Books: Ice-Cream Case

Two years, ago, in Milan, Italy, a new weekly magazine called Omnibus appeared. Skillfully edited by Leo Longanesi, 33-year-old Fascist journalist, it printed political articles, photographs of pretty women and, as its specialty, the fiction of such little-known foreigners as Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell. Italy’s best magazine, Omnibus quickly became its most popular as well, with readers clamoring for more & more contemporary U.S. authors.

Particularly steady readers were Mussolini’s censors. Last month they decided they had read enough. Omnibus was suppressed, and Editor Longanesi was told by Minister of Press and Propaganda Dino Alfieri that he would not again edit an Italian magazine, thus sparing the good folk of Italy a “debasement of morals” and a waste of “good money.”

Pretext for the ban was an article accused of slandering Italy’s celebrated crippled poet, Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). The author of the piece, a young Italian critic who had dug up. much new material on Leopardi, admitted, the poet was “never very strong,” but suggested that Leopardi’s poor health may have been aggravated by his passion for ice cream.