Balancing the Books

Random Reviews of Recent Volumes

Books which I have most enjoyed reading this month have included The Man Within by Graham Greene (Doubleday, Doran), Twelve Against the Gods by William Bolitho (Simon and Schuster), July '14 by Emil Ludwig (Putnam), Hanna by Thomas Beer (Knopf), The Bruiser by Edward L. McKenna (McBride), Wild Honey by Samuel Scoville, Jr. (Little Brown), God's Man by Lynd Ward (Cape and Smith), A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (Harcourt Brace), Carl Akeley's Africa by Mary Akeley (Dodd Mead), Harriet Hume by Rebecca West (Doubleday, Doran) and Is Sex Necessary? by E. B. White and James Thurber (Harpers). Books which I have most enjoyed not reading include The Meaning of Culture by John Cowper Powys (Simon and Schuster), Sincerity by John Erskine (Bobbs Merrill) and The Political Follies by Will Rogers (Putnam).

Graham Greene, out of a clear sky, has dropped a first novel into the swirling fall lists that dominates the whole scene as a still voice can command a bellowing mob. The Man Within, sweet and graceful and insidious as absinthe, leaves you with a next day's hangover more powerful than the effect of forty other novels. You cannot lose it; the quality haunts you like the vague madness of The Innocent Voyage; the extraordinary blend of pity and irony that great humour should possess is in this volume. Great-Uncle Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde never depicted with more startling and poignant effect the struggle between the two natures of a man; and even Stevenson's prose did not hold the potentialities of a more beautiful music than that of Graham Greene.

Concerning The Way of Ecben by James Branch Cabell, Mr. Riddell would like merely to quote from that superlative critic, Mr. Louis Kronenberger, writing in the New York Times: "Mr. Cabell the stylist has always sacrificed beauty to the beautiful, the final effect of prose to the specific effect of phrases. His style is not only admittedly studied and archaic it is also, if the word can be so applied, slightly sentimental. It plays on the innate pathos in words, the sentimentality of superlatives, such as 'whose magic is more great than the magic of time.'" Thus Mr. Kronenberger; and thus, consequently, Mr. Cabell.

This man McKenna is good. Catch him in The Bruiser, even if you missed him in Hardware; he has restraint and pace and power, he packs a left hook that will leave you reeling, he treads closer to the heels of Hemingway, I think, than either Callaghan or W. R. Burnett. And don't fool yourself that he is not an artist. The fighting Irishman Clancy lives, in McKenna's fine novel; his stout heart, his dark courage and honest fumbling mind, his baffled loyalty are elements of a character study that will not be forgotten. It is the best story of the prize-ring I have ever read. It is easily one of the outstanding novels of the year.

Whoever thought of listing the "dramatis personae" at the outset of Emil Ludwig's July '14 had a flash of genius; for this establishes superbly the true character of this very human drama of the events in Europe at the beginning of the War. I do not see how this book can escape being a national best-seller; for it is as vivid as a moving-picture, and brings alive in simple and thrilling action the hitherto obscure and sheltered causes of the international conflict. In this unique present-tense style Ludwig sets all these puppets moving again' on a miniature stage, unencumbered by the propaganda and hysteria of partisanship, distributing blame and pity and ridicule where they are deserved, and presenting the first graphic picture of European intrigue in 1914 that I have ever seen. In its way, this book should do as much good as All Quiet.

Others? The Gluyas Williams Book, with a preface by Robert Benchley (Doubleday, Doran), is absolutely what the doctor ordered for anyone who wants to enjoy life again after the Wall Street flurry; and Benchley's introductory word is one of the funniest and most graceful pieces that that master of fun and grace has ever written. Hanna by Thomas Beer is my own candidate for the year's very best biography; also for the best piece of writing Beer has ever done, and that is putting on praise with a trowel. Wild Honey by Samuel Scoville, Jr., is a thoroughly pleasing nature book by a graceful and sympathetic writer whose work has always shown restraint and tender humour. God's Man by Lynd Ward is an unusual book, worthy of attention; an effort, and I think a successful one, to tell a subtle story entirely through the medium of some inspired woodcuts, which in delicacy and individuality of style place Mr. Ward high in his profession. And last, though not least, White and Thurber's Is Sex Necessary? takes a gorgeous idea and does very well with it indeed. It makes out an almost perfect case for the Mary Ware Dennett jury, and is extremely funny reading.