Books: Hicks' Town

SMALL TOWN (276 pp.) — Granville Hicks—Macmillan ($3).

People in & around New York's Rensselaer County know Granville Hicks as that nosey writing feller who lives on a farm (without farming it) over to Grafton township (pop. 627). Onetime college professor and repentant Communist, Hicks, 45, has been a year-round resident of Grafton .since 1935, and would probably deny that he sticks his nose into anything. But he notes with satisfaction that he, an "intellectual," belongs to the P.T.A. and the volunteer fire department, that he is secretary of the fire district, director of...