Books: Torrents of Ink

THE MARSHALL STORY (344 pp.]—Robert Payne—Prentice-Hall ($5).

Author Pierre Stephen Robert Payne started something in 1919 that he can't stop. He was only seven that year, but he had an attack of writer's itch, and with the same zest another boy his age might have used to dismember a grasshopper, Payne wrote The True Adventures of Princess Sylvia. His manuscript showed a youthful disdain for humdrum fact, e.g., he set Princess Sylvia to reign not only over Denmark, but over all of Asia as well. The main thing was that his writer's itch turned chronic. This week, at 40, he published his...