Books: Kremlin Gremlin

ELOISE IN MOSCOW (70 pp.)—Kay Thompson—Simon & Schuster ($3.75).

“I was,” reports the tourist, “an angel all over the Krémlin.” Decent Marxists, of course, are not supposed to believe in supernatural beings, but they might find it easier to believe in angels than in Eloise, the wildly implausible moppet who usually lives at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel with her nanny, dog Weenie and turtle Skipperdee. Two years ago her devoted biographers, Nightclub Comic Kay Thompson and Illustrator Hilary Knight, described how she cut a rug at Maxim’s in Paris. In this, her fourth appearance, Eloise dons raccoon coat and diplomatic pout to travel to Moscow, where Mommy has some vague connections with Americanski Embassyski. And here is the thing of it, as she would say: never before have those Red squares been exposed to anyone as hip as Eloise.

She is, of course, an irrepressible capitalist (“The Rolls is the only sports car I will drive in a Russian blizzard”), shows dangerous bourgeois-individualistic tendencies by riding her tricycle on the frozen Baltic, and utters subversive observations (“Everybody watches everybody in Moscow”). But she makes up for it by getting right into the thick of cultural exchange, playing chopsticks in F at Tchaikovsky Hall, and doing a “rawther unusual” ballet with three elderly snow sweepers, which cries out for Choreographer Jerome Robbins. The book’s most remarkable character is Eloise’s guide, Zhenka, who has a magnificently declarative style: “Is possible to see here Sovietskaya Square, pleasure garden with statues, in former days was empty lot . . .”

Author Thompson and Illustrator Knight recorded the international innocent after a 3½-week trip to Russia in February, can be certain that the book (75,000 copies in print before publication) will sell like blini. Author Thompson’s humor is becoming strained, but whenever the text sags, the illustrations more than make up for it; Artist Knight has provided the most arresting views of Moscow since Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev (was great turn-of-century painter). All in all, is possible here to have fun with Eloise, in former days little girl, now diplomat.