Strongly Flavored with Salinger, Bernays' Short Pleasures Follows Stereotyped Receipe

Take some Holden Caulfield crap about adolescents trying to find themselves, and a rebellion from the strictures of upper-class society, and you've got the makings of a monumental literary stereotype.

These are the ingredients of Short Pleasures, a first novel by Cambridge resident Ann Bernays. Miss Bernays no doubt intended her heroine Nicky Hapgod to emerge as a character comparable to Holden Caulfield. (In fact, the cover of the book shouts, "Shades of Salinger!") Holden, however, was neurotic enough to be a completely original creation. Nicky attends a boarding school where her roommate is a lesbian, desires to find true love, sleeps around, gets pawed by her college president, wants to be an actress although her conformist parents disaprove, jilts her socially-respectable fiance, runs away from home to find herself. She's just an average American girl.

Capable Writer

But in spite of its hackneyed theme and its essentially unoriginal main character, Short Pleasures manages to be an entertaining book. Miss Bernay's breezy, racy style and several of her other character portrayals suggest that she is capable of writing a much better book than the framework of Short Pleasures permits.

Stalin, after copious draughts of vodka mixed with red pepper, had fallen asleep in his chair. Molotov, Malenkov and Beria, with fingers to their lips warned off intrusive domestics who might interfere with the great man's repose. While they guarded him, he had a dream.....

He was a captive in the hands of the Western Allies. But they, having observed that the Nuremberg trials generated sympathy for the Nazis, decided this time to adopt a different plan: Stalin was handed over to a committee of eminent Quakers, who contended that even he, by the power of love, could be led to repentance and to the life of a decent citizen....

In the company of four muscular Quakers, he was taken for a brisk walk during which he was encouraged to admire the beauties of nature and enjoy the song of the lark.... He was not allowed any literature that might be considered inflammatory, he was given the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress and Uncle Tom's Cabin.... He was allowed no tobacco, no alcohol, and no red pepper. Cocoa he might have at any hour of the day or night, since the most eminent of his guardians were purveyors of that innocent beverage....

Tea and coffee were permitted in moderation, but not in such quantities or at such times as might interfere with a wholesome night's repose.

During one hour of every morning and one hour of every evening the men to whose care he had been entrusted explained the principles of Christian charity and the happiness that might yet be his....

From "Stalin's Nightmare--Amor Vincit Omnia" in Bertrand Russell's Nightmares of Eminent Persons.