The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1953-02-03
KY Books
by A. de T. Gingras

$780, ~ 4|Ah6 OA0Ck
novel published by Doubleday Pub
fishing Co., New York City, 447
pages).
If this book is any evidence.
Miss Ferber has tangled unfortu-
nately with two kinds of Texas
wind the kind that blows up from
the prairies and makes the Tex
ans nervous and edgy, and the
kind the Texans blow up verbally
when they talk about their out
size state.
She also seems to have had un-
pleasant experiences with Texas
fried food, and cows and oil wells!
The author uses the excellent
fictional device CT moving a
stranger into the milieu which she
wishes to show to her readers. Les
lie Lynnton, the highly intelligent
daughter of a Virginia doctor mar
ries Jordan Benedict, Texas
cattleman, and goes as a bride to
Reata Ranch.
In the course of twenty five
years, as her two children, Jordy
and Luz grow up, Leslie looks at
Texas for the reader. Other ranch
erS and their wives are introduced
into the story, her husbands re-
latives and the Mexican servants
and vanqueros.
But before the reader gets into
this, the first IS pages describe
the coming together of prominent
Texans to celebrate the opening of
a new airport. They are today's
Texans who live in a world of pr.
vate airplanes, bourbon whiskey
and millions made in cattle and
oil.
The effectiveness of this device
of the introduction of a current
incident and then the cutback is
questionable. This reviewer be-
came intensely interested only
when the cutback began, with Les
lie Lynnton coming to Texas as a
bride. She had to go back and re-
read the first IS pages again in
order to get the complete pattern
of the book. If this is a universal
experience, Miss Ferber might as
well have told her story chrono-
logically straight.
AS to the truth of the picture
which the author gives of Texas
during the past quarter century as
Oil began to make inroads on the
massive cattle ranches, this re-
viewer cannot Judge. But if any
judgement is to be passed on these
people for their treatment of the
Mexican minority from whom they
took the land, and for the small
relationships they set up on their
ranches, it is a judgement which
must be passed against man in
many parts of the world. Men have
always abused power, sometimes
with viciousness and sometimes
with a blind noncomprehension of
what they were doing. Time and
the younger generation in this
book seems to be adjusting mat
tiers very nicely when the book
ends.
And another interesting point to
remember is that the same sec.
tons of the world have very often
been simultaneously interpreted
alphabetically and otherwise by
two different authors. In American
literature the pictures which Villa
Gather and Hamland Garland give
OF the same section of middle
America is one of the striking ex.
amples.
(MR. PICKWICK by Stanley
Young, comic play freely drawn
from Charles Dickens Pickwick
Papers, published by Random
House, New York City, 1sl pages
Mr.. Pickwick, the baywindowed
balding gentleman created nearly
century ago by Charles Dickens.
is enjoying a revival.
Actors of the renown of Charles
Laughton have been giving read
ings from him on the radio and
television. During the spring of
last year. he made the Westminis-
ter theatre in London, and on Sep
TENDER IL he opened on Broad
way at the Plymouth theater.
And nobody deserves more to be
than does Mr.. Pick
wick. He is a natural hero of
comedy. and his half wistful half
absurd charm has maintained for
nearly a century.
This play is an excellent way Of
Mr.. Pickwick little easier
to swallow for the reader accus-
toned to the economical prose of
the 10th century. While the leisure
ly pace of Charles Dickens is pecu-
liariy suited to the peregrinations
Of the Pickwickians, a lot Of
modern readers shun anything lei
surely despite its quality.
The story and the characters do
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