Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-03-01


from English outlook and method and manner.
The dependent minority Of country cannot
last forever any more than that of an IN
dividual in democratic land can. Moreover
America is full and ripe, ready to burst with
mature material for the native novelist And
here he is-not ia great numbers 10 be sure, but
among the most serious and the most compe-
tent of our writer's the American theme is para
mount and obligatory. In the West, this fact is
clear In the Middlewest it is gathering TO a
rich fulnllment. Young writer's are following
the lead Of a few already competently at work
on the task Of writing down America by way
of the novel.
The picture here is that of little community,
the familiar country village. Orderly and
even pious In the main, this small town has all
ready built two churches, signs these Of the re-
spectacle quality of the people themselves. Even
piety grows cumulative upon occasion as it does
here. An active Methodist, of the public
spirited" brand, launches the project of build
ing another church, one for his own creed Un-
der great stress the church is built. But no
great revival of the spirit follows its compile
ton and use. Apathy toward religion seems
to have taken both of the crurchgoers Of this
hamlet. Hard times exact from the body at
the expense of zeal for the souls welfare There
is boy in this community whose aim is to be
a preacher. And he becomes just that-to find
his vision Of rescue and welldoing thwarted
often and too often, by the thousand familiar
worldlmeSses OF life. Into this simple web of
building a church and maintaining those
already built into this "call" Of one young man
to the clerical life there obtrudes exactly what
you see every day all over the world, the hard
Shedding of moral guidance in face of an open
and reckoning world. However, the point of
this book Is hardly the matter so briefly and
inadequately outlined. Rather is 1t the partner
ship between patience and insight, between
crowded minutes and ultimate progression
toward the end that here is re-created COM
munity representative in detail of thousands
of these settlements and towns throughout the
less densely populated areas of the United
States.
Hour by hour does this writer follow the In
terests and activities Of the people of this
rural community Friday morning" does not
come anywhere near accounting for that day.
No, Friday afternoon" follows as actively bent
upon gathering the effect of that part of the
day as If events Of vital quality were on the
way. Just the vital business OF being alive in
particular way Is the prime concern of this
writer Of new big novel. Big in real sense,
though many win not follow 1t because 1t lacks
the concentration upon few items that the
general reader demands. Instead here is the
place itself, in all Of its commonplace doings,
the people not any of them remarkabIe-but
all, place, people, interests gathered into-not
into a picture, but into q reality itself for you
to take or leave. But here it is, alive in the
minutest details of its actuaIity-and that
manifestly has been the concern of this man.
this young man, whose certainty Of purpose and
\
meantime here is a new novel-too, long, not
particularly well proportioned, not altogether
coherent and consistent, but very remarkable
novel, all the same, and a mighty interesting
one.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT; Novel BY Carl VIII
helmson. Wood cuts by Lynd Ward New
York: Farrar g. Rinehart.
THE not unfamiliar story of a boy who runs
After years Of rowing he returns to his own
Iand-F1nland. There, as If it had been pre-
served by some strange solution, he comes upon
the village Of his birth without single change
about it. And all the world roundabout where
he had been so long had amazing changes TO
point upon, like a miracle world. In some way
this crystallized gem Of a birthplace caught the
heart and imagination Of the wanderer, and it
Is the story Of the primitive ways of this spot
that he has seized upon with so much Of poetic
divination and has set down with much Of
beauty. Midsummer Night is a festival night
among the country folks. The story pictures
that merrymaking In ali Of its grace and back
looking toward infinitely remote customs. From
this the story moves out into the more proSaic
days Of the people, making record of the ways
and means Of life that the locality has inn
posed, that the ancestors, likewise, have passed
on This Is rather more than an interesting
story. All Of that. It is besides, the careful
preservation Of an earlier time, one that has
been kept unchanged. Exactly the kind Of
relic that investigators are searching out in
order to hold it fast as objective proof Of the
past in one or another of its ways throughout
the earth. However, It is the idyllic picture
itself that counts, and with 1t there counts also
the writer's tenderness toward It. after serving
bard lines and meeting many adventures in
wilder localities than this peaceful corner could
imagine or dream. A lovely thing that may
Just possibly slip By the reader, because it n