Books: German Falstaff

THE MIRROR or POOLS—Alfred Neumann—Knopf ($2.50).

Publishers always have some reason for publishing what they do. Authors' reasons for writing what they write are vaguer. In a letter to Publisher Knopf, Author Neumann defiantly admits why he wrote this historical-romantic farce: "Because I wanted to fight against the general and my personal depression, and because in hard and bad times there is always one tragicomic feeling in place—gallows humor." Seekers after belly-laughs need not apply! Author Neumann's humor is fun but it is gruesome.

Heinrich, enormously fat, drunken, gluttonous Duke of Liegnitz, was...