Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

Nobel Prizewinning Novelist William Faulkner, after picking up the National Book Award for last year's best fiction (A Fable), gave a peripatetic interview to New York Timesman Harvey Breit as the two strolled down Manhattan's gilt-edged Park Avenue. Faulkner suddenly exclaimed that his widely quoted statement about fellow Nobel Prizewinning Author Ernest Hemingway's literary cowardice (TIME, Dec. 13) had been Yoknapatawphaed all out of context.* "I was asked the question down at the University of Mississippi--who were the five best contemporary writers and how did I rate them," drawled Faulkner. "And I said, Wolfe, Hemingway, Dos Passes, Caldwell and myself. I rated Wolfe first, myself second. I put Hemingway last. I said we were all failures ... I rated the authors on the basis of their splendid failure to do the impossible. I believed [that] Wolfe tried to do the greatest of the impossible, that he tried to reduce all human experience to literature. And I thought after Wolfe I had tried the most. I rated Hemingway last because he stayed within what he knew. He did it fine, but he didn't try for the impossible."

One of former Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey's few defensive weaknesses is his habit of dropping his guard when near girls named Estelle. The succession began with his second wife, Actress Estelle Taylor, continued last year when

Dempsey, a youthful 59, briefly wooed a wealthy widow, Mrs. Estelle Auguste. Last week the ex-champ popped up in Miami Beach for a vacation with a new friend: Estelle Allardale, a pretty Californian from Beverly Hills and owner of a woman's-wear shop. Mindful of Jack's old weakness, his friends agreed that they could already hear wedding bells.

After plodding through the 301 pages of The Drama of Albert, Einstein, a book sent to her by an admirer, winsome Songstress Dinah Shore, now burbling her old favorites (e.g., It's So Nice to Have a Man Around the House and Blues in the Night) at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, ventured a timid literary criticism. "I've concluded, honey," sighed she, "that it's easier to understand relatives than relativity."

Argentina's Strongman Juan PerOn, already acclaimed at home as his nation's No. 1 worker, No. 1 engine-driver, No. 1 journalist and No. 1 sportsman, won his oddest title yet. The canary breeders of the city of Rosario (pop. 522,000) presented Aviculturist Peron with a pink warbler, a gold medal and bird-seeded him as the Argentine's No. 1 canary breeder.

At an Overseas Press Club luncheon in Manhattan, snow-topped Poet Carl Sandburg, in town for a photography exhibition staged by his brother-in-law, famed Cameraman Edward Steichen, told the icwsmen why Steichen's good health is unlikely to wane soon; "Steichen was 76 last April, and he will be 77 next April--my present age. That's the Crapshooter's number, which you're sure to live through." *

On a tour as the villainous Captain Queeg with the road company of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Actor Paul Douglas, currently pictured in magazine ads as a genial beer guzzler, hit the town of Greensboro, N.C. and made some ungenial, damyankee noises. Caught either off guard (according to a local reporter) or off record (according to Douglas), the actor waded Queegishly into a question about how he liked Dixie, snapped a curt "It stinks." After the aghast newsman commented that the reply would make interesting reading, Douglas plowed onward: "A land of sowbelly and segregation--it stinks." By the time the show had rolled on to Atlanta, Actor Douglas was trying to get his foot out of his mouth, succeeded only in jamming it in farther. It was not the entire South that stank--just Greensboro. Then, after making it clear that his pet peeve is "to be misquoted by newspaper people," Douglas hopefully murmured that he'd heard that "the people of Atlanta are very friendly."

On the House floor, California's Democratic Representative James Roosevelt rose to make his maiden speech. Subject: something should be done about U.S. citizens who are starving and/or earn less than $1,000 a year. His sole congressional listeners: California's Republican J. Arthur Younger and New Jersey's elephantine (320 Ibs.) Democrat T. James Tumulty. When Congressman Roosevelt finished his oration, puckish Jim Tumulty applauded thunderously, asked that the record show the speech was received by "a large and appreciative audience."

* Poet Sandburg overstepped his poetic license; Steichen will be 76 next March.

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