Soapboxers

THE HIDDEN FLOWER (307 pp.)--Pearl Buck--John Day ($3.50).

WINDOM'S WAY (286 pp.) -- James Ramsey Ullman--Lippincott ($3).

"If the critic mounts the soapbox," wrote Poet John Peale Bishop, "the garbage remains in the streets." He might just as well have been talking about soapbox novelists.

In the past 25 years, hundreds of hortatory novels have appeared, preaching everything from Communism to yoga; with story generally sacrificed to sentiments, few of them survived the intellectual storms that blew them up. Last week brought two more.

Pearl Buck's latest, The Hidden Flower, preaches racial tolerance. Allen Kennedy is a young lieutenant in Japan. He meets pretty Japanese Josui, and they fall in love. Josui's parents object at first, but love triumphs and they get married. Alas, back in the U.S. Allen's biased mother will not receive Josui. For a while the couple tries to live in big-city isolation, but can't make a go of it. Josui runs away, has her baby, and sees it adopted by a kindly Jewish doctor. But Josui's life and Allen's life have been ruined by intolerance.

Window's Way, by James Ramsey Ullman, preaches humanity. The hero, Dr. Windom, is a dedicated medical missionary in a remote corner of Southeast Asia. Inevitably, he gets caught up in a struggle between the wicked reactionary government and the ruthless Communist guerrillas. Windom's problem is what to do when the government troops retreat. Shall he retreat with them, or stay on, in Red territory, and do what he can for the peasants? His wife deserts him, and friends misunderstand him, but Dr. Windom, caring more for people than for isms, decides to stick it out.

A good novel might have been written on Miss Buck's theme, a good one on Ullman's. Neither writer has succeeded. Both are content with liberal formulas, stillborn characters, slipshod styles.

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