Word: ruark
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Craig Price, the financier hero of Robert Ruark's new novel, makes such a point of drinking, uttering menaces, shooting lions and helling about with women, that one suspects him of wearing a toupee-all that chest hair can't be real. At any rate, he is a standard literary article -the poor boy who gouges his way to wealth. The author's account of the gouging has its moments, but doggedly lumped together, they become hours...
...part. Old Pro Ruark may have been betrayed by a compulsion to be autobiographical. Hero Price follows Author Ruark's trail almost exactly as he grows up in a small North Carolina town (Ruark was born in Wilmington, N.C.) and gets his schooling at Chapel Hill, where he becomes involved with bootleggers (Ruark says he had "a connection with Texas Guinan's brother, who had a connection in New Jersey"). After that, the author departs from his own life story and builds Craig Price into a villain who marries for money, fires his secretary-mistress and his best...
Barroom Dickens. Novelist Ruark has a sometimes fascinating knack for evoking the smell of money in print, is effectively sarcastic about such subjects as the boredom of suburban marriages. He is perhaps at his best writing about bars, which he does with all the poignancy of Dickens describing Christmas dinner at the Cratch-its'. But when Price's comeuppance arrives-wine, women and the SEC have made him a pauper-the reader finds it hard to believe that the man is truly shattered. This may be because an ex-wife gallantly bails him out with...
...candle, burning at both ends, is printed on the cover of Poor No More. It may be intended to symbolize the state of society, or of the book's hero, but it might just as well represent brightly burning Author Ruark. Since World War II, besides his syndicated column, old Reporter Ruark (Washington Daily News) has churned out magazine articles, movie scripts and half a dozen books, including the bloody Mau Mau bestseller, Something of Value (TIME, May 2, 1955). All this has taken its toll-several million dollars after taxes, Ruark estimates happily...
...Around. Being poor no more, Bob Ruark can and does travel where he likes, maintains a house in London and two in Spain, is an ilustrisimo Knight Commander of Spain's Order of Civil Merit. Not the least of the Knight's luxuries is a former sergeant-major in the British army named Alan Ritchie, who serves him as secretary, listens to his plots develop, and transcribes Ruark's massive manuscripts...