1866

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
INCORPORATED

Publishers New York

257 FOURTH AVENUE

April 9, 1939

Dear Mr. Warren,

I'm sending you herewith the shortish review of Sholem Asch's *Song of the Valley*. I hope you will find it satisfactory. What I've tried to do was to give the spirit of the story rather than its detailed substance.

I'm also sending the Asch essay. On going over it again I can see that I could cut it considerably for magazine publication. I'm thinking of combining sections 2 and 4 into one brief section, of condensing sections 5 and 6 considerably, and of omitting the final section entirely and using parts of it in other sections. In this way I could reduce the essay by a third. If that isn't enough, I could cut some of the other sections. If you are interested in the essay for use in *The Southern Review* I should like you to make what suggestions you think desirable.

I've delayed writing the Asch review because I began reading your novel and didn't want to stop until I finished it. I think you have written a powerful and moving story, although there are several aspects that I do not quite perceive clearly enough and wish I could discuss them with you in person. In the general impression I feel about your novel the way I felt about *Look Homeward, Angel*....

Charles A. Madison

SONG OF THE VALLEY, By Sholem Asch. Putnam, $2.60.

In *Song of the Valley* Sholem Asch, the foremost living Yiddish writer, returns to the idyllic style of his early fiction. Unlike *Three Cities* and *The War Goes On*, which dealt realistically and on a large scale with the effect of revolution and depression on the Jews in Europe, his latest novel gives pastoral expression to the fervor and tenacity of the young Zionist pioneers who turned their backs upon their native lands and flacked to Palestine with the resolve to reestablish the ancient Jewish homeland promised them by the Balfour Declaration. Soon after the World War, to quote Asch, "Palestine was simply flooded with enthusiastic young people who brought with them their lives, their energy and their faith, their dauntless courage, and a firm determination to be pioneers of the Jewish race. Permeated with the great ideals of salvation, with which the honeymoon of national emancipation had inspired humanity, they arrived in Palestine to rebuild the Land of Israel on the basis of a new social justice."

*Song of the Valley* tells how a group of such pioneers succeeded in reclaiming a piece of desolate wasteland. Born in various parts of Eastern Europe, of diverse social background and educational training, they are united by their glowing zeal to rejuvenate the ancient land of their biblical forefathers. With no free land available, with the native Arabs suspicious or openly hostile, this company of idealists is sent by the central committee to colonize a part of the Emek, the infested swampland on the outskirts of Nazareth. These volunteers are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties involved in reclaiming a boggy and disease-ridden marsh. They are, moreover, city-bred and inexperience, without proper shelter, adequate implements, or sufficient food. Yet they seek to make up for these basic handicaps with inexhaustible enthusiasm. In order to drain the centuries-old swamp they continue to dig ditches and carry the pails of mud day after day until they feel it oozing out of their very pores. The neighboring Arabs scoff at their suicidal persistence in defiance of "the Prophet's curse"; stinging insects, malaria and the rainy season torment their bodies and sap their strength. But their indomitable will overcomes all obstacles. At every opportunity

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overcomes all obstacles. At every opportunity they burst into infectious song. The theme, "Long live Israel!"--chanted over and over and with increasing intensity as they dance in unison, with hands on one another's shoulders--acts like a charm against discouragement and dissention. Within the short space of a season they succeed not only in draining the swamp but in reaping their first crop. Indeed, with the coming of spring their commune is established, the tents are replaced with comfortable dwellings, enamored couples begin to announce their marital relationship, and the birth cries of the first child symbolize the promise of permanent settlement.

Writing the story in the shadow of Hitler's increasing ruthlessness, and eager to make his contribution to the painful Jewish-Arab controversy, Asch deliberately accentuated the courage and heroism of these brave pioneers who stopped at nothing in their eagerness to establish the foundations of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Everyone of the seventy workers is ready to risk his life for the success of the toil enterprise, to assume the most onerous tasks for the good of all others. They xxx all day and sometimes through the night, xxx subsist on potatoes and beans, persist through the rains without dry shelter--all for the realization of their Zionistic ideal. For the vision of a thriving Jewish Palestine--an asylum for the persecuted and oppressed of their scattered people--is ever before them: a land once again flowing with milk and honey, once more a beacon of spiritual light for all mankind. This vision and what these dreamers do to give it substance are described with idyllic simplicity. While *Song of the Valley* is not one of Asch's major novels, and while it makes little effort to penetrate to the heart of the *now* grievous theme, it is nonetheless a deeply moving story of idealistic men and women who, after centuries of homelessness, want "to be like other people, admire animals, admire everything in nature, go back to nature."