New-York tribune., 1920-11-19
Books

Drop whatever you are doing and
read Floyd Dell's Moon-Calf. Yes,
Main Street can wait. 1t may be lit
tie disturbing to readers of this col
umn to And US hailing some new book
as the greatest of the year or the great
est Of the century, or something like
that, only to bob up few weeks later
with still another greater than the
greatest. We can only plead that the
year has been rich in work Of the first
class by Americans. The age Of pros
perity seems to have begun. These are
good times. This is no day to be mod
est about American literature. For SO
long time there has been so much to
be modest about In work by native au-
thors that now we ought to break the
oilence with something more than whis-
pers. No newspaper reviewer has a
right to be anything but hoarse in q
season which has seen Miss Lulu Bett,
Main Street and Moon-Calf.
Something is stir" ng In various
dots upon the map men and women
are beginning to look about them and,
having looked, to see visions and dream
dreams.
Unfortunately, there Is something
about truly significant work which puts
blight upon any expression by this
reviewer. 1t is easy to comment on
things half said Or falsely said, but
what is there to be added or explained
when man has drawn /. figure 80 COM
rletely and wildly as Dell's Felix Fay :?
In the gallery of Carnegie Hall the
other night man borrowed our pro-
gram and pointed to Tho Death Of
Siegfried" That's why I came" he
said. Whenever that piece of music
is played anywhere within reach of
New York I 60" Then he leaned back
and knitted his brow in an effort to
find adequate expression for the emo
ton it aroused in him. "I'll say it's
some funeral march," he said.
II an, you will note,' Floyd Dell
wrote to US q week or 50 ago, "suggest-
ing that moon-calfishness has a mean
ing beyond what it may suggest on the
cover Of a new book of fiction; and
since writer Of fiction cannot force
his point home too obviously, he de-
pends upon the astute critic to see
what he has hinted att
But Mr.. Dell has in this case called,
not upon an astute critic, but broken
reed. We think we take the hints in
the book we'll enough, but we are Of no
mind to assume the responsibility Of in
terpreting book which is perfectly
clear and straightforward. Shaw. for
instance, has done it in the little scene
at the end of "Heartbreak House" Just
after the explosions:
Mazzini (sitting dewn)-I was quite
wrong, after all. 1t is we who have
survived; and Mangan and the bur
glar----
Hector-The two Burglars
Lady Utterword-The two practical
men of business
Mazzini-Both gone.
Moon-Calf brings forward again. we
think, the suggestion Of the ultimate
triumph of "the terrible meek" al
though We hasten to add that there is
no evangelical significance in Dell's
book.
1t is in no phase a book to make the
reader pucker his brow. Some months
ago friend told us that Dell was writ
ing a novel and quoted him as having
said that he had just been psyche
analyzed and that he did not see how
any man could write novel before such
searching process or fail to afterward.
We came to Moon-Calf, then, with the
foreboding that it might be a little
heavy with self-conscious Freudian sig
niicance. 1t is not. To be sure, the
novel is enlightened with much of the
new knowledge of childhood which has
come to men through the study of the
subconscious, but not once in the book
is there any effort to befuddle or over
awe the reader with the catchwords of
the trade. The book is at its best, in