Evening star., 1938-06-12

IHE CULTURE OF CITIES. |
Numbered. Harcourt Brace.
MY AMERICA. Adamic. Harp
ers.
FIGHT FOR LIFE. De Kruif.
Harcourt Brace.
treatment which breaks up to some
extent the strong flow of the central
theme. This, you will say, Is aca-
demic criticism. Very well, we will
not quarrel about that. But with
more concentration and less COM
ment of repetitious nature the book
might have had stately. tragic
movement well in the Hardy tradi-
ton. As it is, 1t falls short of being
tragedy and is merely tragic story.
There is difference, and it is not an
academic one either. Still my
Son. My Son!" is distinctly an i'm
pressive book.
A MOTHER novel on the reviewers
list. by an English author, is
Worlds End" by Pamela Hansford
johnson, published by Carrick & Ev-
ans. 1t is story Of the unemployed,
the story of young white-collar
worker animated by the usual wish
to become writer, and how the de-
preston took away his Job, and how he
went on the dole and lived in a poor
boarding. house, and how his wife
helped support him until she bore
him child and died. Whereat the
young man concluded, somewhat in
continently, that the resisters of Fas-
cism in Spain needed him to help
them make the world safe and packed
up his effects and went of to punish
Franco.
1t Is not much of a book in spite of
some very good writing. Its trouble
seems to lie in the fact that the au-
thor has been. unable to make her
readers care about the young man
and his wife or feel that there is any
kind of significance in their fate, good
or bad. 1t is too bad that these young
people had such bad break, you
will say to yourself as you plod along
After which you will quite probably
yawn. The author, who is young,
seems to be under the youthful delu-
sion that the fact of unhappiness is
itself story. 1t is not. Unhappiness
is good deal commoner than the
toothache, and an author must do
more than tell us that his hero failed
tn oot u,hof ha vr,o ,tad fro,,, re, - %t,o
hero is to interest U.s. There must be
some significance to failure If it is
to be worth recording. Or. to put it
more accurately, an author must in
vest his story Of failure with signif-
canoe. And this Miss johnson does
not do. It is too bad for, on the sur
face. she sometimes writes very well.
THE fourth novel which the re-
viewer got through during the
week is "One Minus Two" by Henri
Troyat, translated from the French by
James Whiteall and published by
Washburn Ives. M. Troyat is young
Russian who, since the war. has lived
in Paris. His present book won for
him the Prix Femina American.
1t is that quaint type of novel called
the psychological" 1t tells of an
actor who, in desperate
financial straits, enters his young son
for q trial in the films. The boy is
successful, plays q lead and for time
seems destined to bring fortune to the
family. But the success Is short-lived
and presently matters are as bad as
ever. The mother, who has been in
toxicated by her sons fame, then finds
that she no longer has any feeling for
her husband. All her emotions 60 out
In pity and worship for her boy. The
husband, who has depended on her
for sustaining admiration in his earlier
is obliged to face his dwin-
ding future in spiritual loneliness.
That is all there is to the story.
The scenes are set almost wholly in
the theatrical world of Paris and are
vivid with the patter of stage talk.
The theme is well worked out, but as
In the case of Worlds End" it hardly
seems worth the trouble of the work.
Ing. The actor is dreary fellow and
his wife is a stupid woman. What
happens to their psychological rela-
tionship seems to have interested the
author, but it Is not very likely to in
terest anybody else.
THE fifth novel which came under
notice during the week is an
American story, High Tension" by
William Wister Haines, and published
by Little, Brown g. Co. AS the name
indicates. 1t Is a story of the workers
on high-tension wires, subject which
the author knows we'll, as he has al
ready testified in his book "Slim."
The present story is simple little
one. made to order and paobably with
an eye on Hollywood and the per-
suasive charm of Clark Gable when
Mr.. Gable wears nicely tailored
overalls. It relates to the doings of
a crew of linemen Stationed in a
tiny country town while at work elec-
trifying New York railroad. Using
one Of the oldest devices in the world.
the writer has q waggish fellow tell
the story-which happens to be of the
love OF Shelly and the beautiful Flora.
belle. Shelly is handsome young
lineman in whom the waggish fellow
takes a brotherly-fatherly interest,
recognizing his essential superiority
to the others Of the crew. (In older
stories Of the type Shelly would turn
out to be the long lost son of a great
magnate, but here Mr.. Haines con-
tents himself with letting him come
into nice bit Of money at the end.)
Florabelle Is the lovely daughter Of
the local rich old woman, and is
guarded in the manner most approved
in really good love stories. Shelly
comes laying siege to her heart, as the
captains of invading armies used to
WOO the heroines OF the other side in
Civil War novels, and the waggish
fellow watches, it happen and talks it
Nx,o, v.,if1, fo~k,,~ kSYx,