Books: Bewitched Judges

GREAT MISCHIEF (247 pp.)—Josephine Pinckney—Viking ($2.75).

Christopher Morley wasn't there when his fellow Book-of-the-Month Club judges chose Josephine Pinckney's Great Mischief for March. That leaves the blame to be split four ways among B.O.M. Judges Henry Seidel Canby, Dorothy Canfield, Clifton Fadiman and John P. Marquand. They have bought a salable name (Miss Pinckney's earlier Three O'Clock Dinner was a bestselling Literary Guild choice, is now being filmed) but not a satisfactory novel. Apparently unabashed, they compound their great mischief by bracketing Miss Pinckney with Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. This tiresome little witch story,...