The New York herald., 1922-11-05


tons in those days for budding authors
enjoying the first fine thrill of discovering
themselves literate, there was nothing for
her to do but write more stories. They
came in abundance-the tales of Emma
McChesney, mostly-alive, shrewd warm
hearted. quizzical, full of bounce and cleo
trical with the thing we call the dramatic.
Then, at last, she strangled Emma with
her own hands and went to work harder
than ever
Since then there has been great growth.
There was more of wisdom and art and
truth in "The Girls" than in any of the
work that had preceded that admirable
novel. There is as much in the best of
"Gigolo." the new bundle of eight short
stories now fresh from the presses.
1t is customary, we believe. for reviewers
of Miss Ferber's pieces either to couple
her name with Fannie Hursts Ga purely
impertinence) or to go to the other extreme
and say that on her shoulders has fallen
the mantle of O. Henry-a painful express
sion, suggestive, somehow, of a bruising
ca catastrophe in the O. Henry back parlor.
We can think of only half a dozen tales
in the entire o. Henry shelf that deserve
to be mentioned in the same breath with
the better half of these which make up
"Gigolo." And if any one else, here or in
England since Kipling grew weary. is writ
ing short stories which surpass them in
their humanity or in their craftsmanship
they do not appear in the magazines to
which our barber subscribes.
The present collection is not all of a
piece 1t swings between so entertaining
but obviously pumped up a project as
"Ain't Nature WONDERFUL to so inevitable
and perfect story as "Old Man Minnick";
between so crisp and expert a job as Not
a Day Over Twenty One" to so lofty and
understanding a story as "The Sudden Six
ties"
One element in her work which seems
most profoundly to impress her publishers
Judging from the gasps of their aston
ishment tucked into the pockets of the
Jackets her familiar capacity to drama
tie and enhance the commonplace. This is,
to be sure, a gift of hers. But it is a gift
which she shares with many writer's. The
gift she does not share is her capacity to
speak volumes in a few pages. It is not
that she congresses an anecdote to the
pemmican dimensions of a paragraph. It
is not that she Grams a short story into
the space of a parable. But with her
amazing economy of means, she does ex-
pend a whole, novel in five thousand words.
In "The Sudden Sixties" for instance, there
is such a vista of the years, such a per-
spective of the generations, such rise and
fall of family, a community, an ethic, as
you will find in few latter day novels. From
the day Hannah Winter packs up her wine
colored wedding dress and moves to In
dianapolis to the day when she sits, glum
and thwarted and mutinous, in a Chicago
dental parlor, waiting while the brace is
adjusted to her granddaughters teeth
what time o. years. as Grandma used to
say in the immortal Bunker Bean" Yet
there it all is in thirty-six teeming pages
a stroke here, a stroke there, saying in
credibly much in incredibly little, as Forain
does in a drawing.
Perhaps this feat is not of the essence
of fine art, as the professors would imply.
Sometimes we wonder if our artists do not
become too absorbed in this game, as an
end in itself-fascnated by their score in
strokes, like literary golf players. But such
a doubt could assail no one in reading the
best tales in "Gigolo," so brilliant and
complete is their expression, so real their
people that one becomes hopelessly in
volved in their concerns, so infectiously
full of that interest in, and Zest for, life
which Mr. Dickens had-Which Mr.. Tark-