BOOKS
FICTION CHRONICLE
THE SIMPLE TRUTH. By Eliz.,beth H.,rdwick. H.,rcourt, Br.,ce. $3.50.
OUT WENT THE CANDLE. By HMvey Sw.,dos. Viking. $3 .95.
275
THE BLACK PRINCE. By Shirley Ann Gr.,u. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.50.
ONE ARM AND OTHER STORIES. By Tennessee Willi.,ms. New Direc–
tions. $4.50.
ALL MEN ARE MORTAL. By Simone de Be.,uvoir. World. $5.00.
THE VAGABON.D. By Colette. FMrM, Str.,us Md Young. $3 .00.
Miss Hardwick's second novel deals with a murder of the
kind that has made scores of headlines during the past decade, the
principals being more or less ordinary American citizens. In this instance,
Rudy Peck, a student at a Midwestern college, is accused of strangling
his girl. The case itself is dealt with by Miss Hardwick in considerable
detail. But two university people, Joseph Parks, a twenty-eight year old
student, and Anita Mitchell, a faculty wife, emerge as the major char–
acters of the novel when they become obsessed by the trial, attending
each session and discussing it with friends, spouses and, finally, each
other.
Taken together, this group composes into a well-drawn picture of the
state of mind of the youngish, well-educated and economically secure
class that forms about universities and apparently withers comfortably
and unhappily into middle age. The essential paradox of the class, Miss
Hardwick seems to be saying, and a prime cause of its early inanition,
is that, having inherited the highly individualistic or apocalyptic ideals
of the previous generation of intellectuals, it cannot endure to be what
it absolutely must be-namely, a class. Hence, a pathetic search for
some form of individuality, a search that seems hopeless as the class is
large, quick to purchase the same articles, read the same books, and
think the same thoughts.
This unappeasable craving for distinction drives some of its mem–
bers to ridiculous lengths. Thus Parks, Miss Hardwick's fattish, rather
feminine protagonist has chosen to inherit the last generation's sympathy
for victims of social oppression at a time when the number of such
victims is rapidly dwindling and few, if any, active groups are espousing
their cause: "He could sometimes regret that the labor unions were so
successful they did not need the services of bright, enthusiastic, chari–
table persons like himself. Communists, Trotskyists, conservative ex–
Communists, pacifists-how he envied them all, this man of a later
day. His times were out of joint-poor Parks growing up in environ-
