Handbook of Bondage

MEN IN CHAINS--Thomas Ryan--Random House ($2.50).

Whatever Thomas Ryan's failings, he does not lack for ambition. In ten stories, prologue and epilogue, he tries to nail Man to the map in terms of his leading forms of bondage and self-martyrdom. There are quite a few writers more maturely qualified for such a task but disregard of that fact is one of Ryan's naive virtues, which he shares with most first and some second-rate writers. So in spite of its inadequacies, his rawboned, cornfed volume carries much to be respected in itself.

His first four stories are ancient history; 1) a martyred pathfinder, before 7000 B.C. prototype of Osiris, of Jesus, of the Artist; 2) a dim-witted burglar vivisected by Alexandrian scientists (Result: "We have now proved . . . that the arteries circulate air to the body from the lungs. ... It makes a man proud to be a doctor"); 3) Spartacus and his terrific slave revolt, disappointingly told; 4) the Emperor Tiberius, "a martyr to man's habit of tyrannizing over his fellowman." The four with the U. S. as their setting are studies respectively of cowardice, burnt-out genius, sexual fever as a product of Mississippi Valley boredom, acute alcoholism. The Coward, well-worn in plot and people, is psychologically good & scary; The Defective is rather sketched than brought off. The Bad Girl describes provincial ennui and sexual despair with a good deal of intensity. The Drunkard, the best thing in the book, is a scalding and ghastly story of speak-easy newswriters, a maladjusted comedian. If uneven Author Ryan ever tightens the whole of his talent to that pitch, he will have justified his bold ambitions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.