The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-04-27

greatest tragi-comedy is to have on your
interior premises an artistic, four dimen-
sional, non-refillable psyche. 1t is like be-
ing a burglar in your own house. The
furniture of your body feels strange.
You do not repose comfortably in the
morris chair of your spine. The mattress
of your emotions is full of coolies. The
fireplace of your brain is always throwing
red hot cinders into the clothing of your
illusions. And so on.
Well, you give up introspection and
look out of the house through the windows
of the five senses, if your pipe and
hasheesh and the home made brew haven't
made the windows opaque. But if you
are like Pete Middleton being born in
the heart of spiritual Dongan Hills sud-
denly thrust into the bright lights in the
roaring forties-you will see nothing but
cops, collectors, millinery, ashcans and
fiirt eyed fiufiies. So you take to alcohol,
kelly pool, diaries or suicide. If you
have psyche, whatever you do, you
are done
Peter Middleton Is q brilliantly con-
ceived and written psychological study.
It is full of epigrams and color and
smart phrases. The style is staccato,
dithyrambic, jazzy. One is reminded of
Edgar Saltus. 1t is. that sort of novel
if you get what we mean. Curiously, too,
in parts, echoes Of George Meredith
foated into our consciousness SMILES
and metaphors have Meredithian twist.
1t is not book that James Branch Ca
bell would care about. Theodore Dresser
would like it. Robert w. Chambers would
read it through in one sitting. Joseph
Conrad would not understand it. Booth
Harrington would keep it for next sum-
mer's fishing trip. Rabby Tagore would
give it to his chief tiger hunter. Wood
row Wilson would probably mark off
fourteen of its best points. Carlo de For
marc, who sleeps while be bathes, would
say, "But it isn't like Guy de Maupassant
at allr'
Peter, as you know by this time, was an
artist. This was the main trouble: "Hear-
ing, sight, touch, taste and smell merged
into a composite, opulent and magnificent
"a sort of supersense that gave even
commonplace sensory impressions an ex-
traordinary inner richness and variety"
This man with the o'erlapping senses
married Nina. Enter George Bromley,
from about Fifth avenue and Fifty-eighth
street, east or west Triangle. George
was the hypothenuse. He was drink
ing, epigrammatic, Edgar Satus kind Of
a hypo. As far as we know, Pete the
Composite himself was only one of the
corners in the triangle. Nina had both
sides preempted.
That was the beginning of Peter Mid
dleton's struggle with the world, and
Peter was, as you see (being psycbo-emO-
tional circulaire non-sexual mattOid-
Observation-Disclosures, not
calculated to cope with real life. To him
Beauty and Art were the only realities
(this latter fact took from the "jaeket")
For in Peter the sexual impulse burned
with very feeble fame. At last came the
realization that upon the sexual impulse
depends the positive direction ana nxlty
of character But this was after Pete the
Composite had become acquainted with
the life of reality. He was the very an
tithesis of Robinson Crusoe and Jack
London.
Peter Middleton went to Paris to get
adjusted. He wandered around the world
like a ghost He is sort of Durtal
seeking redemption through sex, which
got all absorbed in his scrambled senses.
On page $40 Pete walked ont of New
York hospital and got deliberately, we
Think right In the way of beer wagon,
and that was the end-we hope-of the
soul of Peter Middleton. We have often
and often thought of doing this ourself;
but instead, in the nick of time, we climbed
on top of the beer wagon and rode with
Heinie to the brewery-fanfare of watts,