else? Syphillis, of course. Because of the contagion, Shakespeare breaks with Fatimah, his dark lady and, if we are to believe Burgess' murkily written emphasis, writes his greatest plays as a result of being mortally sick.

Then he goes home to Stratford to die, only his physician, whose lips are sealed, aware of the nature of his ailment. This is a handy explanation for the fact that seldom, if ever, in Shakespearian critical and biographical literature has syphillis been mentioned as the cause of Shakespeare's death. Internal evidence in this novel would seem to suggest Burgess merely used it as an excuse to give detailed descriptions of the symptoms. They run over several pages and are written with evident relish, the same relish Burgess shows in describing, earlier in the book, a hanging, drawing and quartering so vividly as to make you think you are there watching.

Burgess has a pedestrian and fashionable imagination. It is ironical in the extreme that such a mind should elect to attempt to take us inside the body, soul and genius of the greatest writer in our language. But the failure in no way mitigates the impertinence of the attempt. Nor, to descend abruptly to another critical level, does it prevent boredom. On the level of pure story we are constantly led to expect exactly what takes place. The novelist who cannot surprise (see E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel) belongs in another occupation.

As little as he understands the mind and heart of his towering protagonist, does Burgess understand Elizabethan England. To him it is no more than a compound of shit and vomit, snot and running sores, dirty bodies and filthy sheets. If Shakespeare, through whose eyes Burgess is supposedly making us look, had seen his town and times this way, he would have written tracts on sanitation instead of Hamlet. Burgess' emphasis is wrong.

It belongs strictly to the 20th century and is the final failure of his book. James Colton

SEX OFFENDERS IN GROUP THERAPY by Manning R. Slater as told to George Bishop, Sherbourne Press, Los Angeles, 1964, 159 pp., $4.95.

This is a book based on the notes and tapes of a clinical psychologist. The notes came from meetings at

which four men and one woman for a short time met to discuss their problems. They were required by the courts to attend these sessions as part of probation. All were convicted sex offenders. Mike was a homosexual, Sam and Monty exhibitionists, Norm a child molester and Helen a prostitute with lesbian tendencies.

The book is boring because the recorded conversations are not interesting. The psychologist, who uses the name Slater, adds a few comments which seem, according to all psychology experts I have met or read, sicker than the comments and acts of the admittedly sick individuals he is supposed to help. If this is a typical example of group therapy, it is not scientific and is of no value. The only value apparent is that of "misery loves company."

The jacket says the reader will get actual case histories. This is not true. All the reader gets is a few titillating bits from session to session, most of which are the Slater opinion of what happened or why it happened.

Anyone buying this book for factual information will find none. Anyone buying this book for pornography will find none. Anyone buying this book to find out what goes on in since this is not group therapy will be disappointed a legitimate ex-

ample.

No cheap paperback could be worse. It is sad that homosexuals will buy these books and buy these books and pay Sherbourne and pseudonymous psychologists to

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