THE WAY SOME PEOPLE LIVE

New Yorker material largely -- which renders of that type of short story will like. A purge for softness, these thirty odd sketches of disillusioning penetration. They range far, from personnel of summer theatre, to the undercurrents of a wedding, the conflicts of youth and age, the slavery to conventions, middle aged failure, obsession with one outstanding event, outsiders looking in, adjustment from civilian to military life -- all blending into a fine-patterned design of human blindness, pettiness, egocentricity, that avoids the extremes of sentimentality or smartness and underlines the foibles of mankind with clarity, distinction and finesse.