Books: Cleared of Cant

APPRECIATION: PAINTING, POETRY & PROSE (215 pp.)—Leo Stein—Crown ($2.50).

Gertrude Stein's elder brother Leo, now in his 70s, had delivered this book to the publishers before her death (TIME, Aug. 5). If she had lived, it might have provoked her to Steinesque limpidities in reply, for Leo's range of appreciations does not extend to his sister's works, nor to her enthusiasms. Their estrangement was known all over the Left Bank in the '20s, though one day as they passed on a Paris street, Gertrude so far forgot herself as to nod in recognition—and was then so overcome (so the story goes)...