Neo-Gothic

SEVEN GOTHIC TALES--Isak Dinesen--Smith & Haas ($2.50).

This week U. S. readers got a real treat when for once they were offered a book that would neither harrow their feelings, shame their social consciences, shock their susceptibilities nor arouse their baser impulses. Worlds apart from the concerns of their everyday lives, Seven Gothic Tales opens a window on a refreshingly different world--the world of "Isak Dinesen." Like their romantically pseudonymous author, these seven stories are romantic, but with a difference. Each has the depth of a well-conceived novel. Removed from the U. S. reader in time (the 19th Century) and place (Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Africa), they are even further removed in atmosphere. Some of them are definitely supernatural, most of them are eerie, all of them charming. Though the plots are ingenious enough to seem at times pieces of larger plots, they cannot give away the incommunicable quality of the tales. Some of them:

An old beau, remembers a rainy night in Paris that brought him a lucky meeting with a beautiful girl of the streets, new to her business. Too late he wants to find her again. Fifteen years after, he sees a beautiful skull in a friend's studio, has an inescapable feeling that it is hers.

Four people, caught in the loft of a barn by a rising flood, while away what may be their last night of life by telling their true stories.

The ghost of a hanged pirate comes back for a last family evening with his adoring old-maid sisters.

Three young men pursuing their lost love discover that they are looking for the same woman. When they find her, an old Jew shows them that none of them really knew her at all.

The conversation of Author Dinesen's characters cannot be uncorked with impunity, but these drops give an inkling of the flavor: "I remember an old Danish bishop's saying to me that there are many ways to the recognition of truth, and that Burgundy is one of them. . . . I have been trying for a long time to understand God. Now I have made friends with Him. To love Him truly you must love change, and you must love a joke, these being the true inclinations of His own heart." One of Dinesen's sophisticated elders quotes "that old saying which the peasants call the bachelor's prayer: 'I pray thee, good Lord, that I may not be married. But if I am to be married, that I may not be a cuckold. But if I am to be a cuckold, that I may not know. But if I am to know, that I may not mind.' "

The Author "is a Continental European, writing in English although that is not native to his pen, who wishes his-or-her identity not to be known." What slight internal evidence the stories give would seem to show that "Isak Dinesen" is a Dane.

Seven Gothic Tales is the April choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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