Dikran Kuyumjian

THE LONDON VENTURE -- Michael Arlen -- Doran ($2.50). Again the "Harold Bell Wright of the sophisticates" tosses a volume to eager admirers. In this case, it is his first book, an autobiographical volume. We see the young Armenian in his early days as a lonely essayist in London. We meet for the first time Shelmerdene, "that lovely lady." We find incorporated a first draft of the first story in These Charming People. We learn, in a gracefully whimsical introduction, how it was that Mr. Dikran Kuyumjian chanced to adopt the less complex and more indigenous cognomen under which he has become so pleasantly--and to himself, profitably--known. On the whole, The London Venture will be of some considerable interest to those who crave to know the man behind the pen-name, to those who eagerly lap every drop of ink that may flow from his cleft pen, to those who like to proclaim themselves as having read "every word" any given writer has ever written. It is not a good book with which to make Mr. Arlen's acquaintance.