Evening star., 1933-01-29
y SARAH @. BOWERMHN
Many Books on 7echnoc,ucy- Ne7V Mo7elby
Sinclair Leavis-A Memory Of Pavlovu,
and the City of Emperors:

and the Dragon Throne" Jehol fourished for
100 years, then was abandoned but it is rich
in memories In June, $780, Dr. Hedin and his
party took the road to Jehol, from Peiping in a
Ford car, with three chests of personal equip
ment and Photographic apparatus Nearly
three days were spent on the journey, with two
nights encampment for the roads are not all
concrete.
The book "Jehol" rces not stop with mere
description of the treasures of architecture in
the city OF the past, the temples, pavilions and
palaces; it also reconStructs the past itself, what
went on in the city when it alive, the in
trigues, the romances and the mysteries. Some
of the personage5 of the glamorous story are
lung, the Son of Heaven, who lived in
the eighteenth century and occupied the Dragon
Throne for 60 years; the .Tashi Lama, who
visited Jehol and mystcriousy died in the
Yellow Temple in Peiping; Hsang Fei. concu-
bine Of the Emperor Ch'ien-lung, and Ho Shen
favorite of the same emperor whose power
went to his head, so that he appropriated state
property, looted the homes of the wealthy and
shocked the public censors by his licentiousness.
The history of Jehol seems the more fantastic
and like the Arabian Nights If We stop to
remember that it was contemporary with the
French and Indian War the American Revolu-
tion and the founding Of our Government, with
the adoption of the Constitution. Sven Hedin
adds to his picturesque style the ability to draw
pen and ink pictures, and with some Of these
as well as Will many IdutOIcS, Ic AaS iuuo-
trated his book.
THE LAST ADAM. BY James Gould Cozzens.
New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.
A spoon RIVER ANTHOLOGY with the
~ dwellers in New Winton, Conn. the
subjects of his strong, wood-cut type of delinea-
lion, is what Mr. Cozzens seems, from one angle,
to have produced in THE Last Adam"
Interest shifts from May Tipping at her tele-
IL yI1ke - xI., hnI
side of her dying daughter, to DR.. Bull visiting
his mistress, Janet Cardmaker, at her farm
over near Cold Hill; to Mrs Banning telephon-
ing from the finest old house in town to
summon her troublesome daughter home to
Virginia Banning discontented, hating her
environment, as she drives her brothers high
powered car into fence. These, and many
others in turn step into the scene and are
sklfully integrated INTO this story OF one month.
from February II to March IT, in the life Of
New Winton.
Two persons not the most important in town
(the Bannings are thaD, hold the key to all
that happens in the month of inexorable
results, one the mere recorder and trans
mitter of what happens, the other as deeply
and guiltily responsible for it all. May Tipping,
sitting at her switchboard, occasionally listening
in, watching what goes on along the village
Main street and across the Green. knows every
thing about every one knows what every one
lap she holds book, the sixteenth volume OF
a universal knowledge se6which she is getting
through" for May believes in knowledge and
has, moreover, her personal philosophy, which
Is that facts must be faced and that there Is
"a mercy in the world which you might not
at first recognize. If you just kept on not
getting what you wanted, you would stop want
ing it in any painful way" May needs all her
philosophy with her husband, Joe, crippled
from a gun accident and daily growing more
Grabbed from his invalidism and from the con-
sumption of too much of the bootleg liquor
Harry Weems brings him. DR.. Bull, who gives
the name to the story, is Rabelaisian. Lacking
both knowledge and skill in his profession, he
has not even human interest and sympathy Tor
his patients but drinks himself into soddenness
at Janets farm while Mamie Talbot dies. He
is the health officer, but is so careless and
ignorant that he allows typhoid epidemic to
develop from contamination of the water supply.
from the construction camp on the hill. Mean
while he ridicules Mrs. Banning's reform
agitations and plays malicious tricks on her
and others more intelligent than himself about
his own Job. His ancient aunt who keeps
house for him. recognizes the illness which has
carried of Mamie when he has called it pneu-
monia and has assured Mrs. Talbot that 1t
will cure itself. Janet. his most charitable
judge. thinks of him: There was an immor-
tality about him something here when the
first men walked erect; here now :. good
greedy vitality, surely the very vitality of the
world and the flesh it survived all blunders and
injuries, all attacks and misfortunes, never
quite fed full"
The individual scenes of realism in "The
Last ADAM" unfortunately marred at times by
quite unnecessary coarseness, form almost COM
plete literary units apart from the whole rather
broken, irregular narrative. Such is the scene
in which her neghbors, high and low, visit the
bereaved Mrs. Talbot with DR.. Bull indiffer
emily making out the death certificate, Mr..
Banning interviewing the undertaken, Mrs.
Bates bringing basket of food and remark
ing suggestively to Dr. Bull: PITY you couldn't
get here yesterday afternoon for which he
secures revenge by proposing that she take
shabby, dirty Mrs. Talbot home with her for