MR. Carl Carmer's book, subtitled "A York State Chronicle", is an attempt to catch the glamor of a part of our country almost totally neglected by contemporary writers. Having done his part by the South in "Stars Fell on Alabama", an engaging potpourri of myths, sketches, and experiences of Alabama, he turns to his native state in the present instance in a somewhat confused and confusing piece of copy that is part rationale, part travelog, part apology, part local-color journalism, but which holds the reader's interest throughout.

The book begins at Krebs' famous inn at Skaneatles, wanders to Lily Dale and Chautaqua, back to the Genesee country, and through the Bristol Hills. It follows an aimless route in the Rochester-Geneseo-Buffalo area, through to the Binghamton-Ithaca "Storm Country", "Down the Bear Path Road" of Central New York, up North to the Adirondacks, "Land of Frozen Flame." Hit and miss Mr. Carmer picks up local anecdotes, Indian superstitions, regional customs, scenic wonders, as he goes. It is a peculiar system of newsgathering he uses, here depending on what he sees and knows, here taking in the stories of rural raconteurs, rarely bothering with actual substantiation of what he says--now poeticizing the life of degenerate redskins at the Tonawanda Reservation, of two-fisted lumbermen in the northern mountains, of New York State Police; now ridiculing Chautauqua, poking fun at civic spirit in Rochester. He writes vividly, sometimes beautifully, always imaginatively. He does not, however, do, York State the service it deserves.

Any one of the areas that Mr. Carmer so rapidly covers is ample subject for a book in itself. Chautauquans and Rochesterians, especially those who are both, have good reason to complain of the treatment accorded them. But they come off well compared with Buffalo which gets about a page, and Syracuse which gets nothing. The beautiful and legend-haunted Otsego country, home of Fenimore Cooper, is also completely neglected.

Anyone who reads the first page of "Listen for a Lonesome Drum" will want to read the whole of it. But it has spoiled for a long time the chances of another author writing a successful book on old York State. Mr. Carmer should have confined himself to a more limited space or done more thorough and more accurate work. As it is, he passes a good many localities rich with the treasure of romance; he disposes of the great Adirondacks with nothing more than an account of some winter lumbering activities, points out that cock-fighting can still be found in Central New York near Hamilton (as in a great many other places in York State), passes on a few old stories, investigates superficially a few racial-regional types, and lets it go at the that.