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A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN. Walter Matthau, as a suburban husband looking for greener grasses and keener lasses, proves that the person who plays the common man must be an uncommon actor.
BOOKS
Best Reading
SELECTED LETTERS OF DYLAN THOMAS, edited by Constantine FitzGibbon. This careful sampling of the letters of the tragic poet-genius contains some of his best prose and proves that in his heart he was far less irresponsible than his outrageous behavior indicated.
A PRELUDE: LANDSCAPES, CHARACTERS AND CONVERSATIONS FROM THE EARLIER YEARS OF MY LIFE, by Edmund Wilson. A distinguished and versatile critic joins shards of youthful experience into a memoir that says farewell to the innocence—his own and his country's—that was shattered by World War I. The same experience helps make his rather stilted early stories, GALAHAD and I THOUGHT OF DAISY, penetrating documentaries of an era.
HAROLD NICOLSON: THE WAR YEARS, 1939-1945, VOL II OF DIARIES AND LETTERS, edited by Nigel Nicolson. This second installment of Author-Politician Nicolson's sprightly and irreverent reminiscences may well clinch his position as the brightest British diarist of his age.
THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING, by Jean Cocteau. Autobiographical jottings of the French mime who poured as much of his enormous talents into playing the artist as into his strange novels and otherworldly movies.
RICHARD STRAUSS: THE LIFE OF A NONHERO, by George R. Marek. The author orchestrates vivid evocations of German cultural life around his theme: that decay and upheaval after World War I cut Strauss off from his romantic roots and kept him from fulfilling his greatness.
ALL MEN ARE LONELY NOW, by Francis Clifford. Still another double agent unravels the skein of British cold-war diplomacy with a classically simple plan that Author Clifford fashions into a classically complicated thriller.
SNOW WHITE, by Donald Barthelme. A weird and wicked contemporary version of the old fairy tale. Children would like the story without understanding it—but, then, the same is true for adults.
THE HORRORS OF LOVE, by Jean Dutourd. Exploring a tragic love affair between a middle-aged Frenchman and his mistress, Dutourd also performs a meticulous dissection of French character.
Best Sellers
FICTION 1. The Arrangement, Kazan (1 last week)
2. The Eighth Day, Wilder (2)
3. Washington, D.C., Vidal (3)
4. The Plot, Wallace (6)
5. The Chosen, Potok (4)
6. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (7)
7. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (5)
8. Tales of Manhattan, Auchincloss (9)
9. Go to the Widow-Maker, Jones (10) 10. Capable of Honor, Drury (8)
NONFICTION 1. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (2) 2. Everything But Money, Levenson (1)
3. The Death of a President, Manchester (3)
4. Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet, Stearn (4)
5. Madame Sarah, Skinner (5)
6. Games People Play, Berne (6)
7. Treblinka, Steiner (8)
8. A Man Called Lucy, Accoce and Quet (10)
9. Disraeli, Blake (7)
10. Paper Lion, Plimpton (9)
*All times E.D.T.