Books: Demon Through Nostril

THROUGH CHINA’S WALL — Graham Peck—Houghton Mifflin ($3.50).

Graham Peck is the 25-year-old son of a Derby, Conn, wire hairpin manufacturer. Ten years ago he was saved from a humdrum life as a hairpin king when he won first prize ($100) in the Procter & Gamble International Soap-Carving Contest with a horse whose anatomy was so mythical that he put a horn on its forehead and called it a unicorn. From then on—through Andover and Yale—he recklessly mixed oils, drinks, metaphors. After graduating from college he set out around the world with $2,000 and a set of paints.

He got as far as China, liked it so well he stayed over a year. Then he went back to Derby, Conn. Patient as a camel, he chewed over his experience two years. As he wrote and illustrated Through China’s Wall, he gained 75 pounds. He says he is not worried about the weight because he plans to return to China and live off his humps.

Like its author, Through China’s Wall defies classification. It is part exquisite travel book, part exciting history, part exotic philosophy. But above all it is a portrait portfolio of a race. In deft, humorous, economical sketches, it explains (better than a whole stack of dry-as-dust commentaries) why the Chinese people lose battles but somehow win wars. Typical snapshots:

> General Fu Tso Yi, who sent out a call for a bandit-suppression corps only to have most of the bandits sign up, delighted to double their earnings by plundering at night, suppressing themselves by day.

> Simple peasants gaping at their first automobile (“iron tortoise”), holding their noses to keep demons from springing out from it and slipping up their nostrils.

> Tough, horny, iron-faced camel drivers sitting around a fire gently knitting socks.

> The eager apothecary who advertised: FALSE EYES AND DENTAL PLUMBING INSERTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.

> Chinese soldiers armed with umbrellas, washbowls, teakettles, flashlights, towels, uncooked vegetables, birds, monkeys, occasionally guns.

> His Peking houseboy mocking his master with the chant : “Mo-yu cou-dzah, Mo-yu wa-dzah, Mo-yu chen, Mo-yu fa-dzah” —he has no pants, no socks, no money, no method.

One incident which the book omits : For a while in Mongolia, Author Peck kept a pet chicken in his room. One day, during an epidemic of deadly typhus, Peck felt logy, and noticed pink spots all up & down his left arm. He was sure he had typhus. Deciding to die gallantly, he persuaded a friend to help drink down first a bottle of brandy, then a bottle of vodka. When he awoke next afternoon with no recollection of having done any cooking, he found his room a mess of feathers, blood, picked bones. The pink spots were gone, and Graham Peck felt fine.