The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-04-16

PETER WHIFFLE: HIS LIFE AND
WORKS. BY Carl Van Vechten.
Alfred A. Knopf.
~ EFORE attempting to define
X the indefinable or to explain
this book let us start with
the one statement as to which there
is likely to be no disagreement; it is
one of the best manufactured. the
best printed and most ornamentally
bound volumes of this season. Ard,
even more noteworthy, the proof of
it has been read! Probably one
could find some slight misprints. but
they do not shrek at you in each
chapter as they do in most recent
American books.
That much it is safe to say. Be-
yond that point doubts begin. 1t is
confessedly anomalous; its preface
calls it sort of loose biographical
form, a free fantasia in the manner
of a List rhapsody" And, for
once, the "blurb" on the jacket is
accurate in calling it "a book of SEN
sations and reactions" belonging to
"the literature Of escape" 1t is not
quite a novel, certainly not an essay.
and it is more than a series of cpl
sodic sketches. Probably we would
best ticket it as an abnormal novel,
semi biographical study of a type,
with the addition of good deal of
gossip, philosophizing. and not a
little brilliant description. Beyond
all that it contains numerous pass
ing glimpses of large number OF
actual notablesHa liberal chunk from
the who's Who" editions, from
about 1907 down to date.
1t opens with Mr.. Van vechten in
Paris, in his happy youth, on May
10, 1907; an admirable chapter
the eternal Paris of youth, much the
same as the reviewer remembers it
from his happy youth of day many
years before Mr.. Van Vechten's.
There is-or was-no better place
for young man to be upon any
May 10 than that Paris. And
whether the war has changed all
that or not doubtless there was an
eternally enduring quality about that
Paris. 1t lives, somewhere. Some
of it lives in Mr.. Van Vechten's
pages.
Next comes Mary Garden-not
that she has anything further to do
with the narrative-if there is any
narrative-but because she was ac-
tually there, and Mr.. Van Vechten
experienced her. Incidentally we
meet Peter Whiffle, and learn that
he is going to write book. He ex-
plains:
"What is the book to be about?
Why, it is to be about the names OF
the things I have collected. 1t is to
be about 800 pages" he-added trium-
phantly. Three hundred
pages of color and style and lists,
lists of objects, all jumbled artfully.
Don't you understand that
perfumes and reaping machines are
never to be found together in real
life? That is art. making pattern,
dragging unfamiliar words and colors
and sounds together until they form
a pattern, beautiful pattern
Peter never wrote that book, nor
any of the more subtly conceived
later variants of it. But this is it:
full of perfumes and reaping ma
chimes, and ships>and shoes and seal
ing wax, highly colored sealing wax,
and cabbages and kings, and in
every case a careful account of the
Sensations and reactions" to each
object, human or still life, of Mr.
Peter Whiffle-or, sometimes even
of Mr.. Van Vechten, as you please
For the real secret of all that class
sometimes brilliant-youngster OF
whom Peter is a sample is that they
are, or rather We're, intensely and
immovably self-centered. The pas
tense may be used because although
not entirely extinct the type which
was common enough before the wal
is rare to-day, having been sup
planted by rather inferior, less low
HE