Books: Pumblechook

THE LETTERS OF ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT—Edited by Beatrice Kaufman and Joseph Hennessey—Viking ($3.50).

One day a boatload of trippers who were circling Vermont's Neshobe Island, summer hideaway of the late Alexander Woollcott, spied, under a vast straw hat, a vast bulk swathed in a dressing gown. "Who on earth is that?" screamed one of the ladies. "Marie Dressier," said her benchmate—thereby adding another quip to the many already provoked by Mr. Woollcott's complex personality.

Even his best friends disagreed about the Town Crier's real nature. Acid Poetess Dorothy Parker believed he had "done more...