New Britain herald., 1925-07-01
u & THE BOOK SHELF m u
PASTELS
 AND PORTRAITS

The world today, and especially America, they would tell us. is
 Whirling siddily along through the
 most highly charged period of its ex-
 lslence' It Is like, they say, unto a huge tom tom resounding to the pounding feet of more than a bil-
 lion and a half frenzed dancers.
 each chasing the other in a heIter
 skelter race to the undertaker's.
 And they that tell us so are right.
 We call 1t the jazz" age, and some.
 how or other we are proud of if
 subtly, of course, but proud none the
 less, proud that we can count our-
 selves among the fastest living set
 ever to sing and dance and Volstead
 to the graVes We rush for this. We
 rush for that. We turn franticallv
 in quest of something new under the
 sun, something yet unthought of,
 We scramble nadly for thousands.
 TOT millions for whatever we can
 conVu'sively lay our greedy hands upon We ninety miles-an-hour if
 Tor excitement, for pleasure. And
 we, finally, plunge hcadlong into the caslet..
 And in this butterfly era, this
 short sudden day of living which by ourselves we are accorded. literature
 has been 10 quite an extent the suf-
 1erer No more arc we interested in
 the bulky volumes which so ensross-
 cd the, minds of those in the ages gone. No more are we ready 10
 pcruse the mighty volumes of such
 masters as Dickens and Trackeray No, we might venture to say, the modern American young man or
 woman has scarce the spare time in
 an entire decade of fox-trotting 10
 read thoroughly a single one of these gems say, for instance. David Cop i porfield."
 volumes are being printed vet, huge ones too, perhaps even more than in the days past. But are they being read, except by very small and very dignifed minority? Such i books as Main Street. and others of similar nature are being read rather extensively. true enough, but why and how? They are being read because we rather think it our duty
 to "be up" on them, And they are
 being read as an irksome, tedious undertaking.
 What, then, Is being reado What is America's, and the worlds, chief vehicle of reader interest. The an swer is simple. It Is the short story. Magazines, and especially the cheap CT kind are selling as never before. Mir. So-andSo's office employe, at homo for an hour or so before ! stepping out' for the evening, just reveIs in. one ar two so-called true stories" On Saturday afternoon be-
 fore her shopping tour, and on Sun day, midday, If Is "true stories" again. Or some motion picture magazine, And tho same applies to the male time clerk in the radio fac
 tory, to the youthful production clerk, to the bootIegger.
 And yct, in spite of all this. there ! ts something advantageous in the fact that none of Us are possessed of sufficient time to read more than one or two of those rrodiglous vol. umos which have been so warmly appraised hy the critics, whose fob 1t is, these days. 10 read such for us. For, as a result Of our having but scarce the time 10 breathe, another class. another tyne of volume has become more and more prevalent. Books of this type are masterpieces, are being read, and avidly. by tho
 greater part of us who are really en- deavoring to become acquainted with but the best in literature. and offer the only real solution to the diff eulty-what to read in the time given.
 Books such as those we hre about to mention have been long on the market, but their possibilities have never been as thoroughly developed as today. Dom Byrnc took the first really decisive step in the struggle to popularize them, when back in
 1922 he published his masterpiece, "Messer Marco Polo," an astound- ingly beautiful poem in prose 147 pages long. We all found time to read this, to rave over it, and to
 buy 1t, volume on volume. for our |Christmas-tide friends. And every where it met favor, and enthusiastic favor.
 We never thought we would find its superior from the pen of @ con- temporary, and we did not until last year someone permitted us to read W hat we consider the most beauti- fully written little volume we ever rCmC m Der bnSinr road If iu