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THE SUSPENDED DRAWING ROOM by S.N. Behrman

THE SUSPENDED DRAWING ROOM

By

Publisher: Stein & Day

The trouble with many collections of New Yorker prose is that they're edited by nostalgic hyper-sophisticates who liked all the right people for all the wrong reasons. Nothing like that is evidenced here. The Suspended Drawing Room is a fine and sensitively Culled collection of S.N. Behrman pieces. Prefaced by a recollection of Harold Ross, there are two compassionate commentaries about England and the English people during and immediately after World War II, and seven of Behrman's best character profiles: Robert E. sherwood, Dr. Emanuel Libman; Chaim Weizmann; A.E. Kazan. (the character about whom America, America was written); Ferenc Molnar; Bernard Shaw; and Gabriel Pascal, the magnificent Hungarian phony who managed to wring exclusive film rights out of G.B.S. The emphasis here is not on the Behrman wit or wordsmanship, but rather on the skilled, eclectic, incisive personal journalism from which too few of our younger ""contributors"" have learned.