Evening star., 1935-10-06

not.
That, In sum, is the plot It is don't
with great skill and with unmistakabls
genuineness. There are passages o.
beautiful writing which mark Robert
Reynolds as writer whose first prom.
ise Is being more than fulfilled. The
color and movement of those feverist
times are richly in the pages. THE
town is unmistakably drawn from life
and it lives. But the men and womer
who flicker through Its streets are
painted first.
This f1atness is only disturbing, tc
be sure, in a few cases. The great
number of characters are supernu-
meraries, and a few bold strokes ac-
complishes for them all that Is neces-
sary. But when 1t comes to those to
whom the author has intrusted the
burden Of development, one could wish
for something more convincing. 1t is
hard to believe-completely-in the
precociousness Of Ralph Parks, the
young working man, who burns and
blazes. 1t is likewise hard to believe
in Mary, the sad brilliant daughter OF
the drunken father, whose mentality Is
SO weak in unexpected ways. 1t is easy
to believe in Mr.. Reynolds as a per-
suasive novelist. however. When he
distorts nature, or invents rather than
develops, he does 1t perhaps as we'll as
any one could.
So 1t becomes the structure of this
novel, in its massive richness, tina.
makes 1t fine book, and fine book il
is beyond a doubt. If one can accept
the thin and sometimes distorted forms
that Mr.. Reynolds puts on his canvas
for men and women, one has much
beauty to enjoy. And, after all, a novel
of the jazz age could hardly be novel
Of character. to a great extent. 1t was
not a time that developed character
very markedly, if one remembers cor
rectly.
THEY SHALL INHERIT THE
EARTH. BY Morley Callaghan
New York: Random House.
FOLLOWING the present trend OF
writing books about periods of oul
history, we have Mr.. Callaghan, bring.
ing out novel of the depression
Mr.. Callaghan's book, however, diff
fers radically from other recent books
on the same period in that the effects
of the financial paralysis of the land
are shown in the characters souls
rather than in any physical pheno-
mena.
He has not been occupied with de-
picting conditions in city, an indus
try or in various social groups. He
has hardly troubled to fit his book
out with a physical background at
all. One knows that his characters
are supposed to live in city on the
Great Lakes, but they move essentially
through the troubled dark Of their
own natures. The spiritual atmos-
phere Of the book is that of a sad
still landscape under a lowering sky,
a picture created in the mind of a
melancholy fatalist. There is little of
the American scene" in the book, as
we think of that phrase today.
There Is, however, great reality in
it which, If it were conveyed with
more intensity and less diffuseness,
would raise the novel to a work of
enduring genius. 1t is the reality of
human emotions-not of the great
emotions greatly expressed but of the
small fearful reactions of the human
heart which find their outlet in be-
havior that is oftentimes grotesquely
at variance with their meaning. The
title is expressive enough. 1t is a
book about the meek, and the old
promise that renders life endurable
to them.
The plot is extremely simple. 1t in
wolves one Michael, young engineer
whose emotions seem first to have
been numbed by his estrangement from
his father, and later to be growing
toward a trophy by his inability, in
the depression, to find any work to do.
In this state of mind he allows his
half brother to drown Cthe reader will
feel that it was good job, tool and
then remains silent while his father
becomes the object Of common suspi-
cion in the death.
He is revived to spiritual life by the
love of young girl-similarly out OF
work-who shares his existence in a
vague sort of rooming house. He goes
to his father, now ruined in business
as a result of his supposed crime, and
offers to tell the police. but the old
man-one of the most poignantly ap-
pealing characters encountered in fic-
ton for a long time-dissuades him.
They return together to the rooming
house, where the girl awaits them
with her baby-a symbol of the old
hope, one supposes.
It Is such work as might have
achieved classic greatness, but it
misses it through the authors preoc-
cupation with galaxy of minor
characters whose only purpose seems
to be to express various points of views
as to economics, religion and what q
man can do in general. 1t shows, one
feels, more than a trace Of Dostoivie-
sky's influence, but 1t has none Of the
Russians genius for scene and climax.
It proceeds very levelly and this cir
cumstance, coupled with its consid-
cradle length, makes it as times ur-
eventful reading.
Notwithstanding, it ought to be one
of the important novels of this sea-
son.
THE WIND BLEW WEST. BY Edwin
Lanham. New York: Longmans
Green & Co.
THIS is another Fall novel that pro-
ceeis in the current trend and is
concerned about a period in history
first and men and women afterward.
Not that it is book without human
interest and much activity. But its
author first Of all has been interested
in portraying the frontier line Of our
advancing civilization. and his char
acters live lives shaped entirely BY
frontier conditions.
3 The particular frontier in this case
Is that Of Texas in the 70s. A land
boom is promoted by the fathers of
the town Of Rutherford, who hope to
have the Texas & Pacific Railroad