Evening star., 1937-05-15

naturally built. From the point of
view of American tradition, too, the
book has special interest in these
particular times,
I CAN GET 1T FOR YOU WHOLE
SALE. BY Jerome Weidman. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
TO ANY ONE who has read Mr..
Weidman's short stories, his pres
ent Work-his first novel-will be
wearyingly familiar, and this despite
the fact that it comes out bearing on
its jacket wild blurb from that happy
tempered young man, Burton Rascoe
Mr.. Rascoe, be it said. having reviewed
books for only a decade or 50, still
possesses wellspring Of pure en-
thusiasm which enables him to blurb
incomparably when he lets himself 60
And in the case Of this book he does
let himself go. He writes-nay, he
publishes-that he reacted to this
novel with "shivers Of pure esthetic
delight" and finished 1t with IAN in
voluntary" exclamation. What verve
he has, to be sure! What wide-eyed
rapture! Then. having gone so far with
revelations Of his critical ecstasy, Mr..
exclamation" was. Great j. Pier
pont Popocatepetl!" He confesses that
these were the syllables wrung from
him by the emotional purge of Mr..
Weidman's work Of art. Great j.
Pierpont Popocatepetl! What a
writer!" And then he innocenJly
glanced at the clock and accidentally
noticed that it was in the morning.
So spellbound had his discoverer's
frenzy held him.
Well If you don't believe, take look
at the back jacket. It's all there,
over Mr.. Rascoe's name. This, no
doubt, is literary criticism.
Now surely, when a book is intro
duced with such fragrant gushing, =
reviewer may be pardoned for feeling
a certain hostility toward it. Un-
happily, with the present writer, in
stinctive hostility works on the con-
science to produce more lenient no.
tice than ordinarily would be accorded
No, it is not fair to blame the book
for its publishers method of advertis-
ing. 1t is not fair to blame the novelist
because critic has made of himself
sideshoW barker. Let us see, then, what
with the utmost charity, may be said
for Il Can Get It For You Wholesale" :"
1t is nothing in the world but
portrait, and the portrait is complete
by the end Of the first chapter. After
that it is all repetition and, as Mr..
Weidman writes with extreme monot-
ony, both as to his thought and to his
style, the repetition lacks somewhat in
interest for its own sake. The portrait,
however, Is good one. It is the
portrait Of modern manner of human
rat, a cheap, coarse, dishonest man,
garment trade very quickly. He is not
pleasant certainly; he Is not even in
teresting. He is loathesome, much as
the animal mentioned above is loath-
some; that is to say, having recognized
a rat as rat, one does not particularly
care to investigate its individual char
acteristics. Ones reaction Is to kill
it or forget it-and to do one or the
other quickly. So full-length novel
devoted to demonstrating rats
rattiness, and to no other thing, to
announcing triumphantly and without
the slightest variation of tone on page
after page that this animal is-look
you-a veritable rat, as you yourself
had seen on first glance, falls, there
fore, in this reviewers estimation at
least, something short Of artistic
sublimity. At any rate. finishing it,
she cried out no great j. pierpont
popocatepetls. She did look at the
clock, however, and noted that she
had been three hours reading the
thing, and admired her conscience.
For a perfectly adequate review OF it
could have been done after a 15-min-
ute examination. Let Mr.. Rascoe
choke on that.
Now this does not mean that the
reviewer would look adversely on any
work in which the characters were
scoundrelly-if there be any 30 simple
as to salppO6e that she nni1ht. Subject