Evening star., 1937-05-05
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
BY MARGARET GERMOND.
RAINBOW FISH. BY Ralph Bates
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

new YORK: u. p. DuttOn IL Co.
Ralph Bates, whose two previous novels
have given him rank among England's
foremost postwar writer's, has wandered
far from his former interests and
gathered strange assortment of men
for the leading roles in story that
hauls dragnet through the backwaters
of the social constituency and brings to
the surface peculiar collection of HUI
man Wreckage.
Pathetic representatives OF the socially
submerged are these Wretched refugees
who are victims of the disintegration of
their moral fiber and who have been
gradually driven to seek sanctuary and
forgetfulness in the only occupation in
the world which holds promise of
complete loss of identity. Sponge diving
off the Greek islands literally guarantees
escape from the law, but it is with the
effort to escape from memory that
Rainbow Fish" is primarily concerned.
Robert F'reeth, first in the acquaintance
of the reader, is young Englishman
whose hatred of the sordidness of his
childhood home causes him to seek re-
lease from his misery by joining
troupe OF travelling players. In Paris
LID kIOl lOuo ChpCl lClltS Ill lIcCUOIH COMES
to an abrupt and tragic end.
Captain Skinner is master of tramp
steamer belonging to a Greek company
engaged in the profitable business of
wrecking ships for the twin purposes of
stealing their cargoes and collecting their
insurance. He can sail no other sort of
ship because jury once convicted him
of an intentional wreck in Syrian waters
in which four men lost their lives.
Freeth is on Captain SINNERS ship when
Gianni Malatesta, Sicilian anarchist
fleeing for his life, slows away while the
Swift is at anchor of Catania.
James Whirter Legge is an English
writer disappointed by his failure to at
tain success in his chosen medium of
literary expression and gradually be-
coming insane because memory continues
persistently to remind him of the hor-
rible fact that he has murdered two
women. On mail schooner bound from
Piraeus to Skarpa Island, haven OF those
for whom sponge diving is the last
resort, he makes the acquaintance of
Asher Weisendonck, one-time London
barber whose get-rich-quick schemes had
been too fragrant even for Greece
Charles OPhelan is product Of
Dublin and the victim of Irish revolu-
ton and riot.
These and others of equal wretched-
ness are the curSing, fighting men hauled
by Mr.. Bates from the depths of their
hopeless and foul existence and presented
in succession of sketches which in the
whole comprise vivid and intense study
in human derelicts. Brief outlines reveal
the native and social backgrounds of
the characters, against which are set
forth the motives which cause men to
give free rein to the momentary de-
rangement of their passions. With these
two factors established, the story then
proceeds along its major theme, which
Is an exposition from the inside of the
mental, emotional and intellectual re-
actions OF these men who work and
subsist in world apart, haunted by
memory, hunted by the law and bounded
by the consciousness of an eternal doom
from which there is no escape.
The story reaches its climax in the
enforced voyage Of these men on ship
which the captain has been ordered by
its crooked owners to wreck.
It is an odd story, both in content
and in style of presentation. But it gives
impetus to growing faith in the endur-
ing quality Of the work of Ralph Bates,
whose mild, quiet manner bellies the
intensity Of his nature and the pas
sionate sympathy which he feels for the
victims of a society which possesses little
understanding of the limited powers of
human endurance in stress of emotion
and little knowledge of the sufferings
endured by the oppressed.
There can be no comparison between
this book and The Olive Field" which
was a novel designed to give a clear-cut
view of the causes underlying the present
revolution in Spain. Mr.. Bates is now
and has for some time been on the
battlefront of Spain.
THE TAIL OF THE COMET. BY Mary
Gable Dennis. New York: E. p.
Dutton g. Co.
George w. Cable, father of the author,
and Alfred Dennis, her husband, are the
subjects of this delightful book concern
ing two Of Americas outstanding literary
personalities. The work does not attempt
to be seriously biographical, but contents
itself with the simple and undramatized
recollections of family life in that espe-
cially colorful era in American history
W1lIlcSocO tllt 1loc W CURIOUS
climax and the passing of a great and
picturesque generation in the deep South
and the dawn of new age with the new
century.
Life in New Orleans in the days when
Lefcadio Hearn, Mark Twain, Oscar
Wilde, Joel Chandler Harris and others
whose fame had not yet reached the
heights were familiar figures in political,
literary and social affairs, afforded a
glamorous background for the writings
and for the activities of George w.
Gable in the movement for social reform.
Mrs. Dennis devotes the major part
of her recollections, however, to the per-
sonal side rather than the public side
Of her fathers life. She recalls him as
an affectionate father and husband, as
loyal neighbor and stanch friend, as
conscientious worker and as man
standing of the Creole people.
The story of the life of her historian
husband Is told more briefly, but as a
work of personal recollections of men
and of incidents in that remarkable era
Of romance, when life was more Of an
adventure and less of the undramatic
grind than it is today, is refreshing
and entertaining and perhaps a bit
stimulating if read with an appreciation
of the beauty of a civilization that can
never be erased from memory by the
inexorable march of modernism.
One Doubtful Proposal.
Prom the Helena (Mont.) Independent