Manhattan Parson

MEN AND BRETHREN--James Gould Cozzens--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

Readers who had any doubt whatever that James Gould Cozzens was a professional writer in the best sense, last week had their doubts finally dispelled. His latest novel, Men and Brethren, is a highly interesting, racy book about faith and works, with a faithful, hard-working parson as its protagonist. And Author Cozzens has written it "straight," with no satire, as little horseplay as possible.

Ernest Cudlipp, vicar of a poor chapel belonging to a rich Manhattan parish, was small, middleaged, energetic, untidy, conservative in belief, liberal in practice. He smoked too many cigarets, was always late because he tried to do too much. Celibate by inclination and experience, he had a poor stomach but liked a good glass of wine. He was no Buchmanite. "What adult could accept as real and true that fairy-tale world in which their Dutch baronesses, Master of Fox Hounds and formerly intemperate butlers all walked laughing and prattling, the children of light, and the children of the day?" He had dozens of friends, who took up too much of his time with their needs and troubles--most of which were decidedly not religious.

When brilliant Carl Willever, who had just been expelled from his High Church monastery because of homosexual practices, came to him for shelter, Ernest feared it might well cost him his job. After a run-in with his rector, he knew it would, unless he told Carl to go. After a short, sharp tussle he did the sensible thing, went on with his never-ending round of telephone calls, taxis, cigarets, his headlong, good-humored but uncompromising fight against sinful muddle.

Author Cozzens does not make the usual formal disclaimer: that all his characters are fictitious. Even if he had, many an Episcopalian reader would have recognized at least two likenesses--Bishop William T. Manning, onetime Father Harvey Officer--may think they see in his hero a similarity to the late Rev. Ralph Pomeroy.

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