(4 of 4)
NABOKOV: HIS LIFE IN ART, by Andrew Field. A 29-year-old American critic, Field thinks that Nabokov would be more easily understood if U.S. readers knew his Russian work as well as his English. So he analyzes all of Nabokov and makes a persuasive case that he is the best novelist now writing.
OUR CROWD, by Stephen Birmingham. Novelist Birmingham has undertaken to become the Cleveland Amory of Proper Jewish Society in New York, the fabulously rich mercantile wizards, and he makes a chatty, genial social historian.
SIGNS AND WONDERS, by Francoise Mallet-Joris. Hero Nicholas Leclusier decides that life is really not worth living, which is somewhat difficult to understand, since Author Mallet-Joris has surrounded him with a collection of vivid people and a fascinating picture of France at the end of the bitter, bloody Algerian war.
SELECTED LETTERS OF DYLAN THOMAS, edited by Constantine FitzGibbon. This careful selection shows that the great Welsh poet was incapable of writing badly—and just as incapable of living well.
Best Sellers
FICTION 1. The Arrangement, Kazan (1 last week)
2. The Chosen, Potok (5)
3. The Eighth Day, Wilder (2)
4. Washington, D.C., Vidal (4)
5. The Plot, Wallace (3)
6. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (6)
7. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (7)
8. When She Was Good, Roth
9. The King of the Castle, Holt (8)
10. Tales of Manhattan, Auchincloss (9)
NONFICTION 1. The New Industrial State, Galbraith (1)
2. A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church, Kavanaugh (5) 3. Our Crowd, Birmingham (9) 4. At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, Eisenhower (4)
5. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (3)
6. Everything But Money, Levenson (2)
7. Anyone Can Make a Million, Shulman (6)
8. By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, White, ed.
9. The Death of a President, Manchester (8)
10. Games People Play, Berne (10)
* All times E.D.T.