The Last Trumpet

THE VIEW FROM THE FORTIETH FLOOR (468 pp.)--Theodore H. White--Sloane ($4.95).

Humpty Dumpty is one of the unsung muses. While a rise to eminence frequently appears studied, seemly, and something of a bore, the fall of a man, an enterprise, or a reputation is often nakedly dramatic.

Fictionally speaking, a great failure can be a stunning success.

The Humpty Dumpty that plummets in this virtually guaranteed bestseller (Literary Guild selection for June; movie rights sold to Gary Cooper for $85,000) is Trumpet, a magazine suspiciously li late Collier's, on which Theodore White served as a senior writer. Unfortunately.

White's neon-lit prose and tickertape pace do little to dignify the story.

Banks v. Marines. What spells doom for Trumpet is its balance sheet. No one knows this better than its president. John Ridgely Warren, an aging wonder boy with a Roman nose, whose past careers have rocketed and fizzled like Roman candles "Ridge" Warren has beefed up Trumpet's circulation, but the magazine's advertising is a sickly trickle, its creditors are edgy and the bank is poised to snip its credit life line. Two-thirds of View centers on Ridge's hectic bids to bring the marines of high finance to the rescue.

Ridge's trouble is that he has a menace on the board of directors in the person of Wheeler-Dealer Walter J. Mornssey, a man to whom a convertible is not a car but a debenture. Morrissey wants to fold Trumpet and its sister magazine. Gentlewoman, and save the firm's other, money-making divisions, thereby boosting the company stock and setting up a multimillion-dollar capital gain for himself. In the Cottier situation. Gentlewoman was Woman's Home Companion, and the Morrissey role was played by smooth Financier J. Patrick Lannan, who with other industrialists held debentures convertible into 600,000 shares of common stock at $5 a share. The week Cottier s folded the stock sold for around $5, currently sells for about $25. In the novel Ridge Warren (who little resembles Collier's Chairman-President-Editor Paul Smith) has a potential million-dollar stock option himself and is constantly torn between profit and principle.

Nothing to Say. One reason Ridge can scarcely hear the inner voice of conscience is that'Author White's characters come equipped with megaphones. No one talks; everyone blasts out endless editorials-on the evils of TV. Republicans, Democrats, the American Dream-not excluding Ridge's raven-haired exwife, at whom Ridge makes embarrassing /fl<<--passes throughout the novel. Ridge puts the finger on Trumpet's fatal lack--"It had nothing left to say"--but scarcely lifts an editorial finger to remedy the situation.

View is clogged to the tear ducts with loyal lifelong employees waiting for the last Trumpet to sound. On Author White s showing, it is hard to see why they were ever hired. The managing editor is a choleric refugee from The Front Page, whose English is baser than basic ("Crapola! Crapola! Crapola!"). As a roman a clef, or key-to-reality-novel, the book unlocks some fairly intriguing trade gossip. But as literature. View from the Fortieth Floor lacks a consistent viewpoint, simply upends a wastebasket of facts and scans the litter like tea leaves of doom.

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