NUMBER ONE

Endlessly appealing, presumably; to the novelist is the subject of a dictator, American style, in the making, with Huey Long as prototype just around the corner. This is the best of them -- and perhaps the easiest reading of anything Dos Passos has done. I found it absorbing -- but not world-shaking. One got the feel of the man's hypnotic power, his ability to pull the tops of the public will to capitalize on his own liabilities, to play with scruples and put a veneer of ""clean as a bound's "" ver palpably doings, to lst and gorge to satiety all his appetites, and to even those who saw through him. The story of his meteoric rise is told through the highspots involving his secretary -- down to the supreme sacrifice when the man is made the scapegoat and ""Number One"" rants on. More convincing than Hamilton Sun in , more entertaining than the factual record in Louisiana Hay. Appalling, degrading if you will, but here's an American tycoon tramping through the of decency and honesty -- and -- for the moment -- winning. The publishers are backing it as their big book. The Dos Passos market will welcome it as a forward stride, though less original than his earlier work. Conservatives -- 'ware.