Men on Women

THE BEDROOM COMPANION--Farrar &

Rinehart--($2.50).

When there are momentarily no women in the smoking room, men hasten to ease themselves of what they feel are appropriate stories. No reputable modern publisher has yet had the nerve to sponsor a really bawdy anthology, but with the weekly encouragement of such smartcharts as the New Yorker, such pseudo-smart-charts as Ballyhoo, smart publishers are beginning to see that anything (within reason) goes. The Bedroom Companion, or A Cold Night's Entertainment: Being A CURE for Man's Neuroses, A SOP to His FRUSTRATIONS, A Nightcap of Forbidden Ballads, Discerning PICTURES, Scurrilous Essays, in fine A Steaming Bracer for THE FORGOTTEN MALE sounded like a bold bid for man's attention. Readers who were won by its ballyhoo found it only a mildly entertaining, conventionally improper, publisher's stunt.

Smart Publishers Farrar & Rinehart have lined up a dozen-odd professional writers, given them carte blanche to be skittish. Publisher Alan Rinehart, only non-professional contributor, skits creditably on the perils of childbirth from the husband's viewpoint. Supreme-seller Hervey Allen ponderously parodies himself in a syllabus of an even bigger novel than Anthony Adverse. Author Rex Stout blows the gaff on how to water down love stories for a fiction editor. Newcomer Ed Bell (Fish on the Steeple) sticks a plum in the pudding, in the form of a small-town Southern story. Arthur Kober writes a Bronx seduction scene in Bronx. Robert Cantwell makes a few pointed, sensible remarks on modern marriage. Versifiers Leonard Bacon, Philip Wylie, Baron Ireland do their feeble best to keep their end up.

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