MANY LIVES, ONE LOVE

The many lit'ry lives of Fanny Butcher -- avatar of midwestern taste and booster, as book reviewer on the Chicago Tribune for many years. Miss Butcher remembers her childhood and early education with some spirit and when she is being most personal she is most charming (""I hated my first name because every mare in the neighborhood was named Fanny""). Her childhood was spent in Fredonia, Kansas, but after the University of Chicago and a nerveracking period of teaching, she became involved in the excitement of Chicago's literary renaissance, the Tribune, reportage and reviewing. From then on the account is practically impassable with its blizzard of names: Harriet Monroe (""dear Harriet. . . was just plain difficult to get along with""); Leonard Bernstein (""a musical chick just about to peck its way out of the shell""); Colonel McCormick (who took Rhode Island's star out of the flag); Charles Evans Hughes (she was on his campaign train as a reporter); T.R., Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, et al. And abroad she interviewed Colette, Stein, Joyce, etcetera, et al. And there are tributes to Sinclair Lewis, Edna Ferber (who called her ""Butch""), Hemingway (who wrote she was one of his lasting friends), Willa Cather, Sandburg (who composed some charming doggerel about ""The last time I saw Fanny Butcher""), Mencken, and a cast of thousands. A copious spread of personal minutiae with a few indirectly revealing remarks on the great from a lady with clout.