Bolithographs

TWELVE AGAINST THE GODS--William Bolitho--Simon & Schuster ($4). "In reality, the whole history of human progress from the flint-jabber to standing room in the subway . . . is the result of two forms of effort, the guard and the search, made by the Home-stayer on the one hand, and by the bold affronter of the new on the other; that is, by the citizen and the adventurer." Upon this somewhat labored proposition Author Bolitho presents, en brochette, the characters of Alexander the Great, Catiline, Mahomet, Columbus, Cagliostro and Seraphina, Casanova, Charles XII of Sweden, Lola Montez, Napoleon I and III, Isadora Duncan and Woodrow Wilson.

He comes nearest to apologizing for this tour de force in introducing his highly colored literary lithograph of Wilson: "It is not some faded whimsicality that induces me to include Wilson ... in these studies, and to end with him, but the conviction that so alone can the structure be roofed. . . . Whereas . . . every other adventurer has fought for himself . . . Wilson adventured for the whole of the human race. . . ."

With such abstruse connections, William Bolitho ties his subjects to an arbitrary definition of "adventurer" and a theatrical title. Thus also, with a stretched premise, he gives himself an excuse for an eccentric examination of their behavior, scandals, intentions, tragedies.

Mahomet is described as an Arabian Lion, roaring, like the Lions of Wichita, Kan., in behalf of municipal improvements rather than God. The conquests of Alexander sprang from his original necessity to surpass the celebrity of his father, Philip of Macedon. Napoleon III was "a great adventurer; a beautiful addition to our collection." Catiline captained all the gangs in Rome in the enterprise, not of rebuilding his personal fortune, but of leveling all fortunes, murdering all governors, burning a city. He perished "not ingloriously," in "the adventure of death." Because the intelligence of Bolitho is very nearly equal to the purely technical and somewhat Carlylian brilliance of his style as a writer, his individuals bear resemblance to queerly grouped and overstuffed animals in a museum, regarding their audience with dazed and overconfident ferocity. But if the characters are not alive, Author Bolitho's writing does live, very noisily indeed. A journalist, 39, he is a regular colyumist on the New York World, a resident of Southern France, the author also of Leviathan and Murder for Profit.

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