Books: Amateur Messiah

GENERATION OF VIPERS—Philip Wylie —Farrar & Rinehart ($2.75).

Generation of Vipers is a raging and sometimes very funny set of lay sermons about the human predicament as examined in terms of "you—your home and kiddies, mom and the loved ones, old Doc Smith and the preacher, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Star-Spangled Banner—in short, the American scene" plus the still uglier clutter backstage. Novelist Wylie's high desire is to save the human race from its own worst enemy—itself. Whether he will succeed where such distinguished predecessors as Christ, Dostoevski and Blake have so...