Jug Genius

BLOW FOR A LANDING--Ben Lucien Burman--Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

Mark Twain covered the same ground and water 50 years ago, so readers were not surprised that Ben Burman's novels (Mississippi, Steamboat Round the Bend) did not come up to Huckleberry Finn; surprising was the fact that Author Burman should find as much good old-time stuff as he has. His best find yet, the shanty-boat hero of Blow for a Landing, though by no means as much of a fellow as Huck Finn, is at least of the breed.

Willow Joe Penny is a lanky, happy-go-lucky fellow who finds "a power of music" in everything from rubber bands to squeaking shoes, but especially in jugs. His powerful ambition is to be a showboat musician. Mrs. Penny's ambition, more powerful than Willow Joe's, is to get a home on solid ground and be respectable. So Willow Joe grits his teeth and builds cabins, which floods always wash away. But when hard times come, Mrs. Penny lets him go to work on a dilapidated showboat.

Instead of getting a chance to play in the show, Willow Joe is sent off on a fantastic publicity stunt, a ten-day trip down the Mississippi on water shoes, playing a guitar. Unlike his half-dozen drowned predecessors, Willow Joe makes it. Then he lands in prison for shooting a man. His luck gets worse & worse. Then he becomes a hero in a big flood, is rewarded with a nice farm in the hills. But come summer, the Pennys start complaining-- even the clock "ain't been ticking natural" --and sneak back happily to the storms, floods, fever, gyp salesmen, rousing revival meetings, fighting and good catfishing at Beaver Slough.

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