The Perverted Village

ONLY ONE STORM--Granvllle Hicks--Macmillan ($2.75).

This is a timely description of the evolution, habits, hopes and hates of a long-neglected U.S. fauna, the intelligentsiac lefties. It is probably the most readably realistic novel yet written about them, because humorless Author Hicks takes these strange creatures almost as seriously as they take themselves. For the same reason, it is one of the funniest.

Hero of Only One Storm is Canby Kittredge, village boy from Pendleton in the Berkshires, who made good as a Manhattan advertising executive only to realize at last that advertising is a form of hyperbole. Its heroine is his wife Christina. Only One Storm is the story of their efforts to re-root themselves in Canby's home town, where Canby has bought back the old Kittredge home, and a local press with which he proposes henceforth to earn his living. But before the Kittredges can solve the problem of re-rooting, they must make the great decision: Should one, or should one not join the Communist Party?

To the Kittredges all these problems were connected. They were alarmed to discover in rural Pendleton the same forces of darkness (chiefly businessmen, bankers and local newspaper publishers) that were defeating men of good will in Europe. The class struggle went on even in the haunts of coot and hern, and what was worse, very few of the local coots seemed to care.

The Kittredges did care. In almost no time, Wife Christina was fighting the withdrawal of allegedly un-American textbooks from the school. Husband Canby was discovering, or being joyously discovered by, local Communists and fellow travelers. He was also helping a C.I.O. strike by printing strikers' handbills free, speaking at their meetings. To such acts of God as hurricane and blizzard, the Kittredges added the fiercer excitements of campaigning to elect a lady liberal to the school board and a somewhat befuddled farmer as moderator of the town meeting.

The radio also kept the Kittredges in a constant state of manic depression. "Neither [Christina] nor Canby was surprised when Hitler took Bohemia and Moravia, for this was what they had predicted when Chamberlain came back from Munich," but "they were numbed." They were shattered when "President Roosevelt recognized Franco the moment Madrid fell--like a man who has taken a physic, as Canby said, and can't wait to get to the bathroom."

Climax of Only One Storm comes as a result of Canby's strike activities. One of the C.I.O. leaders, a Communist, at last corners Canby, suggests that he make up his mind and join the Party. Before Canby can make up his mind (a matter of several chapters), the Berlin-Moscow pact is signed. Instead of becoming a Communist, Canby becomes a selectman.

There is one wonderful scene in Only One Storm in which Christina's father, who is down for Thanksgiving, makes unpleasant remarks about the New Deal. Canby noticed that as Grandfather was leaving, Grandson Danny, age nine, "shrank a little from his kiss." "Danny takes things too hard," said Canby. But the most successful (and funniest) scenes in the book are Author Hicks's re-creation of the endless political patter of the radicals. Best is probably a weekend cocktail party at Comrade Wallace Burgin's, where Wife Christina thoughtlessly asks the unpardonable question: "Are you a member of the Communist Party, Selma?"

"Sitting very straight, her breasts thrust out, Selma [Burgin] stared at Christina angrily. 'We're not playing a game,' she said, and Canby started at the passion in her voice. 'We're fighting the most powerful people in the world. . . . One just doesn't talk about party membership. I took it for granted you knew. . . .' "

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