The New York herald., 1922-11-05
N EW FICTION
-IN-
VARIED FORMS

ITO the professional reader of fiction
there comes at infrequent intervals
a book that is not merely a brave
human story but an intellectual banquet
full of the complex richness of life seen
from a multitude of angles and interpreted
with the wisdom of experience and the
colorful tones of Old World culture. To
this rare category must unquestionably be
added Dorothy Canfield's latest volume.
"Rough-Hewn," In which are blended the
tragedies of adolescence, the true and false
values of modern education, the perplexing
paradoxes of racial standards and view
points and the eternal quest of youth for
the goal of happiness.
Like most really big books, Rough
Hewn" is almost primitive in its SIM
plicity of structure. 1t takes up minutely
in alternate sections, the life stories of a
boy and a girl. quite unknown to each
other and seemingly placed by an obscure
whim of fate about as far apart, by birth,
environment and early training, as two
young Americans of the we'll to do social
class possibly could be. Neale Crittenden
whom We first meet at the age of ten.
glorying in the possession of a brand new
shinny stick, lives in a modest home on
the outskirts of Hoboken, where his un-
1hifiO1Ic father Oh 10 1ixa-
lihood from a lumber business. We get
an enviable picture of a contented fire.
side, of a free flowing tide of trust and
affection" between the father and mother
who. loving their little son deeply, are
none the less puzzled by him because he
is such an lawfully quiet kid-you haven't
any idea whether he's having real boys
fun or not" But they have the rare
understanding to let the boy alone, to re-
spect his reticences. Always in after life
,Neale remembers gratefully, Father and
mother always let me a!one-let me grow"
If this book had merely been the annals
of the growth of one American boy and
of how he wrestled one by one with his
individual problems and conquered them it
would still have been a notable achieve
ment. Studies of boy life. of school and
college days have rarely been done with
more sympathetic insight. Especially re-
markable are the chapters given to the
four crucial years in Columbia, where his
ambitions center upon the university foot
ball team and where at first he finds him
self a failure. is put out of the game and
"sits on the sidelines eating his heart OUT
until he learns his first big lesson in life
namely, that it is often only by being
temporarily out of the active game of life
that one gets the right perspective and
comes to understand "the real inwardness
of what 1t is all about" Having grasped
the real inwardness Neale goes back into
the game and presently finds himself cap
tain of the team.
Meanwhile at Bayonne. IN the south of
France. Marise Allen, only child of her ex-
patriated father and mother, is growing
up chiefly in the care Of the old BASQUE
cook and housekeeper, Jeanne Amigorena,
who diligently trains her in the fine art of
deception and falsehood. Her pretty. self
centered mother is too indolent, too busy
with her French novels, her futile dabbling
in culture, to give the child any serious
attention while the fa.h her. equally weak
and selfish in his way, lets things drift
and only once in recorded history gives
Marise bit of wholesome advice:
Look here, Molly, there is something
in the air here, by heck, and / wish you'd
get IT. I mean the way every one of
them in this country keeps right after