Books: Highbrow Refuge

BOTTEGHE OSCURE, Vol. XII (533 pp.]−Farrar, Sfraus ($2.50).

For highbrow writers, a handsome, American-born Italian princess nearing 72 is the closest thing to a patron saint in the world today. When they visit Rome (and that is the thing for them to do these days), they vie for invitations to her home, a gloomy Renaissance palazzo with an irresistibly highbrow address: 32 Via delle Botteghe Oscure (Street of the Dark Shops). There they get fruit juice and cakes, plenty of rarefied talk about writers and writing, and lots of sympathy. The Princess Marguerite Caetani's...

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