SIROCCO Ralph Random House ($2.50).
Ten years ago Ralph Bates was just another energetic, down-and-out, class-conscious workingman, while Ernest Hemingway was an energetic, up-and-coming, self-conscious writing man. Today, Bates's Spanish civil war stories are better than Hemingway's. Bates lived revolution; when it came, he could almost write it with his eyes shut.
Long before the Spanish civil war, in 1923, Bates went from England to Spain, settled among fishermen in a coastal village. The people, whom he loved, called him El Fantastico because of his incredible energy: he slept only four hours a...
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