Books: Elephantine Cricket

WILBUR THE HAT—Hendrik Van Loon—Boni, Liveright ($3.50). Wilbur, a hat blown into Kingdom Come, found himself drifting down one of the principal waterways of that monarchy accompanied by a certain cricket. Wilbur saw a pile of debris (“The ancient Gods,” said Cricket, “who had meant so much for so long that people could not let them be sold for junk”), the greatest of the world’s builders, a whittling man (Stradivari), a place that smelled of onions (the Acropolis), a resigned figure absolutely alone on an island the size of a dollar (Jesus Christ). Irritated with his guide’s trick of attempting to make a banality significant by understatement and not over-amused by the fantasies of this rather elephantine Cricket, Wilbur ended his extraordinary expedition, it is presumed, without regret.