Wes Lawrence

Musical Disappearing Act

Heroine of the National Booksellers Association Convention in Washington last week was lovely Ann Moray, author of The Rising of the Lark. Miss Moray was singing some ancient Irish love songs when she stepped too far back on the narrow dias and dropped from view. She came back up without missing a note, but from then on she held on to the lecturn.

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Two important autobiographies coming out this fall are The Words, by Jean-Paul Sartre, the

famed French existentialist WES LAWRENCE novelist, to be published by George Braziller, and My Autobiography, by Charles Chaplin, to be published by Simon and Schuster. We used to know him as Charlie Chaplin, and it is to be hoped that there is no significance in the use of a more formal appelation. S. & S., incidentally, showed us an hour of old Chaplin films. The answer is, yes, they were just as funny as they were 30 and 40 years ago.

HOW DOES A speaker decide whether to tell his audience. "I am deeply honored to be with you this evening," or "I am highly honored to be with you this evening"?

DID YOU KNOW that the complete. original text of Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana Jr., has never been published? The Ward Ritchie Press of California says it hasn't, that the book as Dana wrote it was a bit too earthy for Victorian eyes. The California publisher intends to remedy the situation. In August it will bring out a book containing both the

traditionally published text and the text as Dana wrote it, along with Dana's journals and letters of 1834-1836 and 1859-1860.

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AN IMPORTANT biography (not autobiography) coming out in August is Eugene Lyons' life of Herbert Hoover. Doubleday will publish it on Aug. 10, which will be the former President's 90th birthday.

ACCORDING TO the magazine Atlas, one of the best-selling books in France today is Prof. Rene Etiemble's Parlez-vous Franglais? which is an attack on the invasion of French by Anglo-American vocabulary and locutions.

"The phenomenon is not, however, limited to French," says Atlas. "German and Italian have also been invaded, as a casual glance at their papers and mag. azines will reveal. Italian has taken over gangster, slogan, jukebox, boy (in a homosexual sense), musical (for 'musical comedy'), relax (as a noun); German has taken: Manager, Lobby, Slum, Marketing-Direktor."

Little Virgil

Little Virgil beat the heat By golfing in his stocking feet. Mama cautioned, "Careful, son. You might make a hole in one!" --Phil

The New Lexicon

M

Infatuate Where those excess pounds came from.

Boycott-Truant officer's report. Paranoia-The name-dropping couple at the next table.

Annex-What Willie got for deport-

ment.

Agnostic-Behave badly.

-Francis J. McDonald