Weekly journal-miner., 1920-12-01
Views And Reviews
 Books Of The Week

Now that the Christmas holidays are at hand, and persons wise in
 the ways of St. Nicholas are deDat- ing what new twist can be given the immemorial gift, our advice is to gallop to the nearest book shop and inspect the seasons volumes. Several of them will well repay the time thus spent For a while it was formerly the thing to lift a despond- ent brow and bewail the poverty of l the native literary output, the gentle reader now has feast before him surpassing anything previously set forth by American scriveners.
 With a lot of talented young writers coming to the fore, and a sufficient number of the old birds still clinging to the bough, contem- Iporary American writing need draw sniff to no ones nose. Beginning with the late lamented war, poetry has had its renascence, and IS now full-fledged part of the national product, enthusiastically discussed ill the foreign reviews. There are Frenchmen and Englishmen who ac- knowledge that the Yankee rhym- sters are putting forth work far su perior to their own. (The younger school of American painters, by the way, will yield first brush to no foreign academy, conventional or, in surgent. With a list of names such as those of Arthur B. Davies, George Bellows, Robert Henri, Rob ert Edmund Jones, and host of others, the native men are holding their own against the whole of prac- ticed Europe)
 We were discussing the poetic re- nascence. Well, with that now at its crest, the novel is coming for ward in company formation, after the early skirmishing of such as Dreiser, Villa Gather, Frank Nor ris, Stephen Crane, and Sherwood Anderson.
 The season presents an excellent array of fiction, the chief note of which is, perhaps, an emphasis upon a peculiarly American attitude to American life, rather than a subor- dination to the standards of value formerly imposed upon the native hacks by the English tradition. In other words, our writers are begin ming to see our national life through their own eyes. And the result is that they are writing far more clearly, forcibly and convincingly than they ever have before.
 We note especially among the fall array: "Youth and the Bright Me dusa," by Villa Gather, a collection of tales done by an artist who knows her craft; "The Age of In by Edith Wharton, in which this accomplished novelist takes a new satiric slant at life the four hundred Cor is it four hundred fifty now@ of New York; Sinclair Lewis Main Street. a sweet study of mid-western vil- lage life; F. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" wherein the col lege youth is given as searching an as he has yet come in for; and "Moon-Calf," by Floyd Dell, remarkable first novel by a | young scrivener who has hitherto confined himself to the discussion of and sociological topics, but who now comes forth with a work at which the most accomplish ed craftsman need not sheer.
 As for others, let Us consider them more in detail.
 JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER Linda Condon, by Joseph Herge-
 sheimer, New York: Alfred A.
 Knopf, 1920.
 In Lima Condon, his seventh book, | Joseph Hergesheimer has carried to a further degree trait visible in all his work. Discounting his flirta tions with the money-mart, each ser ious effort that he puts forward l bears the mark of all earnest striving after style, an end he accomplishes | with too great ease. His books are well written-too well written. There i is too much style in his phrases.
 This sin, however, Is only an cN- cess of virtue, and will not offend !. readers weary of shabby English. The obverse of the medical is that Hergesheimer generally has a story to tell that is worth telling. In i Linda Condon he draws once more in modern setting the picture of tke old struggle for the ideal
 Brought up amid garish surround l ings, Linda Condon retains a serene Greek beauty of spirit. moving through sordid hotels into the life Of Dodge Pleydon; and their seek ing after beauty ill an ugly world leaves her almost as perfect a thing as the Winged Victory that sym bolizes their quest.
 With an unusual and striking theme Hergeshcimer almost mall
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