Uncle Remus Redivivus

OL' KING DAVID AND THE PHILISTINE BOYS--Roark Bradford--Harper ($2.50).

The Green Pastures, stage smash hit now playing in Manhattan (TIME, March 10), was based on Author Bradford's Ol' Man Adam and His Chillun, might equally well have been founded on Ol' King David and the Philistine Boys.

Playwright Marc Connelly bought the dramatic rights to Ol' Man Adam: reviewers have almost universally given him sole credit for the play, but Author Bradford is collecting royalties.

Like its predecessor, this book is a collection of Bible stories told in darkey dialect, with darkey psychology, darkey embellishments and modernizations. Sly, humorous, kindly, they are reminiscent of the late great Joel Chandler Harris's tales of Uncle Remus. A sample: "So Solomon started kingin' up and down de road, a-bowin' and tippin' his crown to de ladies and makin' riddles at de men folks, and he was a mighty good king.

" 'Kind er like his old daddy,' say de people. 'David was heavy on socializin.' "

Author Roark Whitney Wickliffe Bradford, 33, descended from Massachusetts Puritans, was born in Tennessee, lives in New Orleans. During the War he was ist Lieutenant of Coast Artillery at Panama, then in France; after the War instructor in gunnery and ballistics, then newspaperman. Two months ago he resigned the Sunday editorship of the New Orleans Times-Picayune to give all his time to writing. Author Bradford's first book, Ol' Man Adam, was a success; his second, This Side of Jordan, a serious novel about Negroes, a failure.

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