IN SEARCH OF MYSELF

With a whimsical, sometimes a little woeful, sentimentality, a well-known Coach writer gives an impressionistic odyssey of his first year in America -- occasionally interpolating random memories of his year of flight on the continent. He came to America on a ""Mayflower"" ship of refugees; he records his first meal at the Automat; his first night in the Howery; the ""wound of poverty"". The National Refugee Service was reluctant to accept the fact that the pen was his only means of self-support so the acceptance of his book gave him more than just a sense of security. He tried everything, a boarding house in New Jersey, a visit on a farm in Bucks County, the finding of an agent; he tried to get a job on the Alaska Highway, then with the O.W.I., then in a defense plant. And he's a little dilly about it all.