Idaho Prometheus (Concl'd)

NO VILLAIN NEED BE--Vardis Fisher-- Doubleday, Doran & Caxton ($2.50).

To readers who have followed Vardis Fisher to this fourth and final volume of his autobiographical novel, his hero's complete candor in showing himself at times a stubborn fool, a dreary bore, a nearly crazy introspect, will end by impressing them with his struggle for honesty. In the earlier books his wrestling to be free from his Nessus' shirt was more painful to watch than not. Now that he has got it mostly off, the scarified body shows sturdy if not beautiful.

Vridar Hunter, agonized self-student, was given something else to think about when his wife killed herself because he planned to leave her for another woman. Vridar tormented himself with remorse, thought long of suicide and even made abortive attempts. He fled from Chicago, where he had been studying for his Ph.D., went to Washington with Athene, the other woman. There he decided to pull himself together, face himself without flinching. As a first step he went back to Chicago and took his degree. Then he got a job teaching, first at his old college in Salt Lake City, then in Manhattan. All this time Athene was spiritually holding his head, watching him spit out the bile. Eventually he regurgitated the cause of all the trouble: he had been an idealist, a blind prig. From then on he was ready to try any dish to find his proper diet.

Books, talk, drink, women he tasted greedily but skeptically, came to the conclusion that self-love was the myopia that blinded nearly everyone he knew, including himself. In spite of his intelligentsiac friends he decided that intelligence was not a menace: it was simply not being used. Because the Communists seemed to him as myopic as everyone else he refused to be a Communist. Instead he married the faithful Athene, who had been "a kind of mother to five years of grief," went with her back to his family home in Idaho, settled down to write his honest story.

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