Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-31
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E, TRACEWELL.

FOUNDER of wisdom, making notes for
| their enlightenment on the ways of au-
thorship, will realize aftera while that
all this has little to do with writing
1t is the spirit which counts here, as
elsewhere.
| We have just been reading 1.-THE
Worlds Delight" by Fulton Oursler,
recently published by Harper & Bros.
1t is a story of Adah Isaacs Menken,
who was born. Dolores MoCord, a real
woman who specialized in captivating
the men, among. her conquests being
Swinburne, the English poet, and Alex
andre Dumas. the French romanticist.
! 1t Is good story, it moves right
along. but one is scarcely ever unaware
of the fact that he is reading . mar
| rative. Not once is heat least not
this reader-ever lifted from this hum
drum world into the wild, free spaces
Of the genuine great work of fiction.
Perhaps Mr.. Oursler, in choosing to
write a novel about a real woman, has
been unable to escape something, the
effects of reality, which calls reader
back to earth time and time again.
Whatever may be the difficulty, he
has not created tale moving enough
to make the reader forget he is read
| ing. The peerless Adah, he tells us,
|
but somehow he fails to show us such
| girl. He tries to make her live again
| by telling about her, but he does not
succeed in making her really live be-
| fore us.
Yet. this is what Julian Green did
with his heroine in THE Closed Gar
den" published last Summer, and which
we haven't the slightest doubt he does
| in his new book. The Dark Journey"
inst issued nv Harner q, Bros
x X
1t might seem presumptuous. as well
as extremely risky, to review a novel
before one has read it, yet any one who
! has gone through The Closed Garden"
With bated breath, as they say, will
know that it would not be particularly
| hazardous to class The DARK Journey
as superior novel.
! The fact that it has been chosen as
the Harper prize novel for l929-30 will
| not be so Weighty with those who read
the other story as the fact that he wrote
that terrific. moving novel of what goes
on behind the walls of those old French
houses.
His predecessors in winning the Har-
per prize. Margaret Wilson, with THE
Able McLaughlins" Anne Parish. with
THE Perennial Bachelor" and Glenway
Wescott, with THE Grandmothers, !"
achieved more popularity but no more
real distinction than Green with his
The Closed Garden"
The power of genuine narration is
still. after all these centuries, a strange,
compelling quality. A book may sell
into the millions of copies and not
possess 1t, but be the beneficiary of some
appealing quality which meets wider
reception.
The quality of interest, coming in a
way not 10 be analysed, outshines more
sophisticated. more complicated quail
ties possessed by many writer's in this
all-writing age. This quality lifts the
reader out Of the novel into a new
world. and keeps him there until the
last word, and then keeps memorial
fresh in his mind and heart forever.
This is the supreme power of a good
novel. and sometimes we think it out
weighs all other qualities whatsoever
without it, even the most marvellous
material does not move. but with 1t
mere nothing may become a divine
something.