The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-11-04

More than that, he gives you 0 good idea of the rigorous training the boys go through: the fine con- dition their bodies and minds are always in; what they eat (the best food In the worlO; and, in con- trast, on one hand tells of their religious pursuits, and on the other gives in fine detail descriptions of how they are taught to kill.
 Particularly interesting in con- nection with this killing are the illustrations showing what nice technique the boys are taught with the bayonet.
 Even though the book is tech- nical treatise on the training of the Marines, you get thrill out of the way they are converted from soft citizens into tough masters of any condition, individual experts at all military maneuvers and capable of waging & one-man war against outstanding odds without benefit of officer direction. There's an interesting miscellany that relieves the technical data - chapters on women Marines, "slanguage," and flying Marines. And there's one alarmed good story!
 Seems there were four of the Leathernecks playing bridge. All of a sudden came shout: Force of about 200 Japs landing on the beach, The four Marines looked at one another. Finally one rose and said: "Okeh, fellas, I'll go - I'm dummy this hand!"
 GOOD NOVELS
 GETTING of Kenneth Tllompsons' O Portrait of Laurel' Appleton Century: $2.50) is unusual - 6 roller skating rink.
 Laurel is a bright character, a gal who gets out and does things for herself. Left motherless at 6 months, raised by her grandmother and drunken father, she went on her own at the age of IA, starting out ey selling papers and working in a 5 and 10.
 In her spare time she roller skated and became so good that she turned instructor. Drunken Pop wound up playing the organ at the rink where Laurel worked and they became reunited. climi ing a plot that is refreshing in its simplicity.
 COMEHoW you get the idea that O Wallace Stegner's "The Big Rock Candy Mountain (Dueii Sloan and Pearce: $3) is going to be Q Lest seller, and probably wind up as a movie.
 It took Six years for Stegner to compete this volume of human strength and frailities, and 1t takes you 8 comparative length of time to blow through its more than 500 pages. But you finish with @ grand picture of the hckleness and faith, honesty and artihciality, and sad ness and joy that you find in everyday life.
 Stegner's characters are every- day folk from Elsa Norgaard and her taciturn father, Morse, to clustering 80 Masce, the glanor- ous, adventurous, swashbuckling man Else married; their children, Bruce and Chet, who move into the spotlight in the middle of the book.
 It's e story of blighted young careers the struggle of the mother to bring Up two sons wide apart in character, and of human emotions most of all of Us have known. l
 OF DUST AND POEMS
 ssVOU buttoned up your duster
 Il to the throat. You adjusted your goggles. You pulled on your gauntlets. You put your trust in God - and then you stepped on her."
 That's the way the dauntless driver started of in the Wander biit Cup races on Long Island in the good old days described by Bellamy Partridge in Excuse My Dust" (Whittlesey House: 42.76). This entertaining book, last of the Country Lawyer" = Big Family tFiology takes you back to the turn of the century and to upstate New York where the author spent his boyhood. Principal character in