Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-29

Book lovers will notice that the popu-
lar vogue for biography is on the wane.
There still are biographies published
but by no means as many, large or
expensive as during the crest of the
year 1929.
This is we'll
Too much of anything is bad, espe-
cially biographies.
Listening to the discussion of Gives
few months ago, one might have
thought that nobody had ever written
or published biography before.
In the popular opinion. there seemed
to have been no biographies before the
year 1914.
The surest thing in American life is
that anything. be 1t book, game or
whatnot, which attains to the stature
OF fad will go down again, sooner or
later. Even Amos N Andy and minia-
ture golf!
Have you read the life of So-and-
SOP" was question which, asked by
one Of another, led to a sort of writing,
publishing, reading hysteria.
just how much of it was due to the
real popularity of lives and how much
to the fact that ones friends were talk
ing about such books must be left to
the gentle mercies of the psychologists.
was no new thing in the world and that
no modern biographer had done any
thing half so startling as the booksell-
erS made out, for reasons of their own.
The eighteenth century was made
memorable not only because the Ameri-
can Revolution began then, but also
because Boswell published his Life
of DIR. johnson" and Gibbon issued the
first 16 chapters of his Decline and
NJ IA
We predict that from now on BIZ
ography will take its normal, justified
position in the world of letters, instead
of posing as something new in the
world, sort of pseudo dazzler for the
newly rich in the things of bookdom.
Vogues and fads are inevitable in any
such sophisticated age and country as
the present United States. We speak,
OF course, of the urban civilization. The
widespread dissemination of newspapers
and magazines, with their interesting
advertisements and well written ac-
counts of popular fashions, is largely
responsible for these interesting de-
Yelopments.
Backgammon. for instance. a game
as old as the hills, is the --latest fad" in
New York, from whence it is destined
to spread slowly but surely into the
hinterland. Every one knows about
backgammon, whose board has been in
the reverse side of checkerboards for
years on years.
Nobody has played backgammon, no
body has wanted to play backgammon.
Then, one bright morning, one sees a
cleverly constructed "ad" in New York
paper about how backgammon is be-
coming all the rage" at the smart
watering resorts
One smiles indulgently. Anything
for fad" and so on. But the idea
sinks in. Backgammon is acquiring
something prestige which goes with
social leadership. The idea sinks in.
Soon one will see something else about
backgammon. Later will see a picture
OF two prominent society persons play
ing the game
The first thing one knows. he will be
busting of the reverse side OF the
checkerboard and trying the game.
And then, because 1t is a fairly good
game, he will discover" backgammon.
The same effort is being made with
table tennis" 1t was called ping
pong" 80 sears ago, on account of the
fancied sounds made by the slap of the
wooden paddle against the ball and its