Books: Big Mac

DISCRIMINATIONS by DWIGHT MACDONALD 466 pages. Grossman. $15.

For going on 40 years now, Dwight Macdonald has written to—or at—his fellow Americans rather in the style of an indignant letter to the Times. The things Your Correspondent has to put up with! From native gaucheries ("Our manners are either bad or nonexistent") to Hollywood movies ("Palm trees don't make Los Angeles an exotic city and options on Ulysses don't make Hollywood a sophisticated one"). Then there's Webster's New International Dictionary (third edition), the "One Hundred Great Books," and all translations of...