Evening star., 1946-01-20
Remorque's Novel
Holds Prophecy of
Great Popularity
THE ARCH OF TRIUMPH

AppLeton-Centnry; $3.)
The new Remarque novel ha:
been widely heralded. 1t has beer
prophesied that it would sell more
than half million copies in its
first week; 1t has been described as
. literary event. I am no one te
question the prophecy, which ]
imagine will come true anyway
But I do question the description
The Arch of Triumph" is a compe-
tent but quite uninspired piece OF
fiction. 1t has to do with the ex-
periences of a German refugee in
Paris in the interwar years and
nave read many novels on the same
theme which had equal distinction
The theme itself, it might be
pointed out, is old without being old
enough. German refugees strug-
Cling with passports and identified
tion papers, lodging French police
men and engaging in humiliating
occupations to earn their livings are
flfures of our day which have been
written up many times. With our
present perspective on them it is
almost impossible to say anything
about them which has not already
epeen said, and recently, too. Let 20
years pass and some one may be
able to state their problems in an
untypical manner. Right now, how
ever, no writer can expect to make
them his subject without itreading
in pretty familiar ways.
On Familiar Ground.
Mr.. Remarque has not even made
an effort to avoid those ways. He
gives us a German surgeon who has
fed the Nazi terror. He has served
with the Loyalists in Spain and has
come illegally to Paris where he
earns his living by performing del
icate operations for an old French
surgeon whose ability is insufficient.
The patients are not told of the
deceit; the Frenchman gets the
credit and all but a tiny per cent
of the fee. BY the end of the
year 1888, when the book opens,
the German has been deported
three times and is an adept at the
refugees desperate shifts.
The novel runs through the
months up to the declaration of
war, when. Of course, all enemy"
aliens are sent to concentration
camps regardless of their politics
In that time the German hero has
a love affair and consummates his
revenge against the particular
Gestapo official who tortured him in
his original questioning"
The Literary Pickup"
The love affair is tepid and
always seems to the reader to lie
beyond some sort of veil. Its heroine
is first encountered in what might
well be the type" incident of the
literary pickup-a foggy night,
bridge, the hero walking alone
wrapped in his coat, the woman
appearing out of the mist obviously
desperate, the suspicion that she
is going to commit suicide, the
humane impulse, the encouraging
words, etc. Nor does anything
that happens later have any greater
life. On the contrary. Precisely
as it progresses the love affair
grows less vivid. 1t ends unhap-
pily-seemingly because refugees
are an unhappy theme. The un-
grateful young woman leaves her
rescuer for another lover who shoots
her in a jealous rage. The hero,
OF course, is called in to operate.
He is not able to save her but hears
her dying protestation that she
loved him all the time.
Theerevenge motif is better exc
cuted but it receives much less of
the authors attention. 1t is brief
episode. The rest of the book is
made up of accounts of operations,
of conversations between the hero
and a philosophical White Russian
"a senior in the refugee school
and of long pages Of meditations.
These, frankness compels me to
say, are never profound and are
sometimes more suggestive of an
sdolescent discovering the futility
of 1t all than of a mature man with
hard experience behind him.
Taken simply as commercial read
ing matter, the novel has sufficient
sensational material to make a
wide appeal-its surgical scenes,
its scenes of the Paris halfWorld.
Taken as representation of
refugee existence it is probably au-
thentic. Taken as contemporary
literature it is a competent run-of-
the-mine performance. Taken as
the work of name-well, it will
sell half million its first week out.
The BeIeoouered CITY