Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1936-08-29
By Mary.Carter Roberts.


By Carl GARNER. New York: Far
rar and Rinehart.
I'm THIS book Mr.. Garner carries
on the success of his last years
best seller, "Stars Fell on Ala
i bama." That Is to say, he offers
his public another book about one OF
the 4s States which comprise. the
Federal Union. He has shifted his
ground q bit. From the deep South
he has gone to the Canadian border;
his Listen for Lonesome Drum" Is
york State Chronicle" But he
follows much the same line as In his
~ former work, which critic has aptiy
described as imaginative reporting"
Listen for q Lonesome Drum" IS
o collection Of bits of history and
legend taken from the part OF New
York that knows Chautauqua rather
than Manhattan. The stories OF the
astonishing religious sects which had
their origins there, the various heroes
and remembered leaders of the peo-
pie, the old criminal gangs, the In
dian legends, the towns, the coun-
tryside-Mr. GARNER devotes chap
tiers to all these aspects of his terri
tory and unrolls melloWly colored
canvas.
York State comes to life as one
reads him-one has no hesitation IN
saving that it lives in his book more
wildly than 1t does in the mind OF
many @ conscientious tourist who has
been there. Mr.. GARNER has talent
for place writing that puts one newt
ably in mind Of still another New
Yorker-Washington Irving.
One Is the more keenly aware OF
this because Of the flood Of uninspired
books on the "Amrican Scene" which
has recently been pouring from the
presses. It has become a passing lit
erary style for a young writer to 60
forth ruthlessly to squeeze local color
from q given spot wherewith to tint
his maiden venture into book covers,
and reviewers everywhere will bear
witness that many of these Squeezings
have been more ruthless than colorful.
The southwest has been one OF the
hardest worked regions. with the APP
palachians and their perennial Anglo
Saxon mountaineers running 1t O
close second. The New Englanders
have come in for their arbitrary pub
Gcizing too.
One can see nothing against these
attempts, save that too often the am
bilious young man or women has OBJ
viously been more eager for pictur-
sequences than for facts, or so greatly
in hurry to get his royalties that he
has resorted to personal narrative to
fill up the spaces between his sparse
gleanings of honest material. We
have all read the humorous book that
revels in accounts of the authors un-
ruly Ford, or his quaint guide, on his
appalling accommodations in the
hotel; we have all read it dozen
times, under as many titles. If there
is any virtue In praising book for
what it does not do, that virtue is
claimed here and now. Mr.. GARNER,
like Julian Meade in his Il Live in
Virginia." sticks to his last. He tells
his story in the first person. but we
do not weary Of him.
Listen for a Lonesome Drum" Is
healthy and substantial work. It
gives us a recognizable cross section
of an American rural community-in
Its ignorance and superstition, in its
achievement and its personalities.
Written journalistically, without re-
course to sociological Technology, it
As vastly more revealing of American
folk-fabric than good many texts
on the subject. One refuses, never
theless, to hope that Mr.. GARNER will
60 on with the project and do an
other State for us; one refuses pre-
cisely because this present book is SO
good. One would not like to see the
meter degraded.
THEY WALK IN THE CITY. BY J.
B. Priestley. New York: Harper
and Brothers.
IN THIS, his latest novel, the author
of THE Good Companions" gives
us another rationing of his familiar
tepid charm. His talent for evoking
faint ghost of Dickens is still with
him, and he uses it to evoke faint
ghost Of Dickens. His capacity for
doing best-sellers Is well-remembered
and 50 perhaps 1t may be pardonable
to point out that the plot of They
Walk In The City, Is pure Hollywood,
even down to the locking Of the lovely
country-bred heroine into a disrep-
utable resort, where she is rescued by
the opportune Intervention Of the
sturdy young man from back home.
But 1t is never Hollywood in the vulgar
sense-dear me, no.
It is a mediocre little love story by a
man who knows how to make the
mediocre seem momentous and gen.
uine. Boy meets, loses and gets girl
never was the formula more barely set
down, and seldom has it been more
impresSively camounaged. That is all
there Is to 1t.
STRANGE HOUSES. BY Cora Jarrett
New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
WE HAVE here q currently best
wv selling book on the Jeckyl and
Hyde theme, with, of course, variations.
1t involves the transference of the
personality of an elderly and pious
lady to the body Of beautiful and
bad young dancer-and vice versa.
in other words. the body of the old
lady goes about. looking quite natural
out inhabited by the soul Of the
chorus girl, while the chorus girl,
beautiful as ever, starts to sing relig-
ious songs and write religious letters
because she is inhabited by the I'M
material parts of the old lady. Both
are quite seriously disturbed.
Any plot so picturesque rs the one
which gave Robert Louis Stevenson
his commonest fame, ought to bear Q
good amount Of retelling. It would
be bard, almost, to make dull book
out Of 1t. Mrs. Jarrett, for her part,
utilities the suspense possibilities very
well; you will want to know how they
got the old lady back into her skin
from the very moment when you grasp
the problem. Unfortunately, the rest