Evening star., 1936-09-12

terms to be.
For the most part this would seem
to be cheerfully sordid materialism.
Intyre shows them to us, are aiming
at their objectives with the apparent
assumption that all other members of
the race exist solely to be cir
cumvented. They betray one another
with the innocent promptneSs OF q
school OF sharks turning on q
wounded member. They bear one an
other no intelligent dislike but only
resentment for passing defeats. AS
the immortal Able said, they sin
without malice" Their real enemy,
Mr.. Mcintyre seems to tell us, is not
themselves but life.
He does little direct talking about
life in the course of his work, but
the picture which he insinuates as
his tale runs along is of a throng of
people struggling and scuff1ing in the
dark at the foot of great wall. 1t
towers above them and shuts them
out from light. peace and honor.
They are not accursed, however, for
light, peace and honor are no part
of their knowledge or desires
They are characters for the plea
rescue and Pete himself is such a one
raised a bit above the level because
he has a certain code of fairnes- and
tolerance and thinking mind. Yet,
sordid as the people are and sordid as
the tale, the novel as whole escapes
that quality. 1t is informed strongly
with humor and its cynicism is no
more cruel than that implied in a
city shrug 1t is the cynicism of i'm
potence rather than that of hatred
and contempt
Much the same mood has been ex-
pressed in two plays in recent years
the farces Broadway" and The
Front Page" You can take such
works as a terrible commentary on
our civilization, you can follow them
single -heartedly as human stories. or
you can view them detachedly as good
entertainment The same thing Is
true of Steps Going Down" as
| novel.
And yet it has been said that the
work falls short of being literature,
and the reviewer holds to the opinion.
1t is too far from sympathy to de-
serve that particular praise. 1t is,
essentially, spectacle. 1t is some
thing like puppet show. The charac-
tiers arouse sense Of recognition, but
never of liking or disliking. The
reader will ticket them according to
their parts in the action, but will
hardly care what end befalls them
or whether their endeavors are sue
cessful or not. Taken as a puppet
show, however, it is an excellent one.
Whether it was the best book sub
mitted in its competition or not, it
is we'll above the average novel and
deserves attention of some special
sort.
FAR FOREST. BY Francis Brett
Young. New York: Reynal and
Hitchcock.
THIS is the twenty-fourth novel to
come from the hand Of the vete-
ran Mr.. Young. Like its predecessors,
or like such of them as the reviewer
has read, it is long and utterly in
consequential story, told with COM
plete gravity. 1t happens to deal with
a girl-and-boy romance, set against
a background of English countryside
1t might have dealt with anything
else, and been exactly as memorable
BIG BLOW BY Theodore Pratt. Bos-
ton: Little Brown g. Co.
THIS is one of those novels in which
local color" Is used so lavishly
that no space or necessity remains
for plot, characters, motivation or
any Of the one time classic properties
Of the long fiction form. In other
words, it Is one Of those novels
wherein the reader is so choked,
blinded, deafened, dizzied and gen.
orally defeated by an overwhelming
use Of the nomenclature and dialect
| of some particularly distant and
oafish district that, in his mere effort
to survive, he overlooks the circum-
stances that the plot set among the
pineywoods, coral reefs, pueblos, Cape
Codders or what have you Is COM
pletely conventional In the present
case, Cape Cod is Florida-that same
Florida which netted Mrs. Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings such q nice profit
when spread on the pages of South
Moon Under"-the Florida of ham,
mocks and crackers. 1t is about a boy
and girl who decide to get married.
EXCUSE 1T, PLEASEl Cornelia Otis
Skinner. Illustrated by o. Soglow.
New York: Dodd Mead d. Co.
THE distinguished monologist writes
here a collection Of essays, some
Of which have been published before.
They deal chiefly with the things
which Miss Skinner does not like.
such as indulgence in strenuous
sports. conversation over the Long
Island telephone, horse shows, old
school friends and the like. The
humor Is labored and obvious. The
pictures by Soglow hardly seem up
to his usual level.
THREE CHEERS FOR THE RED,
RED AND RED. BY Percy Crosby.
Mclean: The Freedom Press.
THE creator Of Skippy adds here
another volume TO his not very
happy list of written books. The YER
dict is: Cartoonist, stick to your
trade! For, allowing some exceptions,
! the generality of this thick volume OF
criticism Is that 1t labors, that it is
narrow in viewpoint and that it
smacks badly at times OF jingoism.
/ This pains the reviewer extremely, for
she Is fond Of Skippy. But memory
serves to remind her that that pre-
cocious young man has sometimes
sinned in sentimentality beyond his
years. Perhaps this work was TO be
expected after all
Divided in three parts, the volume
treats of current press RECOMMENDATION,
OF the American intelligentsia and OF
the New Deal. 1t Is pretty largely done
In terms OF Mr.. Crosby's own expert
ences and consequent dislikes, the
tone being so personal that the reader