"To the Poor, The World is Full of Strangers.” New York Times “Any slob who don't throw his weight around gets pushed. I’m just tired of it, Mike . . . tired of being told what to do, where to go, how to work, who to go around with, even who fo marry. If I could be born again, Mike, I'd come out hollering bloody murder.” Tony Viola had more than his share of worries, what with a strike at the yards and his poor Italian-American family. But his thoughts always led to Christine—how she'd tried to wait for Tony's return from the army; how a few minute's weakness had given her a “fatherless” child; how neighborhood gossip had raised a barrier between them. But it was what Tony didn’t do that finally resulted in tragedy, and the shocking climax to Christine's pitiful, crushed existence. “What [the author] is saying is that, though the actors in life's drama squirm against their environment, there is a brute force in society stifling their cries.” New York Times DAVID ALMAN was born in New York, has worked and traveled widely in the U.S., and is married and has two children. He has been a New York social worker and parole officer and knows intimately the background he depicts so vividly. Two other distinguished novels, The Hourglass and The Well of Compassion, preceded World Full of Strangers, published by : Doubleday & Company, in 1949. Photo SVE Rosenblum Published by the New American LibraryBooks of the Times By CHARLES POORE —_— uly 9, 1949 HE proletarian novel was always stronger in its sympathy for the proletarians than in its credibility as a novel. It began with tirades and ended with barricades. It denounced, the station-wagon set and presently found among the station-wagon set many of its authors as well as its most attentive readers. And it left the wretchedness and unhappiriess and despera- tion that it exploited to await the day when the advent of a Mus- covite mystique would make everything as right as rain. That was in the old, old days, of course. The early days of the Nineteen Thirties, long before Ribben- trop and Stalin were photographed togeth- er, affably posed to show what could al- ways be done when differences were rec- onciled around a table in the interests of peace, David Alman The new proletarian novels of the Nineteen Forties are written in the eternal shadow cast by that matey picture of Ribbentrop and Stalin, and it cannot very well be offered as a beguiling promise of salva- tion. The world still holds wretchedness and unhappiness and desperation—and proletarian novelists, who are in quite a quandary.Indeed, they suffer from an occupational wretchedness and unhappiness and desperation of their own. For, in the nature of things, their novels are protests against the existing system. But remarkably few persons in this country could be expected to buy a book suggesting, say, that the Muscovite mystique of totalitarianism is something to stir dancing in the streets. What can they do, then? Well, one thing they can do is to take a leaf from David Alman’'s new novel, “World Full of Strangers,"* whose hero, a slum-born shipyard worker (the rebel) is equally furious at his girl (the people) for having allowed herself to be seduced by a college- bred social worker and temporary Army officer (the ruling classes) and at the cad himself, who adds insult to injury by becoming a cop in their district and thus—perhaps?—symbolizing the armed civilian law. *WORLD FULL OF STRANGERS. By David Alman. 306 pages. Doubleday. Hi. Nebulous Folk in Cosmic Roles There’s not an honest-to-Aesop Communist in ‘World Full of Strangers.” Why, there’s not a single character who is even enough of a fellow- traveler to use the key words in their dreary little lexicon of vituperation—‘“hysteria,” “‘war- monger,” “‘smear-tactics,” “red-baiting,” “witch- hunt," ete.—to the required extent. Mr. Alman has blazed a new trail for the proletarian novel. Where it leads, though, it might be difficult to say. In the end, the strong- est statement of intentions that Tony, the hero, will make is: “I’m gunning for his kind of peo- ple, but I won't kill him. You know what I’m talking about, Nicky? Tell him I’m going after his kind,-but I won't kill him.” Not the sort of message that would immensely cheer tif fel- low who got it, at that.