Innocent Abroad

RICHARD HALLIBURTON--His Story of His Life's Adventure--Bobbs-Merrill ($3.75).

When, at the age of 22, Richard Halliburton lawlessly hid in the shrubbery, watched the Taj Mahal and his chance by moonlight, and swam in the lily-padded pool, he was neither putting on a show nor concocting copy: he was simply a college boy on the loose, a little bit crazy with romantic enthusiasm.

When, three years later, he wrote "Monday I was free to climb over the darned walls and spend a night alone in the Parthenon," a lot of water had gone under the bridge. His Royal Road to Romance was a raving bestseller, and Richard's whole trip was a professional set piece: a stunt following-out of the wanderings of Ulysses.

These episodes and the change of spirit that took place between them may be understood from Halliburton's letters home, of which this volume is a selection. The stunts, it is obvious, became more & more staged, more & more weary, as time went on. Yet the naivete which made it possible for him to invent them was also nearly great enough to exonerate him of their ridiculousness, their frantic commercialism. His last stunt -- a voyage across the Pacific in a Chinese junk, which ended somewhere at sea -- was of a piece with all the rest.

Halliburton was something more than a bad writer, a rather hard-to-take public figure. He was an appealing, confused individual, a U. S. phenomenon, a U. S. symbol. The nice son of a nice U. S. environment, he never entirely either out grew or betrayed it. He was essentially, if mildly, an artist and a rebel, he achieved neither art nor rebellion. He was an innocent sort of Byron-of-his-time.

The first half of this book, full of the breathless excitement of a child, is a moving record of this innocence. From there on it toughens and saddens. Richard was crazy for fame, and he became, scarcely realizing it, the captive and corruptive salesman of all that had been most genuinely graceful in him.

It is as easy to laugh off Richard Halliburton as it ever was; and this book could easily be regarded merely as one last bid to the fans. But as a record of an eager human life, and of the relations of that life to its parents and its planet, it is a touching tale.

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