FOOD FOR CENTAURS

This is a gathering of the latest stories, talks, critical studies and poems by that peripatetic scholar who reached his widest audience with I Claudius. Graves has a wonderful narrative style, and the stories- or rather long anecdotes (many of which have appeared in the New Yorker) about the village on the island of Majorca where Graves lives are perhaps the best thing in the book. But the other pieces are stimulating and sometimes fascinating. If the title of the book intrigues you, it refers to the mushrooms as not only a food for centaurs but also as a potency factor in the Eleusinian Mysteries and probably the Delphic oracle. The last section of the book contains his latest poems- perhaps his weakest bent. Others may differ.... Intellectual canapes- for a select group.