Books: Why So Hot?

THE LITERARY FALLACY—Bernard De-Voto—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Indiana University (peacetime enrolment : 7,000) is the alma mater of both Paul McNutt and Wendell Willkie. Like other universities, it occasionally invites various bigwigs to give lectures under its auspices. Last year, the Will Patten Foundation lecturer was Bernard DeVoto, onetime professor, onetime editor of The Saturday Review of Literature, who looks like a bumblebee and writes like an angry hornet.

The Literary Fallacy consists of five lectures given by DeVoto. Purportedly a re-examination of the literary '20s, most of it is given over to a vehement...