Best Reading

CINEMA

Never on Sunday. A rambunctious little politico-philosophical fable about the Virtuous Whore and the Quiet American, who meet and educate each other in an earthy Greek setting. Directed by Jules (He Who Must Die) Dassin and starring Melina Mercouri, Hellenism's latest, triumphant incarnation.

Spartacus. Hollywood has taken the old formula of brawn (Kirk Douglas championing Rome's oppressed) and sex (Jean Simmons swimming in the nude) and added both heart and brain. Thanks to Director Stanley Kubrick, Scenarist Daiton Trumbo and Actors Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov, Spartacus adds up to an impressive piece of moviemaking despite its obeisance to commercialism.

Sunrise at Campobello. As in his play, Dore Schary enshrines Franklin Roosevelt, but also provides a stirring, often heavily sentimental drama.

The Entertainer. England's John Osborne has provided Laurence Olivier an ideal vehicle. If a seedy music hall performer seems an inadequate symbol for all England's ills, he is, as Olivier plays him, fascinating in and of himself.

The World of Apu. Satyajit Ray completes his uncompromising and unadorned naturalistic trilogy about Indian life, giving proof that he has risen to a control of the film medium that places him among the best directors in the world.

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. William Inge's careful insights into the problems of an Oklahoma harness salesman and his troubled family are well illuminated in the screen version, with Robert Preston setting the acting pace.

TELEVISION

Tues., Nov. 1

Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.).* Skin-divers on the floor of the eastern Mediterranean explore a ship that went down 1,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Wed., Nov. 2

The Perry Como Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Perry's guests: Clooney and Rooney. Color.

Thurs., Nov. 3

Close-Up! (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The show promises a searching look at an often ignored subject: local election proposals --for school bonds, constitutional revisions, etc.--and how an indifferent electorate can inadvertently cause good ones to fail, bad ones to pass.

Fri., Nov. 4

Presidential Countdown (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). The last campaign updater by Walter Cronkite.

Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). One of the major news stories of the week.

Sat., Nov. 5

N.C.A.A. Football (ABC, afternoon). According to viewer's region: Syracuse v. Army at New York, Illinois at Michigan,

Denver at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The Campaign and the Candidates

(NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Final wrapup.

Sun., Nov. 6

College News Conference (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Guest: Henry Cabot Lodge.

Meet the Press (NBC, 6-7 p.m.). A major Republican and a major Democrat in a dual interview.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). History of the White House.

See America with Ed Sullivan (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Sullivan in Chicago with Charlton Heston, Benny Goodman, Mahalia Jackson, Bob Newhart, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Dolores Gray--all of whom are to some degree connected with Chicago.

The General Electric Theater (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). Gene Tierney stars in "Journey to a Wedding," making her first acting appearance in seven years.

Mon., Nov. 7 Continental Classroom (NBC, 6-7

a.m.). First half-hour: modern chemistry under Dr. John F. Baxter of the University of Florida; second half-hour: contemporary mathematics under Dr. John J. Kelley of the University of California.

THEATER

On Broadway

An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Into the cobra-comic coils of this superb comedy team fall mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, lovers and mistresses, P.T.A. chairmen and guest speakers. The subjects may be common, but the hilarity isn't.

A Taste of Honey. This earthy drama about a desperately lonely girl who takes love--and the resultant misery--where she can find it, written by Shelagh Delaney when only 19, has turned out to be one of the season's first dramatic hits. The dialogue is true and the lead performance by Joan Plowright uncannily apt.

Irma La Douce. A French musical as fetching and airy as a bouffant petticoat stars Elizabeth Seal, whose song-and-dance skill and saucy insouciance flesh out her personable part as everybody's dream tart.

The Hostage, by Brendan Behan. A gorgeous display of Erin-go-bawdry, keening Celtic lyricism and tongue-out-of-cheek irreverence. In an incoherent sort of way, it is all about an English soldier captive in Ireland.

Among last season's plays with a strong grip on this season's playgoers are: The Miracle Worker, Toys in the Attic, Bye Bye Birdie.

BOOKS

Incense to Idols, by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. In this impressive second novel by the author of Spinster, an amoral and witchingly lovely woman spins a treacherous human web, in which men snared by beauty must ultimately confront God, death and salvation.

Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a Marine Venus, by Lawrence Durrell. The laureate of the wine-dark sea turns his sun-bedazzled eye on the islands of Corfu and Rhodes. To Durrell the Greek landscape lastingly utters one commandment: Know thyself.

The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart. A panoramic, quasi-epic novel of Jewish suffering, from medieval pogroms to Nazi crematories, in which the descriptions of martyrdom are eloquent and touching, and answers to the question "What is a Jew?" are largely existential.

Portrait of Max, by S. N. Behrman. The twilight years of a dandy, Sir Max Beerbohm, sketched with grace, fondness and urbanity. Decorated with many a scathingly eloquent caricature by "the incomparable Max."

The Sabres of Paradise, by Lesley Blanch. A true Arabian Nights tale of 19th century Russia's subjugation of unruly Caucasus tribesmen, replete with high-bouncing feats of battlefield and seraglio.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer. The gaudy, grisly supermen of Nazidom strut their Wagnerian stage once more in a historical chronicle beside which most historical novels seem puny.

The Nephew, by James Purdy. A highly accomplished novelist, who changes his pace from book to book, examines the secrets of a seemingly commonplace life and concludes that to love is not to know someone.

The Child Buyer, by John Hersey. In an acid satire, the author jousts tellingly with most of the fatuities of the age.

Rome for Ourselves, by Aubrey Menen. A handsome goody for early Christmas shoppers, with superb plates of the Roman scene and a mockingly intelligent essay in debunkmanship--the art of using the past while seeming to abuse it.

The Trial Begins, by Abram Tertz. Smuggled out of Russia, this surprisingly sophisticated novel of modern Soviet life is a kind of drawing-room autopsy of the workers' paradise.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee, with photographs by Walker Evans. Since it was written in 1936, this prose account of sharecroppers' lives, set down with the dark rage of a poet, has become a classic.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1)*

2. Hawaii, Michener (2)

3. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (3)

4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (5)

5. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (4)

6. Mistress of Mellyn, Holt (7)

7. The House of Five Talents, Auchincloss 8. The Chapman Report, Wallace (6)

9. The Child Buyer, Hersey (8) 10. The Last Temptation of Christ,

Kazantzakis (9)

NONFICTION

1. The Waste Makers, Packard (1)

2. Born Free, Adamson (2)

3. Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? Schlesinger (4)

4. The Politics of Upheaval, Schlesinger (7)

5. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (5)

6. The Liberal Hour, Galbraith (8)

7. The Conscience of a Conservative, Gold water (6)

8. Taken at the Flood, Gunther (3)

9. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer 10. Baruch: The Public Years

*All times E.S.T.

*Position on last week's list.

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