Evening star., 1934-09-16
VIEWS AND REVIEWS.

thinks she Is tired of men and audi
ences, but really demands both for
her happiness. Her first week at Due
Tori drags, with her only mental
stimulus one of irritation because
Regan Nichols, former lover, has
written a biography of her called
"Gaudy Calliope," which her agent
assures her cannot be kept off the
presses All her indiscretions are
about to be revealed, but what does
it matter, since she is world famous?
So she promptly begins to commit
more indiscretions. Whatever she
does, after this biography, she thinks,
"in the future half of my audiences
will suspect the other half of being
my current lovers"
At the end of the week the sulking
prima donna is invited to the neigh
boring palatial villa of Mrs. Hamilton
Cotter Frewitt, an Englishwoman who
has her own affairs of conventional
immortality; meets her old friend,
Tavo Won Keinelohe, IAN artful cad
ger" and parasite, at present at
tached to Mrs. H. C. F., and becomes
acquainted with Ricardo del Retti,
tall and golden" who mixes impair
tiality with the royal whites, the
papal blacks and the Fascist black
Shirts" and indubitably has some
secret work on hand for MuSsolini'S
government. Manfred falls in love
with Ricardo at first sight, as she
is rather prone to do whenever a
masculine rarity appears in her
milieu. The intrigues of Ricardo and
the complications in which Marie is
soon involved can be followed only
by an agile mind At no point does
Miss Faulkner's fantasy lag, until she
dismisses her genius-heroine at the
end, with her past uniting with her
present and probably with her future.
1t Is all very good fun, but conscious
ly and continuously over-clever.
4 X X
HOLY WEDNESDAY. BY Manuel
Galvez Translated from the Span
ish by Warre B. Wells. New York:
D. Appleton Century Co.
CALLED from his bed by his serv-
~ ant just before midnight to con-
fess a dying man, Father Eudosio
Solanas wearily remembered, as he
heaved his great bulk to the floor, that
the next day was Holy Wednesday, "a
grinding day." when he must hear
hundreds of confessions. Trying to
resume his interrupted sleep between
and 2 in the morning, he found
himself wakeful and tense and his
mind full of the conflict which had
become so common with him. His
temptation was not to sin, or even
worldly pleasures. Prayer, pseitence,
masses and the scourge with which he
disciplined himself from time to time
all this had given him a soul strong
against Satan" His temptation was
nostalgia because of the loneliness
of his life, its emptiness of all save
duty.
Man could not live by faith alone 80
His duties as parish priest absorbed
all of his time except the two hours
of his siesta and two more in the
evening. His sole recreation was play
ing cards for an hour or so with his
curate. He had no friends and his
only relative was married sister in
Santa Fe. long distance from Buenos
Aires. His greatest temptation came
In the form Of vision of home,
swarming with healthy, dirty, naughty
children, with nebulous woman
somewhere in the picture, who was
their hypothetical mother. Prolonged
scourings always drove this vision
away, scourgings against which his
devoted servant protested in vain.
What was the sense of f1ogging him.
self. holy man like him? If he were
a sinner but saint, who Ger
tainly had place reserved for him
up there!" The conflict reaches its
climax, a terrible one, capable of diff
ferent interpretations, on Holy We'd
nesday. This story of Father Solanas,
his saintliness and his tragedy is told
with the utmost simplicity and poign-
ancy by Manuel Galvez, prominent
South American author. It is real
piece of art.
SLIM. BY william Wister Haines.
With decorations by Robert Law
son. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
A MAN will perhaps enjoy this
= story of a lineman more than
will a woman, but few readers of
either either sex will fail to be in
terested in the personality of Slim, the
young Southerner who found drows-
ing over his mule plow dull and ex-
changed 1t for the high-tension
gambling life with power transmits
sion lines. Mr.. Haines, though only
rs, has worked as lineman for seven
years, SO he is no theorist He has
put real people into his story, in the
sense that he has been unable to avoid
individual peculiarities of speech,
thought or personality" encountered
among the linemen of his acquaint-
ance.
Slim began by watching Red Blayd.
his future friend, climb a pole with
wheel, wheel" sound as he dragged
the points of his gaffs. Reds
mad descent was even more breath
taxing than his climb but Slim
was becoming excited by the idea
that he could do all that him
self. OF course he couldn't, then.
11V oAioe iuCd was tIlc eIlQ OF MS work.
ing with mules. He became a "grunt. Z"
the chore boy who fetches and carries
for the linemen, but he soon learned
to climb and to order about other
"grunts" who succeeded him. Before
long ne was a star hneman and he
and Red together travelled about from
place to place, in search of the best
pay and the most interesting life.
Their personal affairs, which included
nights and chorus girls, are mingled
IN the narrative with the dangers and
accidents of their dangerous occupa-
tlon, close to hot wire. The tragedy
OF Red, which was also the tragedy
OF several others, in a terrible acci.
oent OF broken winch line. BURNING
wires and broken insulators is the
dramatic climax of the story 1t was
as one OF the officials of the company
SAID the price of progress" Mr.
halnes' style is brusque and mascu.
Ine and his use of the dialect of the
hnemen, If at times it is difficult
reading. adds greatly to the truth of
the picture. -- oi
sANDBAR SINISTER. BY Phoebe