Book of the Month

The U.S. Communist Party, often surprised by the turns of history, had another little surprise last week.

The Party had ganged up on the Book-of-the-Month Club's choice for May, Mark Aldanov's novel The Fifth Seal (Scribner's; $3). The Daily Worker opened the attack with a letter demanding that the club withdraw the novel as "subtly and viciously anti-Soviet." Then the machinery started turning whereby the Party gets a wide assortment of innocent bystanders and fellow travelers to forward the assassination. Labor unions, civic groups and authors received unsigned memorandums, urging protests; many obliged. Protests were made by Sculptor Jo Davidson, Artist Rockwell Kent, Poet Alfred Kreymborg, Poetess Genevieve Taggard. They were joined by many simpler admirers of the Russians who frankly admitted that they had not read the novel.

The Communist campaign progressed nicely until last week, when the B.O.M. Club suddenly gave the New York World-Telegram the club's-eye view of the gang-up. The club revealed, for instance, that its waggish editorial member, Christopher Morley, had sent a telegram to Jane Benedict, president of the protesting Book and Magazine Union. Said Mr. Morley: "Assume principal objection is to chapter where Commissar Dlugash, Georgian renegade, makes his burlesque of Stalin." Miss Benedict wired back: "Other passages equally objectionable as one you mention." The curious thing was that The Fifth Seal contained no such episode.

Poet William Rose Benet and Authoress Marcia Davenport said they had read the novel in galley proofs, and denounced the "political" campaign. In no time at all the Communist drive to suppress The Fifth Seal had turned into a fine publicity boom.

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