Books: Inquest on Democracy

WALT WHITMAN. POET OF DEMOCRACY—Hugh l'Anson Faussef—Yale ($3).

This compact, brilliant critical biography is 1) an excellent life of Walt Whitman, 2) a just, if merciless, evaluation of him as poet, mystic and prophet of democracy, 3) an arduous, provocative sermon on the nature and responsibility of democracy and of art. Unlike most Whitman critics, Author Fausset avoids the extremes of most books about Whitman. He neither damns nor admires Whitman for being a homosexual. He does not claim that Whitman's poetry is as great as Homer's or merely a free verse Sears, Roebuck...