Evening star., 1934-06-03
DT SARAH BOWERMAN
I: S. Stribling Completes His 7rilogy
':Shavings" Of BermMd ShqzU-Stmm
Jameson S Negv Novel.


of Storm Jamesons most interesting or original
works. Hervey, with all her experiments with
life is far from equaling her grandmother
either in ability or in strength of personality.
In THAT Was Yesterday" she was student,
longing to write. perhaps more or less the
prototype of Storm Jameson herself She mar
ried as people are known to do without much
consideration of the effect the life she
wished to live. Up to the time when Company
Parade" opens, marriage had brought her
nothing she wanted and many things she didn't
want, including a child, whom she loved never
theess. But Penn. her husband, had decidedly
not been worth 1t all. Now. as she starts out
from her cheap room in London, to hunt for a
job in writing advertising copy, she reads his
letter hastily and thinks Of him with i'm
patience and kindness, think of a person
we neither like leave off liking" He
is \ ground officer in the Air Force and his
war had been a pleasant tour of stores depotS,
parks and aerodromes in England"
Hervey battles her way through the confu-
sion and obstacles of postwar London. where
every else is also trying to find place in
the strange new world. She has not the per-
sonality for success, as her grandmother had
that grandmother whom she resents so bitterly
because she allowed her daughter, Hervey's
mother, to suffer the consequences Of an un-
suitable and disapproved marriage. Hervey's
mind, "a strong, clumsy instrument" is always
'blunted and turned aside by her profound
carelessness of herself" She seems made for
defeat, yet, at the close of this book (Which
stops at point which demands another) she
is making slow headway. Though she has ar
rived too late to her dying grandmother.
who has sent for her and may have been in
tending to do something at least for the small
Richard she has secured a Secretaryship and
has written three novels. Her outlook is not
too dark-and she is sure that some time she
will be rid of Penn. But she has confidence
in herself a writer and cannot believe that
'tmoney earned by writing novels was as safe
as the money her grandmother, Mary Hervey.
had made out Of ships" So Hervey's story
ends. for the present She is still young. We
shall hear more Of her. 1t is fair inference
that into the character Of Hervey, Storm jane
son has put much of herself, her ship-buldng
ancestors, her novel-writing. her lack Of self
confidence, her bitterness over what the war
did to those of her generation.
PORTRAIT OF AMERICA. BY Dieg Rivera.
With an Explanatory Text by Bertram D.
Wolfe. New York: Covici-Frede.
THE Mexican artist Diego Rivera is the
painter of revolution and, as practically all
of the reproductions in this volume show, of the
bitterest human hate. He is considered by
many the worlds foremost mural painter of
today, and even those who are repelled by his
COuCeptIOIlS NdIIlOl Oelly power ana Tie
vigor of his technique. He has always been a
stormy petrol. Wherever he paints there is
controversy. He first won fame by his series
of murals in Mexico City, and for IA years the
battle between their admirers and their de-
testers has gone on He created a, brief sensa-
tion in the United States when his mural for
the Rockefeller Center, into which he had in
troduced portrait of Lenin was destroyed be-
cause according to his explanation, he had
oiy,fad fIo bod md fr,,fIH a1.af
the essential factors of social strife" This
volume contains a reproduction Of the only ex-
tant photograph of the destroyed mural other
murals which he painted during his sojourns of
nearly three years in the United States are
those in the San Francisco School Of Fine Arts,
the San Francisco Stock Exchange the Detroit
Institute of Arts and the New Workers School
in New York. These constitute his portrait of
America" and from them are reproduced the
so plates in the volume.
Only occasionally in the strongly drawn faces
of his crowded compositions is there serenity,
refectiveness, absence of suffering or hate. Such
exception is the face of the young worker
with vision-seeing eyes in the aviation section
of the Detroit murals, reproduced on page At.
Capitalist faces are all hard, scowling, crafty.
In the murals of the New Workers School, New
York. Rivera had the most complete freedom,
and these are probably most typical of his
Communist propaganda art, though among his
poorest works If judged entirely on their ar
tistic merit. He has been carried away by
Marxist indignation and the desire to crowd as
much denuncation as possible on his wall
space. The subjects, taken from American his
tory, begin with Colonial America" "a tumble
of sour faced Puritans depressed Indians and
toling, beaten Negroes) and end with "Pro-
letarian Unity" in which the imposing but
rather wooden figure Of Lenin is surrounded by
Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxembourg, Stain, Trotsky
and various American Communists. The panel
on the World War presents caricatures of Wood
row Wilson, dominating the scene; Clemenceau,