CRIMSON BOOKSHELF

The first novel of David C. DeJong, author of many short stories, will be published this month, under the title of "Belly Fulla Straw." It is the story of a Dutch immigrant family in a small city in the Middle West.

It took Francis Hackett almost five years to write his biography of Francis I. In November he promised his publishers: "The final section will be ready in December unless I get the pip." He writes of the completed book, "The beginning is quiet, simplified, kept sober in style. The second section is the opening of the fruit. Here is the Man in action as King, in love, in intrigue, in battle, at court, the spender and speculator and crook and adventurer. I have tried to squeeze the juice of French characteristics into these pages and to make him as human as Henry, though his own kind of man. The final section is after Pavia with his imprisonment, his second love affair, and the life he builds up on which Benvenuto Cellini throws a big light. It tries to make out the meaning of the whole thing."