PARTISAN REVIEW
The new dictionary is very well turned out. The page, of course,
is crowded, but there has been no effort to lighten it with typographical
novelties-type and make-up are conventional but excellent. The paper
is good and the binding is sturdy. Save for a list of symbols at the end,
and another of given-names, the 132,000 entries are in one long alphabet,
including all other proper names, all abbreviations, and all unnaturalized
loans from non-English languages, e.g.,
sforzando
and
au fait.
The maps
deserve high praise, for they are both numerous and illuminating. Under
Jericho,
for example, there is a little outline plan of Palestine and its
neighbors which shows precisely where the town lies, and under
Erie
Ctmal
there is one showing the route of the canal from Buffalo to Albany.
The old dictionary device of indicating the size of living creatures by
printing 1/6, 1/ 64, or the like under the pictures of them is abandoned
for the more rational scheme of giving their heights and lengths in feet
and inches. This last is not original, but it is a great help to the reader.
I recommend this new dictionary to the nobility and gentry. It is
comprehensive, it is scientific, it is handy and sightly-and it is aston–
ishingly cheap. It has, to be sure, some defects. The grotesque musical
terms in use in England, e.g.,
crochet, minim,
and
hemidemisemiquaver,
are properly listed and defined, but why are they used in definitions, as
in that of
alla breve?
Also, where is
Bible Belt?
I have a tenderness
toward it because I invented it myself, but is that any reason for ex–
cluding it? It has come into wide use in the United States and England,
and there is no other term that means exactly the same thing. Moreover,
it gathers new shades of significance, as good terms always do:
in parti–
ceps infidelium
it is used satirically and even mockingly, whereas in the
Deep South it is coming to be used proudly.
So caviling, I subside.
H.
L.
Mencken
MUCH OUTCRY: LITTLE OUTCOME
THAT WINTER,
By
Merle Miller. Slollne. $3 .00.
OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS.
By
Trumlln Copote. Rllndom House.
$2.75.
We can no longer complain that our peculiar contemporary
American institutions are being overlooked by fiction writers. Almost
every month brings forth another novel about the radio, the movies, the
large magazines and publishing houses. Contemplating these gifts, one
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