER (Grove, $7.50) has finally achieved open publication in this country. It proves to be a paean of disgust, sometimes humorous, sometimes obscene, often both, directed against European civilization, the twentieth century, and everything connected in any way with either of them. It is impossible not to respect the degree of fury that Mr. Miller expresses (a man so volcanically angry must believe he has just cause for wrath), but to share it is another matter.
MY PLACE IN THE BAZAAR (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $3.95) is a collection of short stories assembled by ALEC WAUGH from all the work that he has done since 1920. It is highly civilized fiction, intelligent, written in a lucidly graceful style, well constructed, attempting no more than the author has reason to think he can achieve, never profound, and never for one instant dull.
Rae Dalven’s admirable translation of THE COMPLETE POEMS OF CAVAFY (Harcourt, Brace & World, $6.75), with W. H. Auden’s introduction, at last makes this fine Greek poet available to English readers. six POETS OF MODERN GREECE (Knopf, $5.00), translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, has somewhat less poetic quality in the language but has the merit of variety, offering examples of the work of Cavafy, Sikelianos, Seferis, Antoniou, Elytis, and Gatsos.
PHAEDRA AND FIGARO (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $5.00) couples good translations of utterly unrelated works, unless the French theater can be taken as a universal solvent. Robert Lowell, first announcing flatly that Racine is untranslatable, puts his Alexandrines into speakable, nontinkling English couplets, a great feat and one that goes far to contradict his own statement. Jacques Barzun’s translation of Beaumarchais is properly sparky and pseudocolloquial, but inevitably less impressive, because less of a problem was involved.
COMMUNICATION AMONG SOCIAL BEES (Harvard University Press, $4.75) by MARTIN LINDAUER is a careful study and explanation of the pantomime language by which bees inform each other of such matters as the location and nature of a supply of nectar. There are those who like bees and those who do not, and while Dr. Lindauer’s book may not convert the latter, it will certainly interest the former.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF AMERICA (Atlantic — Little, Brown, $15.00) by JOHN BURCHARD and ALBERT BUSH-BROWN is very aptly subtitled A Social and Cultural History. What American architects have borrowed and how and why they have modified it make an enlightening story.