Evening star., 1949-01-02

is one of the significant novels O.
Somehow historian and arts
capacities. One is concerned with
the general picture, the net effect;
the other with the ideals and fall
ures, the Strength and frailty of in
dividuals. 1t is doubtful whether the
gifted Mr.. Dos PaSsos ever has
turned out as firm a piece of work
as this synthesis of a whole turbu-
lent epoch. 1t is still more unlikely
that any other novelist could have
done it.
THE Grand Design" like all first
rate novels, tells a story, is more
than a collection of episodes illus
trating a period or an event. The
book is crowded with characters.
But they keep coming back, devel-
oping, meeting unguessed situations,
until after a while you feel that
you know them all.
The story is centered in Wash
ington. There are excursions-into
cotton lands of the South and corn
and wheat farms of the Middle
West. But these are few, the action
remains almost entirely in the
thronging Capital, and yet some
how the author makes you feel
the impact of the experimental pro-
grams on the entire country-the9
approval and the condemnation and
the fierce pickering in and out of
Washington. Herbert Spotswood,
whose sons were chief figures in two
earlier novels, comes into this book
as an older man, neurotic radio
commentator, but he is only one OF
several important characters.
The Radio Voice.
No attempt is made to portray
the actual key figures of the Roose-
welt administrations. The President
comes in as an occasional radio
voice and as the all-powerful leader
by whom certain characters are
summoned and whom they some
times quote. BY using fictitious per-
sons, attached to ambiguous de-
partments or to slightly imaginary
emergency administrations, like
Farm Economy, Mr.. Dos Passos has
left himself freer to weigh deeds
and probe motives, to build up his
story. 1t is true that some of the
disguises are SO fragile that they
fall off before the masquerade is
well under way. Walker Watson
might as well have been called
Harry Hopkins, though there are
touches of at least one other as
widely known statesman in his
makeup. There are others whose
masks are thin, despite the usual
disclaimer of actuality at the front
of the book. But it was a tough
task the author set himself, to
depict some of the top men con-
cerned in historical events with
their identity sufficiently confused
to allow him full scope. He has
managed it adroitly.
There was Millard Carroll, a man.
ufacturer in a Southwestern city,
who gave up substantial income
to go to Washington because he
wanted to help the New Deal to get
started. He stayed on, increasingly
important in the administration, in
creasingly imbued with its doctrines
until, after the war came, he was
forced to make too many compro-
mises and he quit. There was Paul
Graves, an agricultural scientist,
who was too direct and honest to
master the intricacies and subter-
fuges of Washington. There was his
research assistant, Georgia Wash
burn, whose life got too involved to
extricate. There were others.
Dividing Up the Globe.
Mr.. Dos Passos always has had
lively concern for the ordinary cit
izen without special influence or
privilege. He might have been ex-
pected to regard the New Deal with
rapturous approval He is sympa-
thetic to its ideals, but he is far
from unmindful of it's failures and
Illustrations. He says, in a prologue
to the final chapter, that the Presi-
dent, "a man of great personal cour-
age and supreme confidence in his
powers of persuasion" went to Te-
heran, where the triumvirate' with
out asking anybody's leave, got to
meddling with history; without con-
sulting their constituents, revamped
geography, divided up the bloody
globe and left the freedoms out"
The comrades of the left will not
like 'The Grand Design" In the
woman called DR.. Sparling and in
the man named Joe Yerkes, Mr.. Dos
PassoS has limned the two most
selfish, bigoted, malicious, narrow
minded radicals in recent literature.
The portraits fairly scorch the paper,
and yet they are not caricatures:
they are real And the whole modus
operandi of the Communists-their
frantic about-face from pacifism to
belligerence when Hitler invaded
Russia, their campaign to infiltrate
the Governments brought out
with the cold detachment of a man
who has known them and wants no
part OF them. In the course of the
book, we see an entire panorama of
New Deal Washington: officials,
their wives, sweethearts and mis-
tresses; their conferences and
cocktail parties, their hopes and sac
rifices, their fears and disillusions,
their friendships and jealousies, their
loyalties and backstabbings.
The writing is a delight. It flows
with lyrical ease across 440 pages.
and not one seems dull or super
f1uous.
II II II
HIGH TOWERS
BY Thomas B. Costain. (Dou-
bleday; $3.)
Mr.. Costain's immense public
should not be disappointed in his
new historical novel. 1t reflects
faithfully the atmosphere OF time
and the story 1t develops is as alb
sorbing as the narratives of THE
Moneynaan" and "The Plack PoSe -