Books: Literary Guerrilla

THE GARDEN OF ADONIS—Caroline Gordon—Scribner ($2.50).

Serving modestly on the general staff headed by her husband, Poet-Critic Allen Tate (see p. 81), Kentucky-born Caroline Gordon belongs to that well-educated guerrilla band of Southern regionalists who about a decade ago took up where the Confederate Army left off in its fight against the Yankee cultural and economic invasion. Chief sallies have consisted of nostalgic biographies, fiction and poetry celebrating the feudal charm of the Old South, collective manifestoes (I Take My Stand) advocating return to an agrarian economy, magazines (The Southern Review et al.)...