The Up-Set

Joseph Moncure ("Kid") March vs. Robert ("Farmer") Frost, and Some Other Literary Encounters

JOHN RIDDELL

ONE

KID March had the stuff, but his style was hard;

And he never got a chance at the Pulitzer Award.

Keen as a razor,

Tough as a strop,

He could write like a fool And he knew when to stop.

Ilis pace was swift His plot was bold,

Ilis last-line wallop Would drop you cold.

Compact, terse, hard-boiled:

Tough?

I'll tell de woild.

His language was crude,

Colorful,

Rough:

With lines short,

But long enough.

Compact;

Neat.

He was light on his poetical feet.

(I'd like to show you How bad he'd swear;

But it couldn't be printed in Vanity Fair.) Ilis stuff was modern.

He packed a punch.

But lie didn't rate With the Classical Bunch;

And whatever he wrote, you knew that he gave Milton a shudder in his grave.

He was slick:

Quick:

Each effect was like a brick.

His poetry had the general mien

Of a sonnet written on a sewing-machine.

He got you nervous:

You never could tell

If his verse was prose, or what the hell.

The rhymes were cock-eyed—

The lines wouldn't scan—

But you couldn t lay it down once you began. He'd warm up slow:

He'd let you go

For maybe a couple of pages or so.

Then he'd start.

One left—

One right—

And you'd keep on reading The rest of the night.

Abrupt,

Emphatic,

His poems were always dramatic.

2

Then,

Sudden disaster:

A Boston pastor

Invoked the Clean Books law.

And hung a hot one on March's jaw.

They discovered his first book told the truth And therefore endangered the morals of youth.

"Literature," Kid March pled. "Obscene," the censor said.

Youth must be saved.

Air. Sumner knew best.

The II i/d Party was suppressed.*

TWO

Time out.

One year has passed:

Kid March has been released at last.

He is back to try to win his laurels W ithout corrupting American morals. Now he offers The Set-Up,

A dramatic recital,

To meet all comers for the Poetry title.

THREE

The Hall of Fame was packed that night With a public eager to ,see the fight Between the challenger,

"Kid" March's book,

And "Farmer" Frost's U'est Running Brook. Battle of the Century!

Classic Collision!

Ten editions to a decision!

The huge Arena seemed dim,

Vast,

Filled with the shadows of the past.

I'he gathering crowd was vague and blurred. Their judgment depended On what they heard:

Newspaper ads;

Publicity stunts;

(The American public buys anything once.) They only perused what the critics told them And bought what the man in the bookstore sold them.

2

In the center of the floor 1'he raised ring stood;

The light glared down from a metal hood. The figures within it were ponderous,

Slow;

They crouched without exchanging a blow. They didn't seem to do much fighting,

But that is the trouble with epic writing.

Around the ring,

Alert for news,

The critics were writing Their reviews:

Each was preparing a pompous quotation To boulster his critical reputation;

Each was prepared to sacrifice that If a wise-crack happened to sound more pat. They balanced their typewriters on their knees, And they never raised their eyes

(*And is now bringing $150 a copy, if you can get hold of one. /. R.)

From the keys.

They didn't have to watch the racket.

They did their reviews right from the jacket. Praising their friends;

Smug;

Secure:

The judges of American literature.

''Hey, buddy, I missed de opening bout.

How did dem two lightweights make out?"

''Who, dem?

Oh, fine.

Parker knocked out Hoffenstein!

One on the button in the third—"

"Aw, I knew dat Parker could lick dat bird!"

Shouts, calls,

Caterwauls:

"Come on, 'John Brown',

Knock him down!''

Concerted yelling from one direction:

fhe Book-of-the-Month Club cheering section.

"Who's fighting now?"

"You kidding me? Say,

I)is here is Battling Steve Benet!"

"Yeh? Didn't he train wit' Guggenheim?"

"Sure, he handled him quite a time;

Two years in Yurrop—"

"Gees, he oughta be prime!"

Bowed;

A little cowed;

Several old timers sat in the crowd: Markham, still leaning on the hoe Which once had knocked them for a row; And Masters, of a former age When epitaphs were all the rage.

Dead;

Almost unread.

Forgotten by a younger set V hich had done nothing to forget.

"V ho's Benet fighting?"

"Some old time gink;

Sandburg, or some such name, I think.

It doesn't matter.

He don't rate.

I hear he had trouble to make the weight."

"Sure, Steve should he middle-weight champeen With his epics of the American scene—"

Clang!

"There goes the bell!

Who's the announcer?"

"That's John Riddell!"

Continued on page 114

Continued from page 77

"Thee-ee decision, ladies and gents— Thee-ee-ee decision is—

BENET!

lie is now being matched to meet Millay

In this Arena, one year from today."

3

A happy shout.

"Good Morning, America" is carried out;

The crowd settles down for the final bout.

The ring is cleared,

The clamor has died.

Covici's elbow'

Dug Kid March's side.

"Well—" he smiled.

"Here goes!

Come on, now—

On your toes!"

Friede lifted the bucket.

"Okay," he said.

Kid March strode down the aisle ahead.

A murmur arose from the gaping crowd;

They exchanged eager comments aloud: "That's Kid March!

Did you read The Wild Party?"

"Well, the Kid's looking pretty hearty!"

"I hear he uses Masefield's style—"

"Aw. he could heat Masefield by a mile!"

Suddenly Frost appeared;

A few hoarse voices cheered.

Kid March stared at what he saw: Granite shoulders;

New England jaw;

A Hardy form;

Plenty of meat;

Balanced securely On classical feet;

Fists like sonnets,

Solid,

Sure.

Powerful lines That would endure.

Something in March grew suddenly tight;

He knew he was in for a nasty fight.

4

The bell hammered,

Staccato,

Swift.

John Riddell's arm began to lift:

"LA-A-DEES—AN'

Cents ..."

His voice roared out;

Echoed;

Immense:

In the vast arena The words were lost.

" ... IN THIS CORNERFARMER FROST ... !"

The Farmer bowed,

As stiff as starch.

" . . . AND IN THIS CORNER—" He bellowed:

. . . KID MARCH!"

Covici picked March's bathrobe up. All right, Kid— o get 'em, pup!"

'he bell clanged.

Their gloves touched,

Brushed;

Around the ring the critics sal hushed.

5

They circled a moment,

Getting acquainted.

Kid March pretended to rhyme: Feinted.

Frost raised his eyebrows And shrugged unheeding;

He couldn't forget his Boston breeding.

The Kid Crouched;

He

Pulled

His

Blows:

Then suddenly shot one full-length to the nose.

It caught Frost by surprise:

He glared at Kid March And blinked his eyes.

They circled again;

Neither one led.

The Kid played the body;

Frost aimed at the head.

"Come on, now, Farmer!

Dis guy ain't nuttin'—

Continued on page 115

Continued from page 114

Shoot him a trilogy to de button! Sock 'im wit" a landscape—

Put him away!

Just send him a quatrain:

A, B, B, A!"

Applause and jeers from the opposite faction:

"You got him on plot, Kid—

Show us some action!"

6

Then suddenly,

Ominously,

Austere,

Farmer Frost uncorked an idea.

Kid March saw it coming;

He stood surprised.

His brain seemed dull,

Paralyzed.

He watched it coining A hell of a while:

It sprang from the earth In Vergilian style;

Started slow;

Gathered force;

Rose in a purely classical course. March ducked too late To save himself—!

It knocked him For a five-foot shelf.

"Two . . .

"Three ..."

lie blinked his eyes and tried to see. He seemed to he lying On the floor:

He couldn't remember . . .

A voice droned "Four ..."

TI is brain clicked.

Now he knew what it said:

They were counting editions Over his head.

"Five ..." said the voice,

Almost lost:

He had to get up And get this Frost!

He crouched;

Sprang!

No time for rhymes now—

To hell with that!

He struck,

Hit something hard,

Slumped back against the ropes.

He glanced at his feet—

Then stared aghast—

He seemed to have won the fight at last! Frost writhed there before him In great agitation,

Clutching in both hands His reputation.

The crowd rose:

Booed:

Clamored:

The hell hammered.

John Riddell sprang through the ropes once more,

And raised the Farmer's limp wrist from the floor.

He held it aloft;

Waved his hat;

Bowed.

11 is voice rang out above the crowd:

"Frost wins on a foul!

The judges' slips show it!

Kid March is ruled out—

He wasn't a poet!"

FOLK

And that is the tale of how Kid March lost

The critics' decision to Farmer Frost. They declared Frost poet laureate, And as for March,

He got the gate . . .

As a matter of fact,

It was just as he'd planned,

For the whole gate totalled some fifty grand.

Which shows that it pays To be a palooka:

Frost got the credit,

But March got the lucre.

2

And the moral is this: In American verse

The better you are, the pay is worse.

THE SET UP by Joseph Moncure March (Covici, Friede)

WEST RUNNING BROOK by Robert Frost (Henry Holt)

Continued on page 126

Continued from page 115

ADD 1928

CONTI?ALTC) IIOSANNAS

ELIZABETH AND ESSEX is merely the best hook of (to be conservative) the 1928-1929 season, the most beautiful prose we have read in years, a classic to be banded down from our age to posterity, the outstanding modern biography, a triumph of compression, a masterpiece of style; and to say anything more would lie gilding the lily. And the faint rustling which you heard, as the first reviews began to boom, was the bowed figures of Andre Maurois, and Emil ("One-a-Week") Ludwig, and W. E. Woodward, their cloaks drawn about their faces and their own attempts at biographies tucked under their arms, tiptoeing cautiously out the back door, away from a pitiless and inevitable comparison with Mr. Strachey.

ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, by Lytton Strachey. (Harcourt Brace)

That's the big trouble with making a list of Best Books such as we did last month. For the rest of the year we shall be remembering books that we forgot to include; and by the time we get the list completed and up to date, it will be 1930 and we shall have to start all over again.

Take, for example, William McFee's Pilgrims of Adversity,—in many ways the most important American contribution to the year's fiction, written with sober, masculine, often very beautiful prose, telling a superb story of elemental human relationship, and telling it with the handsome restraint which has already placed Mr. McFee in the very forefront of living novelists. I think the most significant thing about William McFee is that all-pervading humour which ennobles his work, the broad sense of humanity which belongs to sea-faring men whose lungs have filled with ocean air and whose eyes from the crow's-nest have swept the whole horizon. Pilgrims of Adversity is a distinguished and memorable volume.

And that was the book of all books which we had to overlook!

PILGRIMS OF ADVERSITY, by William McFee. (Doubleday, Doran)

IN LESS WORDS, ETC.

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA; OR, DAVID COPPERFIELD, by Robert Benchley. {Holt). Compared with practically any other comic essayist, of course, Benchley is supreme; but compared with his own preceding volumes, this latest collection seems just the least bit sour. And it honestly hurts us to say this far more than it could possibly hurt Mr. Benchley.

WINTER WORDS, by Thomas Hardy. (Macmillan). The last poems of Thomas Hardy as prepared by him, except for minor revisions, to be issued on a birthday which his own preface leaves forever unnumbered.

THE BON VIVANT'S COMPANION or, How To Mix Drinks, by Professor Jerry Thomas, edited by Herbert Asbury. (Knopf). A reverent disciple has restored in all its simple grandeur this manual of the artist-bartender, "the greatest drink-mixer of his age", an age that is not, alas! ours. Gentlemen —Professor Jerry Thomas, inventor of the "Blue Blazer" and the "Tom and Jerry" and deifier of the lowly cocktail. This erudite and aesthetic compilation of recipes of ancient potables is guaranteed to break any good man's heart.

THE STRANGE NECESSITY, by Rebecca West. (Doubleday, Doran). A collection of critical papers, of which the first, on Art and James Joyce, gives its title to the volume, by one of the most sensitive and intellectual critics and most beautiful writers of our day. With certain minute reservations, we offer this book as including some of the most beautiful English prose and some of the smartest criticism we have read. Her slogan is to make Art as interesting as a prizefight.

WHEN IT'S COCKTAIL TIME IN CUBA, by Basil Woon. (Horace Liveright) That the author of WHEN IT'S COCKTAIL TIME IN CUBA figures on the pay-roll of the John McEntee Bowman interests may at once and naturally be assumed from the most casual perusal of the volume. Opening with a glimpse of the high doings at Havana's Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel, an insight into those diversions beloved by the typical tourist is accordingly presented to the reader. Little reference is made to the genuine charms of the country. Boosting of a painfully transparent order fills this book's pages, putting to blush the most enthusiastic and exaggerated of resort brochures. Indeed it would seem that subtlety were a quality unknown to the exasperating Mr. Woon.

Of the countless samples of sheer beauty in which the island is steeped, of the ever-present bits of romance so plenteous, the author alas! seems curiously unaware, preferring to direct his energies to the setting down of those happenings so dear to the heart of the true butter-and-egger.

If you are the type of person who relishes the screech of college-boy jazz bands, hotel lobbies crammed with Jewish cloak-and-suit buyers and their consorts bedecked in all their gaudy finery, members of Rotary travelling on reduced fare tickets, sight seeing tours, fawning head-waiters, gossip about third-rate musical show mimes —in short, the more obvious and disheartening vulgarities of the current age, this tome is recommended without reservation.

THE CASE OF SERCEANT GRISCHA, by Arnold Zweig. (Viking). Taking, in all its unimportant ramifications, the trial of one obscure Russian prisoner, Herr Zweig has written the most powerful, most beautiful and most important book about the War that has yet come off the presses. The story is surcharged with pity and courage and profound morality and presents one of the great characters of modern fiction in its hero. It is six hundred pages long and it reads like a dime novel.

BALLAD OF READINC GAOL, by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by John Vassos. (Dutton). This is a handsome edition of Wilde's poem, embellished by Mr. \ assos' futuristic interpretations which unquestionably make their effect but seem to go out after it a little too anxiously to make for complete harmony with the text.

Continued on page 130

Continued from page 126

RASPUTIN, by Rene Fulop-Miller. (Viking). A conscientious biography of the "Holy Devil" that attempts to reconcile the previous biographies by Rasputin's daughter, Matriona and his enemy, the monk-priest Iliodor. It does not succeed, since so overwhelming a personality can never be interpreted by a compromiser. Even so, enough of the amazing scourge of God comes out to enable you to come to your own conclusions.

A LITTLE LESS THAN GODS, by Ford Madox Ford. (Viking). The old technician turns on too much technique again, and the magnificent story of Napoleon's Hundred Days is ravelled and snarled in circumlocutions, obfuscations and pure dullness.

CAWDOR, by Robinson Jeffers. (Horace Liveright). It completely shows us up that we deal with Robinson Jeffers in a short review, but he is simply not for the likes of us to criticise. There is nothing to say but that here is the blackest poetn being written in America today, the most lonely and the most despairing. Candor is tragedy in its noblest and most terrible definition. It destroys all the optimism of man in one searing geyser of flame. It is, in short, nothing to get gay about. Read it and jump off the Woolworth Building. You'll be happier in the end. But read it, whatever the cost. Jeffers is writing really epic poetry. Of the shorter poems, we commend to your special attention Hurt Hawks and Meditation on Saviors.

ON MY WAY, by Art Young. (Horace Liveright). Here is one of the most memorable figures in American art. Art Young, an unpretentious and forthright and courageous man. He has put some of bis reflections, in diary form, and a lot of his admirable drawings between book covers, and the total is more than delightful, it is provocative and amusing and on occasion extremely serious. Mr. Young "has been places and seen things" and the people he has known and the things he has done are fascinating and often part of America's artistic history. The drawings are gorgeous, from the little illustrative sketches in the margins to the brilliantly satirical and often bitter full-page cartoons. Mr. Young is conspicuously gifted with the "seeing eye", be really sees what he sees and be remembers it. His observations on such of life as has come his way are quietly shrewd and unblurred by orthodox gullibilities. His book is the equivalent of a whole winter of evenings with a wise and remembering man.

ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD POETRY, edited by Mark Van Doren. (A. and C. Boni). Professor Van Doren has done an enormous and magnificent job. From the fourth millenium B. C. to the 1920's A. D., from ancient China and Egypt and Greece to modern Europe and America, he has culled all that has been brought into worthy English translation. Professor Van Doren has already received weightier crowns for his achievement than we could confer, but we wish to add one little tassel. And we call into play an overworked word with all the emphasis of a word that has never been used before: "indispensable".

SHORTER NOVELS OF HERMAN MELVILLE, with an introduction by Raymond Weaver. (Horace Liveright). In the handsome format of the Black and Gold Library, these stories came to us for the first time. They are beyond all words gorgeous. Every one of them has a quality of pure magic, so that its sound and its colour carry on and on in the memory. Even the story the nearest to flippancy, Bartleby the Scrivener, calls out ghosts, has the final atmosphere of Walpurgis Night. As Dr. Weaver's excellent critical introduction and sketch of Melville's life points out, these stories represent Melville's art at its most developed and conscious and restrained point. They differ from Moby Dick as, in Dr. Weaver's happy distinction, portrayal from betrayal. The first of them, Benito Cereno, is a masterpiece; even Edward O'Brien who is not often enough right to make a generality, puts it at the head of his list of the fifteen finest short stories. We were specially hypnotized, however, by the series of sketches entitled Las Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles.

STUDIES IN DECEIT, by Profs. Hartshorne and May. (Macmillan). The result of three years' scientific investigation of the factors leading to deception; and a most unusual work both for educators and for parents (if there are any left) who are interested in their children.

R ECO*I > IENI)E I) R EPRI NTS

NOTRF. DAME DE PARIS, by Victor Hugo, illustrated by Eric Pape. (IT ash burn ).

THE DECAMERON OF BOCCACCIO, translated by J. M. Rigg. (Dutton).

THE YELLOW BOOK: A SELECTION, edited by Cedric Ellsworth Smith. (E. V. Mitchell).

MR. HART STOOD STILL

Mr. Riddell would not for worlds usurp the province of his Favourite Dramatic Critic; but when lyrics are as exceptional as those written by Cole Porter for the musicomedy Baris, then we feel that Mr. Gabriel w ill forgive us if we add our own little laurel leaf to the very considerable wreath of praise now resting on Mr. Porter's brow-. Let's Do It, for example, merits comparison with some of the best light verse of the year—a comparison in which some of the b. 1. v. of the y. comes out distinctly second. On a Broadway where the rhythm of the average popular song beats with all the subtlety of a ten-ton truck crossing a bridge, and where a cheap RodgersHart lyric is considered a model of intelligence and wit, these suave, cool, restrained verses of Mr. Porter, his tactful innuendoes and adult humour, come as a blessed relief.

THE CHASE

The hunt has produced great practitioners, but it has not often received the services of a scholar and a theorist. Now in one ten pound package of red and gilt and handsome coloured illustrations we have all that can be said about hunting. The book is HOUNDS AND HUNTINC THROUCH THE ACES, by Joseph B. Thomas. M. F. II., (Derrydale Press). "An Authoritative Book on the Chase with a foreword by the Earl of Lonsdale, K.G., G.C.V.O." It is subtitled "This book is unique in scope and the standard American work on this subject" and who are we to deny it? No price is mentioned on the jacket, so that we assume that it is priceless. It is the kind of book that is installed under a glass case; it seems a sacrilege to read these resplendent pages, but it is equally a loss not to. Mr. Thomas has gone exhaustively and engagingly into the vast and splendid tradition that supports the chase as a ritual and a social institution. He has also gone with scholarly comprehensiveness into the practical aspects of hunting, the attributes of a good hound, hunting a pack, the eccentricities of scent, kennels and stables, hunt uniforms and hunt countries and quarry. The gorgeous reproductions of hunting pictures and the quotations from the poets are especially admirable. If you are interested in the chase there is nothing left for you except to purchase this book by Mr. Thomas.

Continued on page 134

Continued from page. 130

MR. WINCHELL

Speaking of Broadway (which is obviously impossible without speaking of Waller Winchell i we are wondering when that most indefatigable and witty commentator on the Main Stem w ill be persuaded to collect his invaluable data into a book. It should be an amazing volume, and an important reference-book for posterity. There is no doubt that Mr. Winchell is the most arresting phenomenon in current New York journalism: he has adapted the entire jargon of Broadway into a unique literary style of his own, amassed a spy system unequalled since the heyday of the IVillielmstrasse, developed the local influence of a Mussolini, made a pink tabloid the bulletin-board of the cognoscenti, inspired more burlesques of himself than any writer since Hemingway; and he emerges today as the sole authentic prophet of that influential slice of the American scene that extends from Times Square to Columbus Circle. If the saga of Broadway is ever to be written, in its own tongue, Mr. Winchell is the man to do it.