Evening star., 1936-07-11

from q pQtnL1ng Oy Z. w.
Pedle, reproduced in "WaSh-
ington and His Aides-de-
Camp" by Emily Stone
Whiteley (MacmilIdn).
ultimate hope and allowing for con-
slant present failures species of
patient mysticism nearly Oriental in
character. He has found the physical
sciences on which he was nurtured in
sufficient and has reached out into the
realm where one mans guess Is as
good as another's. Combining his
scientific attitude with the mystic in
a desperate attempt to rationalize the
universal phenomenon. Is it the end
of him as a novelist? Frankly, it
looks like it,
Perhaps this development has been
implicit in Mr.. Huxleys work from
the beginning. For there has always
been an element of desperation in
him. The thing which made his early
work SC stimulating was the shock and
horror with which he rejected. His
was never the renunciation of ennui;
it was the renunciation of young dis
covery. There was no weariness in
him. He rejected rather with positive
passion. And that was precisely why
his work lowered above that of the
other disillusionists. 1t sprang from
a nature fundamentally naive, and,
therefore, capable Of seeing truth orig
inally, and not through the lens of
tradition or fashion.
So perhaps 1t was to be foreseen
that. desperate. he would lift himself
by the bootstraps of his need clear
had found so loathsome-which Is
what he has done. Indeed, he even
prophesized his own course. One re-
members, out of the lost young 20s, q
burlesque drama which he published
in Vanity Fair; 1t described ironically
the youth of o coming generation
turning TO the religion which their
postwar parents had renounced. Is
that not precisely what he has done,
in spirit If not in letter?
And yet one cannot cry ave Atque
Vale" either. One cannot quite bid
him good-by. "Eyeless in GAIA" is a
cropping, uncertain book but it still
does not lay the Question-what is
going to happen to Aldous Huxley?
AS long as he writes at all, one
prophesies, he will still be interesting.
He Is too vital to be otherwise. As
often as he writes himself out, he will
return. He may turn monk, but he
will not turn trappist. He will not be
silent; he is incurably a writer. One
waits now his next move-with in
terest."
GONE WITH THE WIND. BY Mar
garet Mitchell. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
THIS novel of more than a thousand
pages length has been praised for
presenting q vivid realistic picture of
the South during and after the Civil
War. 1t will not be the present re-
viewer who takes exception to that
finding. 1t does most certainly present
remarkable picture Of the war and
the reconstruction days. But more ex-
cellent than that, to this reviewers
mind, is the delineation of character
accomplished by the author in her
heroine, Scarlet O'Hara. II the book
had no other merits-and 1t has many
it would still deserve attention for
the skill and consistency shown by its
author in portraying the female preda-
tor, pure and simple. For that is what
the lovely Scarlet is.
She-Scarlett-dominates the book.
Rarely does one encounter historical
novel which gives realistic interpre-
tation Of its time and still has a char
acter who lives and seems to the reader
capable of living in any time. Usually,
in the historical work of fiction, the
background subordinates the people,
or else the people are romanticized
into types conventionally supposed to
belong to the period under examina-
ton.
But in Gone With the Wind" there
is no such Ill balance. The book is
fitted out with a heroine who is any,
thing but conventional Southern
type; she Is beautiful woman, to be
sure (belle Of three counties), but also
one who is ruthlessly selfish, "unlady-
like" and stupid. She is carried by
the action through paths somewhat
customary in the reconstruction novel;
she Is left impoverished after the war,
her once luxurious plantation home is
stripped, her slaves desert her, her
relatives and friends, similarly bereft,
are unable to help her. All this has
been met with before In novels about
the Civil War. But seldom has the
lovely heroine done anything except
suffer genteely until a hero was raised
up to end her troubles by marrying
her.
Not so the redoubtable creature
whom Miss Mitchell has created in
Gone With the Wind" She does not
wish to suffer-a fig for the genteel at
titude! She briskly marries the only
man she knows who has any money,
and the fact that he has been engaged
to her sister does not deter her for q
second. She tells him that the sister
is false to him Ca lie) and catches him
neatly on the rebound. With his money
In her purse she then sets out on
business career as the owner and oper-
ator of lumber mills. She Is almost
ostracized for doing anything 20 sun
womanly." Social approval, however,
means little to her. She has tasted
poverty, and now she Is out for money.
When she Is unable to make her
mills pay with colored labor she coolly
leases conv:cts and hires driving boss.
She grows rich and takes on other
ventures; she runs q store and builds
a saloon. She uses her "womanly ap-
pear' all the time, of course, to help
her on. but her secret feeling toward
contempt.