March 19, 1958

Books never grow old for me.

Somehow, I rarely find time to
read them when they come out but months or years later I find them on
the shelves and they are as fresh as if newly published.

If
they’re good they stay good and it is this permanence and availability
in books that will never be replaced by, shall we say, the more
transient arts. Furthermore, having a batch of unread books gives a
person something to look forward to.

Of course, I am reconciled
to never making it with certain books which glare at me daily. Marcel
Proust, for instance, in two volumes. Marcel, I’ve tried, but I don’t
follow you.

THERE ARE brooding
boys and ponderous boys and the obscurity boys and sometimes, as in
William Faulkner, it’s worth fighting your way through a page-long
sentence to find a glittering phrase. But I find I am increasingly
impatient with the soul-tortured boys, including Thomas Wolfe, who take
too long to say what they have in mind. I prefer the precision guys.
And there are plenty of men and women writing today who can say more in
a short story than the so-called masters do in a long novel.

Actually,
reading is a matter of mood. I can always get a lift from the casual
but sharply etched writings of E.B. White, James Thurber and the mad
precision of S.J. Perelman. For that matter, I can lose myself for
hours in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

For a jolt I turn to Ray Bradbury, J.D. Salinger, Roald Dahl, John Collier, Elizabeth Enright–the
list is endless. I always come back to Ernest Hemingway, John
Steinbeck, Somerset Maugham, Norman Douglas and Henry James. And it’s
always a satisfaction to turn to books not so well known.

I wonder how many persons who hear Eric Severeid
on TV know he wrote an excellent book, "Not So Wild a Dream." Or ever
heard of Laurens Van Der Post’s "Journey to the Interior" or have read
H.L. Davis.

All of which is another reminder that this is national Library Week. A treasure awaits your pleasure.

IT IS CUSTOMARY for persons receiving awards to express deep gratitude to their mothers, wives, fellow actors, producers and discoverers.

On receiving one from TV-Radio Life the other day, Desi Arnaz
said, "I would like to thank those guys who started the revolution in
Cuba in 1933." Creating in Desi a wild desire to be elsewhere.

Stan Freberg, who received an award, although his KNX
show was canceled in mid-satire, said: "We tried to avoid cliches on
the program and one of the most successful eliminations was the phrase,
‘And now a word from our sponsor.’ "

IN CASE YOU hadn’t heard, the third stage of the Vanguard which is orbiting along with the satellite is named Toozigoot. Where, you are bound to ask, did it get a name like that?

Well,
the YMCA sponsors a Y-Indian Guide program designed to establish closer
companionship between fathers and sons between the ages of 6 and 9.
Different groups take different Indian names.

Charles E. Bartley, head of Grand Central Rocket Co. of Redlands, which made the Vanguard’s third stage, and his son Steve, 7, belong to the Toozigoot tribe which, according to archaeologists, existed in Arizona AD 1000-1400. So there you are.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY — Listening to a recording of Gertrude Stein (a rose is a you know what) reading her own stuff, writer Lou Huson remarked, "How can you tell when the record gets stuck?"

AROUND TOWN — No matter what anyone else says, Mrs. Evangeline Benitez of East L.A. received a letter from Lupe Gutierrez in Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico, addressed to "Los Angeles 22, Calif. Heaven" … Attorney Pat Cooney
received a check the other day from James Termini of Hollywood. On St.
Patrick’s Day 10 years ago, he recalled, Termini was arrested for
selling shamrocks downtown without a license. Cooney took the case and got an acquittal … Doreen Jakubowski’s
favorite Mrs. Malaprop was an elderly Cockney housemaid who always
explained an absence with, "Couldn’t come yesterday, ma’am, it’s me ‘ardening of me artilleries."