After Victory

A BELL FOR ADANO--John Hersey-- Knopf ($2.50).

This is a first novel. Angry and intense, it is half sharp-eyed, unsparing war reporting and half fast-moving, self-consciously hard-boiled fiction. It is the story of what happens behind the lines of a typical Italian town in the confused interlude between war and reconstruction-- when the Germans have been driven out and the Allies have come in, when the fascists are out of office but the civilian governments have not yet been set up, and when the high aims for which the war was fought disappear before the realities of incompetence, brutality, red tape, swollen eyes, dead bodies, ruined buildings, ruined lives, cynicism, contempt, and the starved inertia of purposeless living.

It begins when Major Victor Joppolo, 35, a senior officer of the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory, enters the town of Adano. It ends, 266 pages and three weeks later, when he is recalled. Between these two episodes it packs: 1) a good deal of concrete information on the errors and accomplishments of the administration of the occupied village; 2) an unforgettable, sometimes sickening picture of the degradation of the Italians after 20 years of Mussolini; 3) a lopsided, bitter portrait of a loudmouthed, fire-eating, bullying U.S. general, who resembles General Patton; 4) a plot. The work of 29-year-old LIFE Editor John Hersey (Men on Bataan, Into the Valley), based on his war-reporting experiences in Sicily, it has an impact like the kick of one of the mules on the road to Adano.

Wop v. General. Hero of the book is Major Joppolo. He is patient, tenacious, understanding, humble in the sense of being willing to drudge for what he believes in, and possessed of a genuine love for Adano, the place and the people. This love is epitomized in his effort to get the people of Adano a church bell to replace the bell the Nazis carried off for scrap. Sometimes it seems that Major Joppolo is the only person who loves the villagers. Certainly he is the only one who has a practically realizable vision of what democracy can bring to Adano. Raised in The Bronx, razzed as a wop in school, a truck driver at 16, a $12-a-week grocery clerk at 20, a second-class clerk in New York City's Department of Sanitation before going into the Army, Victor Joppolo brings to Adano the unbelievable thought that government should be the servant of the people. There are no subtle shadings in Author Hersey's portraits. Victor is unqualifiedly good.

U.S. Divisional Commander General Marvin is unqualifiedly bad. He has been built up as one of the heroes of the invasion. But "I can tell you perfectly calmly that General Marvin showed himself during the invasion to be a bad man, something worse than what our troops were trying to throw out."

When a mule cart blocked his armored car outside Adano, General Marvin ordered the cart tipped off the road. When the terrified mule began to scream, the General ordered it shot. When his staff officers objected, thinking of the effect on the townspeople of Adano, the General damned them up & down. Then the General issued an order forbidding any carts to enter Adano. That stopped all food to the starving town. When General Marvin and Major Joppolo met, each felt an instantaneous, unrelenting mutual dislike that grew in a few moments to intense hatred. When the General discovered that Joppolo had countermanded his order and had let the food carts come into Adano, he cussed until he choked.

Bats in the Belfry? But slowly, in spite of General Marvin, Italian apathy, and bureaucratic red tape, Adano was cleaned up, the houses repainted, the people fed, the Italian prisoners returned to their homes. But for Major Joppolo the war was over. His requisition for a bell for Adano struck headquarters as another sign of his failing mind. And when General Marvin discovered that the Major was still on the job, he stopped reading Secretary Stimson's commendations long enough to fire Joppolo.

The mood of A Bell for Adano is bitter. Its humor is raucous and wild. At its worst, it descends to college humorous magazine slapstick. At its best it is a superb piece of reporting. Read unimaginatively, it is a deadly account of U.S. official incompetence. Stripped of its humor, it is the story of a battle for democracy, no less real for being fought without arms, more important than the military engagement that preceded it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.