Balancing the books

JOHN RIDDELL

In which we find a record of some sour NewYear's pledges and other comments upon the literary horoscope for 1931

New Year's Day, according to a custom dating approximately from January first

of the year 2, has been devoted to an annual pastime entitled "Making Your New Year's Resolutions". The day after New Year's Day, according to a custom likewise dating approximately from the year 2, has been devoted to another annual pastime entitled "Breaking Your New Year's Resolutions". The game each year is to see if you can break more resolutions than you make.

This New Year's Day I am going to vary the custom just a little. This year, instead of making my Resolutions first and breaking them afterward, I am going to break my New Year's Resolutions before I make them. In other words, I intend, on the coming January first (1931, if 1 am looking at the right calendar) to bust a whole series of perfectly dandy pledges that I shall never make at all. It ought to save a lot of wear and tear.

Take, for example, my annual Theodore Dreiser Resolution. Each January I have made a firm vow during the coming year to finish a novel by Theodore Dreiser. And each succeeding January I find I am no nearer the end of the novel than I was twelve months ago. During recent years, in fact, I seem to have even lost ground a little.

• Then there is that yearly Resolution of mine about uncut pages. Each New Year's

Day I make a solemn vow to find a papercutter somewhere and actually make an efTort to read the interior of one of these artistic volumes with every other four pages left joined together (instead of just peeking inside the uncut section and letting it go at that). On January first I even make one desperate efTort to overcome my prejudice, seize the first sharp instrument that lies handy, such as a lead pencil or my knee, and rip the pages not only apart, but up, down, and diagonally across as well, thus reducing the whole book to a tattered mass and bringing another good Resolution to an untimely end.

This year, therefore, I am making no such mistake. This New Year's Day 1 have decided to save time, and swear off all my Resolutions as fast as I make them. (Maybe, in Dreiser's case, a little faster.) For example, this January I am definitely swearing off (a) books with uncut pages, (b) Dollar Books, or (c) books that give away free phonograph records, dimes, lead pencils or other red herrings. I am also

taking a firm stand against all Prize Novels.

In addition, I intend to swear off the following Resolutions in 1931:

1. Literary teas.

2. Biographies of Mary Baker Eddy.

3. The adjective "readable".

4. Letters from publishers which start off: "My dear Mr. Riddell: Under separate cover we are mailing you an anonymous autobiography of the late war, which we consider in many ways the most vivid interpretation of the mind of the German soldier . . ."

5. Novels of New York in which real people are mentioned by name.

6. Novels in advance page-proof.

7. Novels beginning: "Hattie gazed out the drab window at the limitless grey horizon, like a rim of hardened grease, and streaked hack the damp white hairs from her forehead with the back of her hand. 'Supper's ready, Matthew,' she called wearily . . ."

8. Books entitled "Ex-" anything.

9. Books by Will Durant, John Erskine, Chic Sale, Carl Van Vechten. Will Rogers, George Jean Nathan or Kathleen Norris.

10. The Autobiography of General Pershing.

With these Resolutions out of the way, and nothing to do but enjoy the books that I like, the prospect for 1931 is not a particularly unpleasant one. Last month, in a breathless rush to include all the worth-while hooks in one omnibus summary, this department fell afoul of the advertisements, and as usual a number of our outstanding enthusiasms were left shivering in the overset. So if all our patient little pupils will pick up their slates and crayons and stick with teacher, we shall try to hurry through our lesson this month before the nasty, ugly space-limits nip us again.

In the first place, if all our little pupils have done their homework correctly, they ought to be pretty well acquainted by now with Yeats-Brown's superb Lives of a Bengal Lancer, for example, or Russel Crouse's Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives, or Clarence Knapp's gay. mocking parody of our early torch-songs, I'm Sorry If I Have Offended. And they ought to have used their own intelligence enough, without my telling them, to have acquired Bob Benchley's The Treasurer's Report, the latest collection from the most consistently entertaining pen in America; or William Bolitho's Camera Obscura; or, of course, In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway.

Upon novels, I hesitate to advise very emphatically. There is nothing more futile, in my opinion, than recommending a work of fiction. One man's novel is another man's Christmas present. For my own part, I have particularly enjoyed Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale, Rosamund Lehmann's A Note in Music, Grace Zaring Stone's The Bitter Tea of General Yen, A. P. Herbert's The Water Gipsies, William (Continued on page 86') Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and (with reservations) Margaret Kennedy's The Fool of the Family and Booth Tarkington's Mirthful Haven. You, on the other hand, might enjoy Louis Bromfield's 24 Hours. There's no accounting for tastes.

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A book I am reasonably sure anyone would enjoy is The Gun Club Cook Book, published by Scribner's, a "discussion of the methods and procedures of cooking, together with observations on kitchen usages and including many receipts from many lands", by Charles Browne. This is the kind of hook that belongs in the library of every sportsman who has ever hung his rifle over the chimney-place and crossed his steaming bootsoles before an open blaze; it is entertaining, rich with fun and gay comment, packed with tried recipes, a unique and valuable volume. If you have ever eaten canned beans for four days in a fishing-camp or huntinglodge, then this happy, hearty book is a godsend for your next trip.

John■ Held Jr.'s Dog Stories, in case the reader is vague about it, is a collection of Dog Stories by John Held Jr. And a very swell book it is, too. Held loves dogs; indeed, the only fault with the present book is the very occasional sentimentality into which that love betrays him. (As a matter of fact, I do not mind sentimentality about dogs or horses; but I was afraid you might.) Mostly this is sympathetic, honest writing, beautifully told, and in it Held

proves himself clearly a master of pathos. The illustrations, needless to add, are Held at his delicate best; and the reproduction which Robert S. Josephy and the author have supervised does them full justice.

Concerning archy and mehitabel I am afraid 1 must render a negative report; and this does not mean that I do not consider Don Marquis' poem one of the superb examples of American humour of this century; nor that I fail to recognize in George (Krazy Kat) Herriman the very greatest living master of poetic comedy in art. To see the blending of these two outstanding talents has been my pet hope for years; the combination is as eminently right as bacon and eggs. My quarrel is with the blundering stupidity of the house of Doubleday, Doran in securing these gorgeous illustrations from Herriman and then jamming them carelessly into odd corners and margins, reproduced so small that they are barely legible at all. By this single act, the house of Doubleday, Doran receives my annual award of Publishers' Booby Cap for 1930-1931. Unless they apologise handsomely hy bringing out a decent edition of archy and mehitabel next spring, a little larger than the current vest-pocket size, with the Herriman drawings reproduced in the scale to which they are accustomed (and preferably in color) then I am off them for life. Doubleday, Doran ought to be very heartily ashamed of themselves.

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If you are looking for taste, you had better turn instead to the house of William Edwin Rudge, who have just added Robert Austin to their Masters of Etching Series, and Hokusai to their Masters of the Color Print. I have just one criticism of these collections. The reproductions of the originals are so superb that one cannot resist ripping them out and sending them one by one to be framed; and this not only ruins the hook, but runs up a nasty framer's bill each time the house of Rudge brings out another. These books would seem to me ideal for Christmas gifts. Rudge has also just published a Catalogue of the etchings of Levon West, compiled by Otto M. Torrington.

More, more, more. Ward Greene's Ride the Nightmare, for example, a swift and compelling and eminently readable novel. Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera by George S. Chappell, a rambunctious travesty that is as funny as anything this noted explorer has ever done—■ than which praise I, for one, cannot go higher. Baird Leonard's Simple Confession, a slender compilation of her celebrated and charming light verse.

The stories of Katherine Mansfield, a careful and sympathetic selection by J. Middleton Murry, published by Knopf. Paul Eipper, whose Animals Looking at You was a real sensation, has followed this with Animal Children, an equally unique and personal book, illustrated with startling photographs by Hedda Walther. William McFee, in his best full-throated manner, has done a rich and readable novel, North of Suez, that makes elegant reading. And, if you like to browse in books, then your book for browsing is Walter de la Mare's Desert Islands, a grand, conglomerate, jangling pirate's chest of treasure.

Lastly, two books of controversy. Discreet Drinking by Robert C. Binkley is required reading for anyone sincerely interested in the question of Prohibition reform. And The Third Degree by Emanuel H. Lavine, is a "detailed and appalling expose of police brutality" that brought the short hackles upright on the back of my neck.

There is one other book out which I understand is called The John Riddell Murder Case. I just thought I'd mention it.