The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-08-20

the Moon" with "Ethan Frome," as Mrs. Wharton's masterpieces. is just this: Susy and Nick of The Glimpses of the Moon," are really and truly honest to- goodness in love with each other; they have an equal strength of passion with Ethan Frome and Hattie, and the richness of their problem gives them even greater sig nificance.
 Obsolete Phase
 "The Age of Innocence" which preceded Mrs. Wharton's The Glimp- ses of the Moon," has had its share of criticism and praise.
 It was an admirable novel, but 1t had to do with an obsolete and van ished phase of American society, while "The Glimpses of the Moon has to do with the "hereness and the nowness" of society.
 The scenes of "The Glimpses of he Moon" are laid mostly in Europe, where the "haute monde" dashes for amusement and recreation.
 Italian lakes, Venetian palaces, and , blue Aegean seas ("the long golden days and the nights of silver fire') romance, beauty. immortality and
 
 wealthy and the great and the care free and the insouciant, who form the personnel"
 Nick and Susy are very attractive, charming people; they arc parasites 1 on society, living on their rich l friends, doing the "dirty work" if might express 1t so vulgarly, of thos. whose fragrant immoralities are too well known to need comment from Mrs. wharton or any one else. Nick and susy, because they are poor and because they are attractive, can't afford fso they think at the get the beauty they legttimately crave except from the possessors and purveyors of beauty-the swine guard the pearl. How much do they want tho pearl? How far will they go with the swine to get it7
 This is a pretty problem that Mrs. Wharton has set her pair of lovers. Nor, of course, has she done any thing so crude as to tar all her peo- pie with the same brush. Violet Melrose wants different things from Ursula Gillow. They are srada- tions In degradation. We have Nat Fulmer and the Hickses as well as the Gillows and the Vanderlyns. 0ANSo T hdi uiy DctOh8st ly. in the group at all; and the creator of Ellie Vanderlyn herself has had the wit to make her kind and sweet-tempered-a very gentle Messalina The only things the Lansings, Hickses. Vanderlins, even Fulmers, can all be said to have in common Is realization of the im- portance of money.
 Oh, the blessed moral freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer's uncomfortable cry. The most wonderful thing of all Is not having to contrive and skimp and give up something every single min ute!" Yes: 1t was only on such terms that one could call one's soul one's own.
 Question D'Argent The question dargent is as tightly woven into The Glimpses of the Moon" as into any novel of Balzac's. Yet. as study of the question d'argent alone, this book could hard ly stand with any of the members of the "Comedie Humaine." If, for Balzac, everything comes back in the end to money, he has proved his point more oxhaustively than Mrs. Wharton has tried to. He illustrates more conclusively than she tho ail- inn. ortance of riches since he shows the principle of greed, the sense of the purchasing power, at work in so great a variety of human types Parisian. provincial. peasant, are all 1 drawn into his picture. You cannot | confront Balzac with any sort of vic- tim that he has forgotten. Whereas these people in 'The Glimpses of the Moon" are special case. Not the worst hater of America or of modern ity would pronounce them typical. though they may be symptomatic The question d'argent, though 1t en- ters crudely or subtly into every sit- uation Of the book, Is not the final interest. It Is, an assumption rather than the point of issue.
 Lily Bart and Susy Lansing are
 perilously alike, while selden and Nick are almost identically the same young man.
 Mrs. Wharton offers us . "slice o1 modern life" in "The Glimpses of the Moon," and whether the Pulitzer prize Is given to this most interesting de- l lightfully readable and worthwhile story of contemporary American life
 or not as was the case with Mrs
 Wharton's The Age of Innooence,' 1t can be truthfully said that no other has been written for ages which has so definitely added illustrious laurels to It's authors fame.
 "Adrienne Toner"
 Did you happen to read Anne Doug las Sedgwick's "The Third Window? ? r fc nf fni fA ff,-fh fu