Evening star., 1943-08-08
Man Of Malice Landing
By Dorothy James Roberts.
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(MdcmillGn)
The author Of this book is the
reviewers younger sister, Dorothy
Last year Dorothy collaborated
with Katharine Ann Smallzried on
a volume of American social and
industrial history, More Than You
Promise" For a critical notice the
reviewer published a letter which
she wrote her sister after having
read the work, for the letter seemed
about as adequate a summing up
as she could manage. Now, some
days ago, came the review copy of
Dorothy's first novel, "A Man of
Malice Landing" and the letter
plan still seems good. In the first
bright shock OF discovering that
one whom she used to shove around
in baby carriage land has since
showed in other sisterly ways, she
fears) had done a work not un-
marked by genius, the reviewer ex-
pressed herself, she believes, more
effectively than she can now do by
benefit of hindsight. So, with the
permission of The Star editors, the
original letter follows:
Dear Dorothy:
so you have written a novel. So.
Indeed. There was a time once,
when we were both starry eyed
young things with dreams of lit
erary fame, when I automa tically
revered any one who could put so
many related words end to end. The
person who could write "a novel;
was to me then definitely q superior
being. Not so now, nor for these
many years. I know too much about
the business-and business it is too.
For we live in an age when, for
the first time in history, writing
has become lucrative for common
practitioners, and common prac-
titioners have risen to the curcum-
stance with all the techniques of a
mass production era. They have de-
veloped assembly line methods for
every kind of book; the average
novel is a standard model composed
of fictional duplicate parts, and a
practiced reader can identify the
few choices as readily as a mechanic
can recognize makes of cars. So,
hardened by eight years of naming
them off, I have ceased to feel any
awe before the mere fact of compo-
sition. Had you written a merely
respectable novel, then, or, par
ticularly, had you written a thing
which seemed likely to be just a
big seller, I would have had no
more to say to you than that
hoped that it was what you wanted
to do. AS 1t is, I have to tell you
that it seems to me that you have
given birth to book.
You will know what I mean. The
difference between a book and those
so many Thousand related words
laid end to end. Your first-born has
many of the properties which one
wants in such child, too-sturdy
vitality, symmetry and a certain
happy radiance. Well, congratula-
tions."
Let's see the ingredients. You
have written the story Of young
mans adventure when, after learn
ing the ways of the great world,
he returns to his little native town.
Lots of authors have done that
same thing-you have even set
the town in the Midwest, which is
of itself pretty much staple. What
commonly interests the novelist in
such plot, however, is not what
has interested you. You haven't
written an expose Of small town
meanness or American proyinci-
ality. You have tried, and success
fully, think, to give your book a
universal significance. You have
used your local materials inciden-
tally. as Turgenev used his in
Fathers and Sons"-I thought of
that work more than once as I
was reading you, which you may
take for paralyzingly great praise;
it should make you, indeed, go
apart and fast and pray. Against
your very accurately drawn back
ground Of Malice Landing on the
Ohio really on the river of life)
you have drawn a drama of the
aristocratic soul Now souls, unlike
persons. are aristocratic for their
qualities. The superior soul, to put
it another way is superior because
it can give proof. 1t is strong, it