The New York herald., 1922-04-02
New Fiction
Continued from Preceding Page.

called great" as "Huck Finn" for
instance is great, each Of these has
excellencies far beyond the ordinary.
1t is of interest also to note that
each is obviously the work of be-
glnner at the trade. Each book is
marked by certain crudities that
suggest inexperience; crudities that
may easily be overcome. Further
more 1t is significant that each of
these books is from the South,
section of the country which has
until now produced very little
OF consequence in American litera-
ture. Parenthetically, one may
add Mrs. Tyler's remarkable novel
Children of Transgression" as
evidence of the possible appear
ance of a newly inspired. vigorous
Southern school" of creative litera-
ture. And whereas the wild Western
yarn and the analytical story of the
life of our own "effete East" are
chiefly reminiscent and contempla-
tive, the problems of the South are
those of tomorrow as well as of
to-day.
Mr.. Stribling's story was conceived
from the standpoint of the educated
mdlatto and was placed in Tennes-
see. Mr.. Shands's. novel is larger,
more broadly conceived. chiefly from
the point of view of the sympathetic
white man, and its scene is Texas,
its negroes of the older plantation
type and its white society, in some
respects, even more primitive than
the cynical folk of the Tennessee
story. 1t also deals openly with the
case of very bad bad niger" who
ends his career by being burned to
death by a mob-a scene, by the
way, that can best be characterized
by the hackneyed phrase, "Homeric"
simple, direct in its -savagery and
as inexorably inevitable as any other
natural phenomenon-like the erup-
tioii VI "a foi1dIO. lOul II
correct proportion; it is but an i.-
cident, and not the most vital one Of
the story.
In each novel the central point of
the whole trouble may be summed
up in single word-miscegena
The inevitable racial conflicts with
all their manifestations are ult..
mately traceable to just that. In
this story the educated colored par
son sums it up:
Where two races continue to live
side by side in the same country
either the less numerous race is
swept aside and dies out, like the In
dians, or it is absorbed; it is ANAL
gamated with the ether, like the
Spaniards in Mexico. They
mix till finally there is nothing but
the mixture" To which another
negro replies: but white folks and
niggers amt never gwine to mix in
no sich way as dat" The parsons
answer is that they "have pretty
we'll done it already in some Central
and South American countries
More dramatically the case is also
stated by a Southern white woman:
"Oh, it's horrible, horrible" said
Mrs. Deane, how We are cursed
with these niggers. Everybody calls
us savages when we burn the men
for outraging white girls, and the
(negro) women go on day after day
running our boys. What are We to
do?"
"Well, there's no need to cry about
it," said Jasper, senior, tits an old
story. We brought the mig
gers here and what would we do if
we didn't have 'em to work for us?'
Mr.. Shand's story is a hard knot
of tragedy, a knot that cannot be
united. His conclusion is no finality;
no more than a cutting of a minor
strand. leaving the whole worse than
evef in it's frightened tangle. The
story ends with the unintentional
killing by the Ku K1ux Klan of the
leading white man, the best loved
white man in the county, who IS
shot during their attempt to seize
the negro parson whom he wishes to
protect. The final note is one of hor-
ror at what they have done-of a