Books: Secrets of the Muse

THE WHITE GODDESS (412 pp.)—Robert Graves—Creative Age ($4.50).

Robert Graves has beaten his critics to the punch by calling this "a very difficult book, as well as a very queer one." It is a candid and justifiable warning. As a historical novelist, Graves is famed for his power of mazelike ingenuity, but his novels (I, Claudius; Hercules, My Shipmate; and others) are as simple as Mother Goose rhymes compared to The White Goddess.

Subtitled "a historical grammar of poetic myth," the book would easily provide a term's work for advanced students of archeology, linguistics...