Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Roundup

• Just when you thought it was safe to return to the bookstores, an author named Barbara Delinksy has actually revived the Peyton Place series. Is Peyton Place as scandalous as it once was? Can it hope to restore the same admixture of wonder and scandal that Grace Metalious used to enchant Eisenhower voters? Well, I have my doubts. Not because Delinsky's written 70 books or because she was kind enough to write to us from the lake, but because she can't spell "germane ".
• A Yeats album has fetched £72,000 at an auction. The album includes 18 letters from Yeats to his friend, Sir Sidney Cockerell, and the manuscript of his essay, "The Tragic Theatre." There is also an original draft of one of Yeats' poems that reads, "When you are old and grey and full of water,/And a WC cannot be found and you shall burst, scream for help." But this work appears to have been abandoned.
• Gunter Grass is interviewed by Deutsche Welle during one of his regular visits to Gdnask. I wish I were making this up, but it looks like Grass was even asked to beat a tin drum. What next? Asking Grass to wear a dog suit or asking him to play cat and mouse?
• For the 100th anniversary of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Herkimer County hopes to commemorate the murder that inspired Dreiser. Police have been commissioned to prevent die-hard Dreiserites from going too far during the festivities.
• Pop quiz: Does the phrase "Thousands more are demanding ownership" come from an article on eminent domain or the Harry Potter hoopla. Here's your answer.
• As widely reported, publisher Bryon Preiss has died.
• And bookmobiles may be dying in the States, but they're thriving in Indonesia.