Evening star., 1938-05-29
VOLUME PICTURES AMERICA
Another Tells People the Things That They Already Know
f About the Comtry-War Novel and Other Recent
Literary Products Reviewed.
By Mary.Carter Roberts.

New York: Harper g. Bros.
"HE reviewer finished this book
s of a Sunday afternoon. She
noted at the moment that she
L had read 662 pages of
desperately small print. closed the
work and laid it aside. Then she
heard herself saying, in the voice
customarily used for such an observa-
tion, "Ho hum!" And there is a
perfectly adequate review Ct 1t. Ho
hum.
Y Possibly no other critic in the United
States will think so. The book Is by
an established and popular author, it
Is published by dignified and sacro-
sanct old firm. it is large and thick
and important looking, and, above all,
it IS Serious. Reviewers in general
are going to treat it with respect and
enthusiasm. This reviewer, having
read 1t all-every last torturous syllable
Of it-repeats her verdict. Ho hum,
she says. Ho hum.
It is by an Earnest Thinker. Mr..
Louis Adamic is foreign-born boy
who has made good. He wanted to
become an American writer and he
has done so. He has written a large
number of books and articles. He
has, in fact, formed the habit Of being
q writer, and so now he has joined a
popular writing procession-the pro-
cession of youngish literary men who
are engaged in telling America what
America is. He is in highly reputable
company in the endeavor, the COM
pany of Seldes Zone cannot remem-
Der whether it was George or Gilbert) I,
OF Stuart Chase, of Joseph Freeman,
Of John Cournos, of Waldo Frank and
a whole host of others. Most of these
fine lads have recently put down on
paper q commingled statement Of their
private lives and the development OF
radicalism in Amortization it is in
terms Of radicaiism, pro and con, that
they see our country. The matter
which deals with their private lives
Is, however, of interest to nobody in
the world but themselves. And what
they write about radicalism everybody
already knows. The manner in which
they reveal their own discovery of it,
in these books, therefore, deserves at
tention only for the intense and
humorless way in which they describe
1t. And when one has read dozen
or so of their socio-economico auto
biographies, one finds even that little
wearing.
0NE cannot but wonder a little at
" this passion among writer's to ex-
plain America to Americans. Mr.
Adamic says modestly in his intro
ductory chapter that he concluded
that our country was "a Land Nobody
Knew, and that what the country
needed more than anything else were
a few score of earnest objective Socio-
political-cultural Darwins who would
get busy in the vast Sargasso Sea that
was America" and that this conclusion
gave him the desire to become
eventually, in some small way de-
termined by my ability, one of these
Darwins."
But the reviewer, looking over the
turgid literary scene, concludes con-
trarily that the country has the least
need possible of anybody who can
be described as an earnest objective
socio-political-cul anything. The
place is all cluttered up with earnest
objective -political-cultural fell
lows already. And look at the mess
1t Is in! For five years or more now
the earnest objective political
cultural lads have been saying their
say, undeterred and even admired.
And what of it? Why, so many books
have been published, so much ink
has been put on paper, so many pages
have been bound and so much money
his gone into the earnest objective
zone trusts) cio-political-cultural
pockets in the form of royalties. And
if one of these volumes has changed
the course of events by a hairs
breadth, the reviewer has no knowl-
edge of the happening. Nor has any,
body else.
1T IS simply a literary fashion, that
= Is all. Men who have formed the
habit of writing, whose living comes
from writing, who must needs produce
some form of publishable material
more or less regularly, are now writ
ing these socio books. Publishers, who
after an initial success, always follow
their noses until, to their astonish-
ment, something else makes better
money for them, have continued to
bring the works out. And that is all
there is to it.
And so now we have one more. It
tells us considerable about Mr..
Adamic's acquaintance with radical
leaders Of all shades of pink, from the
old-time liberal idealist to the rabid
professional martyr, and allows us to
think that Mr.. Adanic, when all Is
said and done, is for Progress without
benefit of Revolution. Oh, swell. It
discusses Communism and Fascism
and informs us that true Communists
are excellent, Well-intentioned fellows,
though many wolves masquerade in
their gentle sleeps clothing, and that
the only real Fascism which America
has to fear is that of the employers,
who, says Mr.. Adamic, in grief and
sorrow, often use their businesses for
their own profits-if you can be-
iieve anything so horrible. It COM
pares the American Federation of La
Dor and the G. I. o. and assures us
that the Federation was a racket and
that the C. l. o. is a blessed event.
It also informs US that Mr.. Adamic
met his future wife on the night of
Lindbergh's flight to Paris and fell
In love then and there, and obligingly
! takes us with him over his travels,
explaining as he goes how this or
that experience gave him the idea for
this or that book. It does these
& things with an agonizing weight of
detail, 1t is involved in style. turgid,
slow, insistent and quite generally
? boring. But it unquestionably is earn
est objective socio-political-cultural.
And so it is going to have the plaudits
of critics from coast to coast, who, for
the most mart. are as unoriQinal and