FICTION

Alice

ALICE IN THE DELIGHTED STATES--Edward Hope--Lincoln MacVeagh, Dial Press ($2.50).

Alice in Wonderland, loved these many years by doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief, was also loved by a newspaperman--very, very much. The offshoot of the affair was a daughter, also Alice, who started her pilgrimage through North Hysterica just as her mother's manuscript body was being cruelly contested by the book-collectors. Once in the Delighted States, by way of the stem of a drinking glass, Alice Jr. revolved with the Rotarians round a luncheon table, but when she refused to make a speech the Rotarian next to her feared the girl was moody: "That comes from being too subjunctive and makes the situation tense." Alice thereupon recited a poem for them. Suddenly her entire audience scuttled and scampered off to escape the American Mercurial twins, Twaddle-dum and Twiddle-dee, now that you mencken it, one with H. L. M. embroidered on his collar, and the other, G. J. N. They conversed solemnly with Alice, and tried to entertain her. But Alice declared herself bored, and immediately the two little men vanished, leaving her to walk the Primrose Path. . . .

Then Alice begins to grow up, much too large for her clothes. This so incenses the censor that he sends her to the court of appeals--sex appeals. The pressing press immediately takes her up, while the lawyers of the Persecution and Pretense select a jury of frightened white rabbits, parrots, and a sleepy possum that could not think what his name was. The judge, also dozing, is bound in red tape--red ribbons as Alice calls it. A very cross examination is interrupted by more news: PRIZE BEAUTY SLAYS LOVE MATE WITH ICE PICK AFTER JAZZ PARTY IN RICH NEST, and Alice's trial is over. Alice is advised to go into vaudeville, or write her Life Story, on the strength of her recent publicity, but she goes to W7ash-ington instead, and comes very near making hystery.

Alice in Wonderland is a joke that some see, and some, deserving pity rather than scorn, do not. The same categories apply to the joke by Alice Jr.'s father, Colyumist Hope of the New York Herald-Tribune. Though his verse falls far short of Lewis Carroll's the narrative (packed as it is with social & political quips, flagrant puns and rare etymology) does credit to the English mathematician, and surpasses in satire more serious-minded modern U. S. Jeremiads. So also Rea Irvin's illustrations, which are excellently done.

On Page 143 DAISY AND DAPHNE--Rose Macaulay--Boni & Liveright ($2.50).

Closer than David & Jonathan, closer than Manuel & Esteban, were Daisy & Daphne. Closer because their relationship was not that of equals: Daisy admired from the depths of her self-disgust, Daphne tolerated from the fastnesses of her self-confidence. And because Daisy's inferiority complex cowered behind Daphne's blithe assurance, Daphne was bound the closer by protective responsibility for the girl she despised.

To as charming and well-bred a person as Daphne there was much to despise. For Daisy was not only ashamed of her lower middle class family in East Sheen, but pretended they lived abroad, well away from inquisitive friends. Her profession too--writing heart-to-heart patter for London Sunday supplements--seemed to her so painfully vulgar that she concealed it under the name of Marjorie Wynne. Not that it wasn't good of its kind ("Career or Babies for the Post-War Girl?"), and in great demand for its popular appeal, but that was just exactly why Daisy, out of her snobbishness, loathed it, and was grateful to Daphne for forgetting it among their well-bred friends.

One of these was Raymond whom both Daisy and Daphne loved--Daisy poignantly, Daphne lightheartedly. In due course, he proposed marriage to Daphne, thus precipitating between her and Daisy an emotional crisis, composed not, as one might have thought, of jealousy or renunciation, but of the fears and vacillating doubts of Daisy's soul. Closer indeed than David & Jonathan, closer even than Manuel & Esteban, for on page 143 it comes out, with cleverly achieved unexpectedness, that Daisy and Daphne are one and the same. And Daisy hopes that it will always be as Daphne that she appears--particularly to Raymond.

But her hope is destroyed by her own suspicion that she cannot consistently play the part; by Raymond's discovery of her identity with Marjorie Wynne; and, climactically, if somewhat comically, by the revelation of her lowly origin. For her mother, "betrayed" in her youth by a gentleman (Daisy-Daphne's father), rises out of her recaptured East Sheen respectability, and waddles into Raymond's parental drawing-room to inquire into the intentions of Daisy's young man.

P.ose Macaulay's perennial concern for human snobbishness, and consequent shams, takes new form in this entertaining tragedy, punctuated as it is with slapstick. No innovation, it is a psychological study of dual, or rather multiple personality. It is done with wit, intelligence, and according to Freud.

Author Macaulay, brought up in Italy, by the sea, now lives and writes in London. Somewhat annoyed that her publishers required further publicity matter than her creditable list of novels (Potterism, Told By An Idiot, Orphan Island) she answered in regard to hobbies: "I don't keep rabbits or collect stamps in these days."