Shorter notices
The Bush Rebels Barbara Cornwall (Andre Deutsch £2.50) This is an eye-witness account of three months spent with the guerrillas fighting the Portuguese in two obscure parts of Africa — Frelimo in the empty northern provinces of Mozambique, and, the PAIGC in the steamy jungle of Portuguese Guinea. It features graphic descriptions of the courage and endurance of the guerrillas, somehow surviving their gruelling marches and night ambushes, interspersed with attempts to analyse the wellsprings of these African revolutions and the building of new social and administrative structures in the 'liberated zones.' But Mrs Cornwall is a bit starry-eye about the revolutionaires — at one point she describes Frelimo men as "totally real" — and is uncritical of their exaggerated territorial claims and unaware of some of the dirtier politicking going on in Dar-es-Salaam and Conakry. She understands and expresses the liberation movements' roots and staying-power but underestimates those of the Portuguese, who are not just peasant soldiers in crumbling forts. These are obscure wars in godforsaken places but they are vital for the future of Africa, and any book on them is worth reading. C. de C.
Run-Through John Houseman (Allen Lane £5.00) Mr Houseman's record of time spent at Clifton, on an Argentinian ranch, as a temporarily wealthy corn grain merchant and as an important influence upon American theatre is told with elegance. But justifiably, the Mercury Theatre forms the centre of Mr Houseman's extraordinarily readable memoir of the 1930s. The frantic stories of its successes and failures are told with affection and vividness. The author emerges as somewhat self-deprecating, affectionate, remarkably loyal and as an entertainer in his own right.
He has an excellent memory for the absurd and the bizarre. Two days stand out: one in Argentina when he castrated 487 pigs between lunch and dinner and another, in New York, when his grain corporation was collapsing and the office clerk, Mr Weaver, went berserk and ordered half a million dollars' worth of calculating machines in Mr Houseman's name. Mr Weaver died of a brain tumour three weeks later.
The book will be celebrated for its picture of Orson Welles: 'the pale pudding face with the violent black eyes . . . the astonis'hingly small teeth . . . the huge pale hands.' The author played a very important part in Welles's achievements in the '30s, most obviously in the guidance he offered Mankiewicz during the writing of Citizen Kane and throughout the life of the Mercury.
The single unfair remark in the whole book is directed by the author against himself. He refers to his lack of 'creative originality' but it is exactly this quality which makes his book a classic amongst showbusiness memoirs. R.G.
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