Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-09-06

| and perhaps this IL the Fundamental
| reason why every one Is interested II
| Napoleon. His life Is symbolic OF the
| life Of every man. Every man, no mat
| ter how humble, manages to push him.
self forward enough to become klnd 9,
little Napoleon In his sphere pug oeas. y,
| comes TO send him to his st. Helena AZ
last.
is everlastingly good, and by that we
mean that Il Is told with the gusto
the sweep and the Wgor necessary 1ol
| such an enthralling subject. 1t Is Q
good book because the author gets
down deep beneath his subject, and SC
deep into the heart and mind OF tine
| reader.
without this quality Of the real writer
he could not have succeeded In making
his biography the steady reading OF
hundreds Of thousands Of people. There
have been countless books about the
great Bonaparte which have never en-
| joyed popularity. Many have been pup.
lished since Ludwig's big book, ana mos
Of them haven't even created q ripple
in the literary sea.
| Il y n II
One can be surprised at the worn ap.
pearance of the covers Of BENJAMIN
"Balzac: His Prodigious Life" Onhanc
one would not imagine the average ruI
of novel readers would care anything
about Balzac. Despite the fame OF his
Human Comedy" It's component works
are not widely read In America, 1T
author still suffering under the pan o.
disapproval which more rigid standards
Of Victorian America imposed upon
average readers.
yet there it rests in the cases, faded
worn, battered from incessant handling
testifying to the countless fingers which
have held 1t and to the pairs OF eyes
which have inspected its unusual type
pages s,..,. ,s . more ,rank,v novel,zed
biography than Napoleon" The au-
thor. with an evident aim to amuse, has
given us plenty Of conversation, which
even the most careless reader cannot
believe to be anything but sheer tnven-
ton. Yet the story moves along, and
the characters are so diversified that
the reader finds himself entertained
from the first page.
He who reads this book solely for
amusement will get more out Of 1t than
he who reads 1t with the intent OF
learning how Balzac wrote. M. Ben
jamin has been content to touch only
the outside of his great mans literary
labors. It would seem to be the un-
happy fate of most Of the great French
master writer's that their modern BIZ
ographers are more interested in por-
traying them as buffoons than as men
as writer's, IS workers in q workaday
world.
The few biographies Of Alexandra
Dumas which have appeared have dealt
with him as q great clown, which per-
haps he was, in some respects, but
surely there must have been more to
him than that, and more meriting the
serious labors Of his biographers. Yet
no doubt this very frothiness appeals to
thousands Of readers, who are not In
tereSted in writer as q writer, but az
man. Perhaps the great reading pub
lie is right, after all. They took Lud-
wigs Napoleon" to their hearts be-
cause the German writer gave them q
man and not his battles, his soul and
not his cannonS.
The two most worn books in a popu-
lar circulating nbrary-Ludwig's Ma
poleon" and Benjamin's "Balzac"-
surely that Is edifying testimony as to
what the mass Of the people are read
ing at the present time. It speaks
louder, 1t seems to us, than any amount
of Information as to the "best sellers
Of the month or the year. It speaks on
par with the worn volumes of Dickens
to be found In home bookcases all over
the land