Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1938-11-06

of the Sea" is a much better story
teller than his own made man, the
aforesaid Spenlove. Oh, well, If it
comes to that. Mr.. Spenlove de-
serves the worst that can be said
of him.
Mr.. Spenlove indeed seems to fol-
low in the great tradition Of Joseph
Conrad's Marlowe-thati is, he would
talk the best story into oblivion.
or, to put it coldly, he is a dreadful
bore. In the present novel Mr..
McFee puts his story in Spenlove's
mouth, chapter after chapter, Is
Spenlove is supposed to tell it to 4
lady whose patience Is, frankly. be-
yond this reviewers belief, allow
ing the readers no more first-hand
action than an occasional shift Of
the conversationists from deck to
cabin or from ship to fireside. It
might have been q good, lively
story If Mr.. McFee had told 1t to
us himself. But by the time his
Spenlove has worried it over for its
last tepid drop Of psuedo- philosoph-
ical content 1t has been pretty well
mouthed to death. It is just too
bad. and the reviewer writes these
words with bleeding heart. But
there they are. Mr.. Spenlove SIM
ply spells this book.
It is the story of . dreary sort
of Englishman, q sea captain, Of
course. He meets with an injustice
early in his career and never seems
to get over being sorry for himself.
He meets an American girl who, by
the virtue Of a marriage which has
been dissolved In court, bears the
title of countess. It would seem
that this creates q glamour about
her which the Englishman cannot
resist-he loves her madly and with
out the least effort at q realistic
understanding of her nature. He
does not bother to tell her what
his income is and so, when they
are married and she runs up bills,
he is profoundly disillusioned. He
deserts her and goes back to being
sorry for himself. All the time, Is
far as the reviewer can make out,
the reader Is supposed to be sorry
for him, too. We are assured, in
deed, that he is a noble fellow. But
he seems an extraordinary fool.
Then there is a passage to the
tropics and adventures of great dam
ger taking place during the World
War. Another woman-and this
time the Englishman does not make
the mistake of trying to live up
to anything. He takes his new wife
into the jungle and there they live
a very idyll. They are "dereHcts,"
If you wish, in the sense that they
are out of the world. But they are
happy. So what?
Well, practically nothing to be
added to Mr.. McFee's greatness.
These literary seamen, apparently,
excel only at tales of adventure and
action. The loneliness of their work
seems to make them naive about
the human kind. When they at
tempt to tell us stories in which
character plays the chief role they
are amazingly shallow. Their women
are no more than shadows; their
men are curiously inhibited. The
weakness of this book lies specifically
in the circumstance that, though
spenlove digresses for whole pages
about the delicately complicated ma
ture of his hero, he never makes
the hero even family interesting to
q reader. He emerges from thou
sands of words Of analysis as dull
and colorless and improbable as he
was when the tireless engineer began
on him. Again the reviewer says
that 1t is too bad. But there 1t Is.
There Is nothing to do but report It.
o. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD
PRIZE STORIES OF 1898. Edited
by Harry Hansen. Garden City:
Doubleday, Doran.
There are Is stories in this vol
ume. Some Of them are 1lne, some
perfectly ordinary and some silly.
AS usual, it is didicult to the point
Of anguish to discover what the
basis of selection has been. The re-
viewer will content herself with
mentioning the tales which, to her,
represent the extremes.
The first Of these would seem to
be John Steinbeck's 1.-THE Promise, !"
which originally appeared in Har-
per's magazine. It Is Is f1ne q story
of childhood and its implications Is
one will find. However. it has been
inexplicably marred In its editing.
For some reason. the very paragraph
which gives force to the conclusion