Books: Cross-Section

NIGHT IN THE HOTEL—Eliot Crawshay-Williams—Liveright ($2).* The Hotel des Anges et d'Albion, its arresting title notwithstanding, was a second-rate hotel overlooking a second-rate Riviera town. Its 22 guests were a fair cross-section of upper-middle-class England (except for three who were French). When you first see them gathered in the dining room for their skimpy déjeuner they look a pretty average, not to say mediocre lot; but when Author Crawshay-Williams lets you follow them into their separate sanctums, shows them quarreling, soliloquizing, making love, they cease to be typical specimens, become (in most cases)...