The New Books

CHARLES McMORRIS PURDY

THERE was a belief in ancient Rome that when men heard Ji. thunder on the left, the gods had something of special importance to impart, and all the prudent stopped their affairs to study what omen Jove intended. Christopher Morley's Thunder on the Left (Doubleday, Page) assumes the same gargantuan proportions. The gods in this case call our attention to a customarily obscure matter: the desire of children to discover the secrets of the mysterious land of grown-ups. "We'll all be spies in the enemies' country," suggests the imaginative young Martin in this dream-tragi-comedy of Mr. Morley's, "we'll watch them (the grownups) and see exactly how they behave!"

Twenty years later do we see the same children whom Martin herded into this determined little band, revisiting tlie scenes of their childhood. They are now unhappy people, all of them, as most grown ups are, a little afraid of the passions of life. They are grim people, and only the still imaginative Martin retains the childlike simplicity of their youth. While a few search vainly, it is Martin alone who finally regains the key to the secret room of childhood. Never was such a report as this fantastic, ominous indictment which is brought in. Nor was there ever such a book as this new one of Mr. Morley's, he who has charmed for years with his comfortably pleasant tales and essays. "Where the Blue Begins," fine as it was, can in no way compare. For in Thunder on the Left Christopher Morley has achieved a miracle of insight, not only into the tragedy of being young, but also into the tragedy of being grown up.

Floyd Dell appears to have had his difficulties with youth, too. When he wrote his first novel, Moon Calf, the image of turbulent adolescence crept into his plastic inner-consciousness and asserted itself in all the succeeding novels, in both male and female guise. The first thought, however, upon looking into Mr. Dell's newest enterprise, Runaway (Doran) is that the author has won his own battle and written a story through which nophantom mooncalf will lurk. 'Fhe story concerns the magnificently picturesque Michael Shenstone, romantic and ruffian, who has run away from the cloying civilization of the little mid-western town of Beaumont, leaving a wife and baby daughter, only to return years later to take up again his battle with the devitalizing forces of a small town.

This time, however, his horizon is clouded by a grown daughter, now motherless, who in conflict with him presents the mirror of his past. So far, so good. But before long, Shenstone is caught up into the mediocrity of Beaumont, and Dell breaks down and confesses that his burly hero is only a moon-calf in grown-up disguise. And what is worse, the author tacks on a cheap and creaky ending that smacks of the theatrical cheerfulness of a John Golden production. The conflict between father and daughter bewilders, the reader as he is led this way and that through the maze of ideas. It is Mr. Dell, not Michael Shenstone, who is the Runaway.

Then, to show Mr. Dell that repetition of theme can be done with grace and beauty, comes Sherwood Anderson who repeats himself almost as often and interestingly as D. H. Lawrence, with whom he has a very real intellectual affinity. Both Anderson and Lawrence, in a broad use of the term, are sexual mystics. Lawrence in St. Mawr, and now Anderson in Dark Laughter (Boni and Liveright) present an interesting parallel of thought and technique, apart from their individual styles.

Bruce Dudley, the protagonist in the Anderson hook, seeks escape; from the newspaper world in which he is pigeon-holed, from the wife who is becoming famous. He remembers the scenes of his childhood: "Big slow river crawling down out of a wide rich flat valley between mountains far away. Steamboats on the river. Mates swearing and hitting niggers over the heads with clubs. Niggers singing, niggers dancing, niggers toting loads on their heads, nigger women having babies—easy and free —half white a lot of babies." And so he runs away, changing his name. He who had been John Stockton is now Bruce Dudley, painter in a wheel factory. In the company of old Sponge Martin and his equally sinful wife, lie catches something of the spirit of life lie seeks; the nights on the sawdust heaps underneath fatbellied moons; nights of angling for catfish with slow drags at the bottle in-between. And then, the incessant refrain that twangs through his brain:

" T'witche/ty, T'weedlety, T'wadelty, T'wum)

Catch a nigger by the thumb."

The same forces that seethe within Bruce Dudley find residence in Aline Grey, wife of the owner of the factory. The slow, steady working of fugitive passions tend toward an inevitable conclusion, a consuming flame that burns against a background of the laughter of the black servants, amused and care-free. Barbaric morality! A plea for freedom, escape from the hide-bound conventions of our inner selves. Again, the comparison of motif in D. H. Lawrence is inescapable; as Lawrence, in St. Mawr employs the symbol of a magnificent stallion to suggest this freedom from restraint, so with Anderson is there the lax laughter of the blacks. Sherwood Anderson has outdistanced his own Winesburg, Ohio in sheer vitality of performance and advance in craftsmanship. He is cacophonic, barbaric. In Dark Laughter he has written a novel which will sound a new note in American literature.

Mr. Anderson is robust chianti compared with Willa Gather's more tranquilly Graves suferieur manner of writing; yet both authors have a common base, or rather a common flaw. Both Miss Gather and Mr. Anderson seem to entertain in their latest hooks—whether by carelessness or design, I do not know—a fine disregard for what is sometimes alluded to as the form of the novel. Sherwood Anderson in Dark Laughter through sheer heady force blinds you to this weakness, momentarily, at least, while Willa Cather, in The Professor's House (Knopf), as in other of her novels, through her very calm profundity permits inspection of the structure while reading.

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The Professor's House is a passively beautiful study of the effect of the memory of a young man, Tom Outland, one of Professor St. Peter's former students in a mid-western university, upon, not only the professor, but his family as well. The memory, endowed through the material reminder of a considerable fortune willed by Outland to a daughter of the professor's, shapes and warps the lives of six people. In counterpoint to this memory is Professor St. Peter himself 5 his work upon a history of the Spaniards in America, his struggle in middle age to retain the semblance of his boyhood, with its ideals, its freshness of viewpoint. The new house, prosperity concrete, or rather, his wife's desire realized, suggests a change taking place within himself. Suddenly without warning, is interjected by Miss Cather the interlude of Tom Outland's story, as removed and untainted as the simple study in the old house to which the professor still retires for meditation and work. The interlude does for the story what the shabby retreat accomplished for Professor St. Peter's soul—it creates a clarity of purpose. Presently, the narration resumes. The professor in his little cubbyhole in the old house is caught up in a spiritual crisis, he must readjust his ideals, take new stock of himself. And so, peacefully, with calmness born of inner strength, he regards the inevitable approach of years. "He did not regret his life, but he was indifferent to it. It seemed like the life of another person." Willa Cather, in this new novel, sees life through belief in life; she does not flaunt ideas, rather, she subtly flatters the reader into thinking for himself, into divining her ideas as his own. Thus is The Professor's House an adventure.

Over-development of philosphy has long imperilled H. G. Wells' power of story telling; but in Christina Alberta's Father (Macmillan) he returns to the more agreeable literary ground of his earlier novels, Mr. Polly and Kipps. Mr. Preemby, the proprietor of a steam laundry, and Christina Alberta's supposed father, is a dormouse of a man suddenly endowed with a great vision. Through association with reincarnation, spiritualism and a prankish youth, he believes himself to be the embodiment of the preChristian Sargon, King of Kings, with a message for the world. Throughout the greater portion of the book Mr. Wells gives us a story of humor and understanding; the high and gothic-arched ideas of an older generation, embodied in poor little Mr. Preemby in contrast to the younger generation of which Christina Alberta, the young tvomah of England seeking expression, is a clear-headed and direct representative. An excellent story, marred only by Mr. Wells occasional dips into his ink-wellsian philosophy.

Perhaps it is bad manners to stick out one's tongue at a Prize Novel, especially when it is selected by a board of honourable and worthy critics. A novel may be well written, but if it is interminable as life itself, there is such a thing as its being tedious. The history of the Campions from 1 8 50 to the present is a touching one; the details of the periods involved are no doubt historically correct, and the mood bona fide. A story of sacrifice is even more vital than a story of escape; and the sacrifices which the female members of the Campion family underwent in order that the son and brother should be given every chance to gain new glory for the faded, but still honourable, family name, are worthy of an honest tear. Decline and decay of families are always sad.

The unselfish, great-hearted Maggie is the most dominant figure in The Perennial Bachelor (Harpers), the novel by Anne Parrish which won the Harper Prize for 1925. It is Maggie who lives and breathes in every page; her very presence weakens the already too weak and ineffectual brother. A little sadness, no matter how well done goes a long way; and when a deep sense of hurt pervades an entire novel., the sensitive reader is as devastated as a Russian Monday's wash. Miss Parrish has written a fine novel; she drew a straight line and kept on it. Perhaps if she had allowed herself a moment's fun now and then, the suggestion of tediousness which makes a bad reading companion, would have been non-existent.

Gertrude Atherton reminds one of the dear little old lady who thought she was being modern when she said, "Damm!" Mrs. Atherton who may have shocked (and again, may not) many tranquil souls with her Black Oxen, is attempting in The Crystal Cup (Boni and Liveright) to say "damn" twice. Gita Carteret, "a beautiful, talented girl with a distinct aversion for marriage" hates men so very much that she copies their mode of dress. Then, to prove that she has a whole new set of inhibitions, when a "successful" author falls in love with her, she is persuaded to marry him on a basis of friendship only. This mad neurotic tangle finally unwinds itself as Gita is fired with what the author calls "the wine of life", and the crystal cup is probably "full to overflowing", or some similar symbolism. In all fairness, one is warned by an honest "blurb": "T he unfailing consistency and logic, and the careful pathological research that have entered into Mrs. Atherton's handling of a dangerous theme must satisfy the scientist and the most acute student of human nature." Can it be that she has discovered Freud?

Gloriously removed from the realm of possibility is Elinor Wylie's The Venetian Glass Nephew (Doran), the delightful talc of an octogenarian cardinal, one Peter Innocent Bon, who in eighteenth century Venice longed for a nephew. All his brother cardinals had nephews of one kind or another, and Peter Innocent was growing lonely in his old age. A flesh and blood nephew was one thing; a nephew blown out of Venetian glass, and endowed with life, was quite another. Yet Peter Innocent was too old really to be surprised at anything, and having had his wish, he was content to accept miracles with aplomb. The love adventure of the nephew Virginio with the lovely Rosalba forms the slender substance of this hauntingly exquisite tale. Of a world of roofs and chimney-pots ; is Ernest Poole's The Hunter's Moon (Macmillan), an intensely human story about an unhappy little boy, written with understanding almost to the point of over-sweetness. It should be read by what Mrs. Atherton still persists in calling "sophisticates" only in secret moments of sentiment.

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William McFee is perhaps one of our most curiously-minded of adveni turers into life; things bother him, and he wants to find out the why. j He was bothered by the mysteries of that South American country, Colombia; the result of his investigation is set down in Sunlight in New Granada (Doubleday, Page) in which he alternates between the mood of essayist and traveler. Anything he may set liis pen to, is pretty sure to be interesting. This book is no exception to the rule. There is always a refreshing quality to McFee: he carries the sea with him in his pocket, no matter whether he rides burro-back in the Andes, or sits in a patio discussing sociology.

I doubt if Stella Benson is ever bored. Her reactions to adventure where adventure seems a lost art inspire the jaded to new interest in the commonplace; yet the secret of her success as a writer is that the commonplace is never that to her. Whether she writes of her wedding journey across the United States in a Ford, of her hospital experiences in China, or of trippers at Tintagel, The Little World (Macmillan) is a place of new glamour when viewed through Miss Benson's eyes.

Where Miss Benson and Mr. McFee seek life and adventure, General William Mitchell sees aircraft. And yet it is the same world! Winged Defense (Putnam) is a strong and undeniably impressive plea for a complete reorganization of our air service. He writes simply, with a natural bias, and often thrillingly. His chapter on "Aircraft Dominate Seacraft" is perhaps the most convincing in the entire book. General Mitchell and Dr. Morris Fishbein are brothersvaliants; Dr. Fishbein wishes to protect us, too, but in a different way. He is a medical Don Quixote jousting with quack-mills; his lance is a pen dipped with the deadly vitriol mencken. The Medical Follies ( Boni and Liveright) is a hearty, enthusiastic attack on medical fakes, cults and what-nots which have enraged the honest medical profession to the point of exasperation. Don Fishbein to the rescue! Fortunately, he carries his sense of humor in his black satchel; the following quotation from a Chiropractic testimonial-advertisement antidotes his scowls:

"Dear Doctor: Before taking Chiropractic and Electric treatments, I was so nervous that nobody could sleep with me. After taking six treatments anybody can sleep with me."