Evening star., 1934-11-18
In the World of Books
Continued From Fourth Page.)

Continued From Fourth Page.)
lier, at q diplomatic dinner in Wash
ington, Ambassador Won Wyden-
bruck rushed up breathlessly to the
Secretary of State. The Emperor
Maximilian is in terrible danger. My
government implores you to do some
thing Mr.. Seward crunched rad
ish. His life is quite as safe as yours
and NINE he said.''
\ X X X
AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY John Cow
per Powys. New York: Simon g.
SchuSter.
OUSSEAU, Casanova, Powys-of
~ the three Powys, if he does not
indulge in the greatest frankness, at
least accuses himself most unrestrain-
edly. His autobiography will be of
especial interest to the psychiatrist,
though he expresses profound distrust
of psychoanalytical psychiatry. He
confesses to SadiSm, of thought not
action, conquered only in his fiftieth
year, many forms of cerebral senSu-
ality, gluttony, an instinct for acting
in grandioSe roles, vein of obstinate
and absurd ascetism, various obses-
sions, among them constant hand
washing and a meticulous avoidance
of an arrangement of knife and fork
pointing at his breast, and many other
"neurotic alterations which must
hays1 wavered and toppled on the
verge of madness" OF this auto
biography he says: Il have sought
to get rid of all pose, all pretense,
all hypocrisy, all self-deception, all
wordy idealism, all false dignity" 1t
is almost impossible of belief that a
man so completely absorbed in his
own life of sensation as is Mr.. Powys
has been able to drop "all pose, all
pretence"
One of II children of a Welsh
vicar, he looks back upon his child
hood at Shirley, in Derbyshire, as
not at all happy one, but one thing
those early years did was to bind his
life and that of his brother Littleton
''in so fast knot that death alone
loosen it." Two others of the PoWys
brothers besides John Cowper, Lew
elyn and Theodore, have attained
success in literature. To American
readers one of the most interesting
chapters of the autobiography will be
that on America, where Mr.. PoWys
has frequently lectured, and where
for five quiet years" he lived in New
York State His lectures were re-
ceived without enthusiasm, often with
contempt, he says, in the large uni
versities, but in schools and small
colleges and women's clubs he was
usually taken for typical English
man from Oxford" which appealed
to him, "a complete free-lance," as
an ironical joke. Perhaps because OF
his warm receptions in the schools
and by their teachers, he pays trib-
ute to old maids, who always con-
fide in me and trust me-" Mr. Powys
comments on his autobiography that
it may hurt some and surprise others
but I cannot think it will appear dull
to any" Among those who are sur
prised will not be any who have read
wolf Solent," "A Glastonbury Ro-
nance" and weymouth Sands; they
could almost have constructed the
framework of his autobiography from
his novels.
X X X
MORNING SHOWS THE DAY. BY
Helen Hull. New York; Coward
Mccain.
TN PARADISE RECLAIMED" Milton
says: The childhood shows the
man, AS morning shows the day
Building her narrative around thi;
dictum, which has some exceptions
both as to childhood and morning
Helen Hull has taken a group of high
school students in a Michigan town.
on the eve of graduation, all busy over
the editing and publication of the
senior annual. She has followed them
through large portion of their lives
into the postwar depression, which
has now become a conspicuous his
torical landmark, and has shown that
in every case the characteristics and
tendencies of youth were even accen-
tuated in later life. The personality
in which greatest interest centers il
that of Allen Collins, son of drunken
hostler, doggedly determined to secure
an education and to amount to some
thing. His life-plan includes Shirley
Thomas, a self-centered girl of some
character but absorbed in fantasies
focused On Robert Swift, the minis
ter's son. no credit to his father. Tom
Ellsworth, son of the prosperous owner
of the large department store, is the
most tragic of all the young people
under the dark influence of a mother
obsessed by the Mongolian idiocy o.
another son and its imagined cause
Toms personality disintegrates, until
partial salvation is brought to him b!
Ruby Cutter, drab little worker-bee
whose life has been devoted to the in
terests of the Ellsworth Dry Goods Co
Eugenia Murray, daughter OF the rich
est man in town, begins as beautlfu
empty shell and in middle life is still
an empty shell, but without beauty
Elida Hawthorne is saved from th'
profession for which she was obviousl!
destined by respectable but undis
eliminating undertaken. Helen HUH
work is not subtle; it has been callee
obvious, but its obviousness is that o
average human life, about which sh
knows a great deal.
Her writing is direct and vigorous
only occasionally tortuous, as in sucf
a sentence as His letter was the f1na
twist in the woven rope of question
and answer which drew her east
ward"
X y X X
DOSTOEVSKY. A Life. BY Avrahn
Yarmolinsky. New York: Har
court, Brace & Co.
DOSTOEVSKY, lowering always OF
~ the verge of mental collapse, ye
managed to hold himself sternly tt
the work of interpreting other tor
tured souls through the medium of hi
fiction. Mr.. Yarmolinsky, chief o.
the Slavonic division of the New Yorl
Public Library, after long years O.
research, in which he has made us'
of all possible material, chiefly in th'
original Russian, has produced wha
is undoubtedly not only the mos
complete and accurate biography o
Dostoevsky, but also the most under
~+a-l;nr onpraicol nf hic r,arcOp q lit,