Genius

KETTLE -- Gustav Eckstein -- Harper ($2.50).

Unless the author has a touch of it himself, stories about genius are not apt to be convincing. Kettle is. A fable of art's morality, which is very different from the world's, its values are as black-&-white as a fairytale's, its faith as strong as a child's.

Vladimir Munck, as his name indicated, was an American, but he was also and primarily a musician. His father started him playing the kettledrum when he was 4; later he went abroad to study piano. He worked hard, returned to the U. S. and began to make a name for himself as a pianist. At the height of his Manhattan success Tycoon Rothstein came to Munck with a great idea: to make Manhattan music's acknowledged world capital by building and endowing a Lyceum of Music, with Munck as musical director. After many conferences, many misgivings, Munck let himself be won over by Roth-stein's young ally, Cecilia. Then began months of confusing, exhausting work for Munck as Rothstein's errand boy while the great buildings went up. With the Lyceum ready to function Munck thought he could at last start doing a job he was fitted for, but he soon found he was nothing but a figurehead.

One Koehler, administrative go-getter, was the Lyceum's real head, lost no opportunities to show Munck his place. Munck swallowed his pride, went on teaching piano and trying unsuccessfully to get on with his composition. In one pupil, tall, gawky Jeanette. he became really interested; soon he was in love with her. When she went away with a younger man Munck hardly cared what happened next. After a while he pulled himself together, resigned from the Lyceum, got a job kettledrumming in an orchestra. He commuted to his work from a shabby town in New Jersey. There till late at night and often all night long he toiled away at his symphony, trying to make up for all his lost time. When it was finished his bad heart had nearly finished him. But he lived to hear his symphony played twice, knew when he died that he had turned again to the right job before it was too late.

The Author, of German ancestry, has not felt out of place in Cincinnati, where he has spent his 40-odd years. Graduate of no university, at 20 he was a dentist, then studied medicine, now teaches physiology at the University of Cincinnati. Three visits to Japan resulted in his biography of the late great Hideyo Noguchi; his laboratory pets gave him the material for Lives (TIME, May 2, 1932). Swart, tousle-headed, he says: "I am not much to look at. ... I am an authority on the cockroach. I know considerable about the Japanese. I play Beethoven constantly and abominably. . . . You can find me in my laboratory from ten any morning till two the next, and every Sunday, and every holiday. ... I have delivered a baby. Once I gave a serious lecture to a hall full of lunatics. I know professors."

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