MIXED COMPANY

A collection of 38 Irwin Shaw short stories is good news. One has never been published, seven have not appeared in book form. Here is the classic Girls in their Summer heavily anthologized story about the sophisticated New York couple; Act of Faith, with a G.I. setting and its concern with the Jewish problem; The City Was in Total Darkness which takes place in a car on route to Mexico; Mixed Doubles, a tennis game which becomes the stamping and clearing ground for a bad marriage- Shaw's stage is the world. Medal for is Ruth's story to Mitchell, of a month spent in the hold of an ancient Greek ship with 700 others, Sailor off the Bremen is a brutal ""revenge is sweet"" story, of the beating up of a Nazi in New York; Widow's Meeting is the story of the marriage of Irene Clemens to the German Reinhold and her conversion to a Jew hater. There are a number with Jewish background, -- The Lament of Madame Racheusky, the decline of a one-time member of the Yiddish Theatre, God on Friday Night catches the sentiment, humor, speech of a Jewish mother; The Passion of Corporal Hawkins, who watches Jews turned back from Palestine. Shaw writes of a real world, in perfect, repertorial whole.