Myths, Muses & Mushroom
FOR CENTAURS (382 pp.)Robert GravesDoubleday ($4.95).
Robert Graves's mother used to warn him against becoming "like people who feed birds in public gardens, and usually have two or three perched on their heads." But Mother scarcely foresaw the strange-feathered notions that would roost inside Graves's head. Out of this intellectual aviary fly de-crested myths, twice-tweaked Bible tales, a poetic cockatoo called the White Goddess, and great whooping cranes of scholarly controversy. As a man who travels "full-speed in the wilder regions of my own, some say crazy, head," Graves ranges airily...