Books: Fool's Paradise Lost

Gus THE GREAT (703 pp.)—Thomas W. Duncan—Lipplncotf ($3.50).

Thomas Duncan, a down & out ex-Harvard man, has written a rags-to-riches story, and as a result is about to enjoy a rags-to-riches life himself. His novel is the Book-of-the-Month Club selection for September (touted by Book Selector John P. Marquand as "head & shoulders . . . above any fiction [we] have examined this year"). It has already been peddled to Hollywood.

A jug-eared, sardonic lowan of 42, Harvard cum laude Author Duncan spent ten years on Gus the Great and was nearly broke much of the time. An itinerant writer, teacher and Chautauqua...