Books: Goya a la Kinsey

THIS Is THE HOUR (516 pp.)—Lion Feuchtwanger—Viking ($3.95).

The best historical novelists have held the past as a mirror to the present. In Lion Feuchtwanger's grand historical novels, Power and Success and the Josephus trilogy, the reflection was broad and occasionally profound. Since writing those books, Feuchtwanger has moved from Europe to Southern California, and his mirror has smogged up. The Book-of-the-Month Club presents his latest as a novel about Goya—and the novel is indeed about Goya, as a stud chart is about a bull. About a bull there may not be much more to-say. But about Don Francisco de Goya y...