Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 January 1947 — Page 14
¥
3 in the Outer
“CRESS SECTION, 1947." = Edited by Edwin Seaver.
Simon & Schuster, $3.50.
“SHELLEY: A LIFE STORY." By Edmund Blunden.
Ly Press, $3.75.
a pessimistic reference to the established authors who write ha America reads, Edwin Seaver sends his collection of “new American writing” into a world where “the present is uncertain and the
future dubious.”
G Mr, Seaver received 7000 manuscripts In response to his call, but N he is able to print only 52, with the gloomy comment that “our literature §
erica s litera Future. -
Darkness New York,
New York, Vik:
today suffers from a lack of critical leadership, from a.paucity of ideas and ideals.” He doesn’t seem greatly
believe the one-volume “Portrait of Shelley,”
which Newman Ivey
rey
excited about his exhibits. Mr. Seaver found acceptable
Of the remaining out of Leonard Ehrlich’s forthcomtng novel, “The Free and the Lonely” Since Mr... Ehrlich won golden opinions for a novel over 10 years ago, his is hardly new writing. Mr. Seaver also took 10 stories by authors fairly well known, including Jo Sinclair, who won a Harper prize, and Ann Petry, who wrote “The Street” Also present are William March, who wrote his best work right after world war I; Hamlen Hunt, Nelson Algren and Prudencio de Pereda, who were in O. Henry anthologies when I edited them in the 1980s, and Meridel LeSeuer and David Cornel de Jong, who are
When
White made out of his two-volume work, is written with more spirit and conveys more to the reader. But. we need not cavil at the arrangement of biographical material in the Blunden book; Mr, Blunden is a master at research withjout parading this accomplishment. This tale of what happened so long ago in England and Italy, with its continual shifting between lofty poetic creation and human relationships, has the continuing fascination of an enchanted existence. Shelley lived so intensely and played so important a part in the lives he touched—men and women-— that he seems to belong to another sphere. His tempestuous marital experiences, his afflictions and deprivations; the challenge of Italy to his mind and the relations with Byron and the worldly Tre-
“Rr. Sedver Writes “trae Jawad Wi OF névér-énding Ttfterest: [este _ literature is. hankrunt In. Mr. Blunden's. hook they. havel1930%, when left-wing critics
“delirium tremens gives James
and “we have nowhere to turn their proper place and since use is
put #0 the young” I wonder if made of the latest Shelley “dis-
he knows the ages of some of his] eontributors...
| coveries™ “the biography may: well {be considered comprehensive.
= = » THE NEW WRITERS, products a t time, reflect the vio-| lence and maladjustment of society. | number of stories show the cor- |
2
style dominates, and while a few can’t write without using Ginty) words, the best show
Hanging,” by James Cox of Chapel Hill, N. C, portrays an impover-| jshed tobacco farmer going hay-|
by outside cruelty. = » DEAD-PAN IRONY is character-! istic of several stories. “Eat Dusty Bread,” by Teo Savory, an Englishwoman now living in New York, portrays an insufferably cruel woman by this method. -A rambling acoount-of a man on the way to
Turner Jackson's “Blue Aerial” a certain originality. The opening sentence is arresting: “Charlie Beech lived on a country road near White Cloud, in the northern part of Michigan, and there he was troubled by a wet brain and a basement full of glass. It seems the glass was 10,000 beer bottles accumulated by his father, from whom he got the habit.” I see no reason why Edwin ghaver should be too pessimistic about the future, for ‘some of his authors are bound to make their mark,
| Great Lakes,"
‘PAUL BUNYAN — The loggers’ legendary hero, from a jacket design by Harold Hay-
don for “Paul Bunyan of the by Stanley D. Newton. (Chicago, - Packard, $2.50] Mr. Newton's book represents years of travel in the Paul Bunyan country, where he checked and rechecked hun-
dreds of songs and legends
| about the fabulous character.
New Runyon Stories To Be Out in Fall
Damon Runyon, whose death Dec. 10 ended one of the most brilliant modern careers as reporter and writer, left a collection of posthumous story material to be published by Lippincott late this year, Under the title “Trials and Other Tribulations,” the collection contains stories of murder cases “and other gaudy events of the twenties,” the publishers say. Two of Runyon’s story collections have reached the million mark in Pocket Book reprint. sales, - with “Runyon a La Carte” (also Lippincott) the latest to appear in Docket Book format.
Book Has 52d Reprint
Dale Carnegie's “How to Win Friends and Influence People” has
Tol » » MORE IS KNOWN today about Bhelley than at any other timé in history, and: interest in him and his poetry is sustained, especially among scholars, and cultivated in the schools, in spite of the antiromantic character of modern writing. Edmund Blunden undertakes to present a logical account of his career in a handy onevolume biography in “Shelley, a Life Story,” and he gives an excelent, well-rounded account. Mr. Blunden is a specialist in the romantic period and a thorough convert to the genius of Shelley, but his method is not dramatic and his style is more informative than inspirational. I am” inclined to
recently been given a 52d printing of 15,000 copies by Simon & Schuster. These make a total of 974,000 copies of the original trade edition
collection of contemporary Kansas City. Mo.
“THE THRESHER." A Herbert Krause. Bobbs-Merrill, $3. » - -
By HENRY BUTLER Times Book Reporter WHAT IS the province of fiction? That question has occupied a great many critics, It has been answered with svery
A novel. By| Indianapolis,
and current. Back in the "30's many of us felt that a novel without a pungent socio-economic message Was scarcely
But Mr, Krause’s novel is. no mere literary hooked-rug or painfully imitated homespun fabric. It is as solid in its way as “Middlemarch.” It shares the enduring qualities of George Eliot's masterpiece.
wards North- Dakota. Its era; not too definitely established (and I, for
rectly or indirectly affected not only by the human and agricultural environment, but also by the advent
early stages crude and apt to deal death or mutilation. A dread of the thresher, like the dread in other communities of the
popular thinking. Pockerbrush women, with the tragic female forebodings as old as war and other danger-
smoke-spouting monster.
in print.
Ban on Farrell
the action.
A recent leading editorial in the Varsity, Toronto university under-
Well ‘Developed
Cummins’ ot hbigue 1s f his
well read, ) Univ.
N ational forensio and leadership societies have: ve
vatory of Music, 1204 N. Delaware St.
POISE ® CONFIDENCE PERSONALITY ® LEADERSHIP WILL HELP YOU EARN MORE
CUMMINS COURSE
IN LEADERSHIP
~~ New Modern Techniques fresaatuty wit show YOU aie develop these
powerful but o0urse. you 80 easy to follow that you get
attend, NH adership qualities in hundreds of
WANT MORE MONEY IN 1947?
Onpt. R. V. Cummins
is ability and
el traveled oieers
d oe An wen Sdtested,
ednesday, Janus N Piest nt Midd and of aoquain +A
- personali FOR lied pet ce BY
publishers:
clety;
ban centers of contemporary life. Works Not Obscene
Clare.
museum, the collection is now on view in Wi
of the steam-driven thresher, in its|
coal mine or the sawmill, pervades
ous male activities, measure their
future, their slim chance of happifis, eit 3 3t spi Book Find Club
graduate daily, is quoted by the|'Art of Poland’
“Farrell has been fighting the
action and his efforts have brought nounced for March publication by him wide support both in Canada|the Philosophical library of New and abroad , , . His books have |York, strong meat in them, for he is ex~ amining a sterile, depressing so-
he is concerned with thel,y works in Canada. The editor
“But Farrell’ writes with a moral shallow comprosmises of civie lead-
the ‘Studs Lonigan’ trilogy, which has won. critical respect as an honimportant naturalistic novel, by any test obscene. Neither
WHEAT FARMERS—A painting by Joe Jones, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
American painting: Shown lia
Farm Novel With a Midwestern Setiing Has Universal Human Significance
by his genial, sympathetic uncle
Hermy and his narrowly pious aunt, Phrena (full of bitter memories of the elder Schwartz's toying with her affections), the boy is’ subtly but, continually reminded of his father's | faults. He is thus forced into a “hereditary” pattern by social pressure, a process not often dealt with either in fiction or in heredity-vs.~environ-men. detwies,., Whatever. ls gener and trusting in his DE
enwarted by sutséssive, tiny, bitter humiliations. His sensitivity Tie roots whilch have uni-
seared by ribald jokes at his own and his fathers expense. ’
AND SO HE fevelops the “If. them” attitude, which becomes, in
.{terms of Greek drama, the “tragic
flaw” in his character. Johnny as society shapes him is inwardly at war with Johnny who loved his ‘ mother and ‘for years cherished a bit of red ribbon from rE
disastrous by forces he can only partly Wie and baphiness,
m Rockhill Nelson gallery of art in
that's’ what they want, rll show)
opt yectly . degireyiey
1 BIRD th teustins momentun of decisions leading to tragedy more impressive than Mr. Krause’s
last year at Herron Art:
notion of “Time, the great cylin!der,” which makes the grain-sep-arator a symbol of time. : | The background of the novel: sights, sounds, smells and the Bist STWR gona process of seasonal change; the Pockerbrush personalities, with their nobilities, vanities, cruelties and Pharisaic handles with great skill He has contrived to fuse. style pith Maker 3o that bis story draws undistractedly”
!versal human significance.
" ” ” THAT UNIVERSALITY of “The — Thresher” transcends its regional IW setting. What you learn from Mr. i Krause's wholly admirable novel is inot just how Minnesota wheat farmers lived a couple of generations ago, but how people generally behave. You get new and profound insights. That, it seems to me, is the prov-
learned much from “The Thresher.” thoughtful, true, revealing.
"THE LADY FORGOT." By Mar-| garet S. Marble. New York, Harper, $2.50.
By DONNA MIKELS FRANKLY, “The Lady Forgot”
» f J ITS SETTING is the Minnesota | has this reviewer puzzled. The big remember was whether she had wheat-growing country, over to- mystery is whether it's a top notch {murdered her boy friend. psychological
novel or a weak whodunit.
WHO DONE IT?—Margaret S. Marble, author of "The Lady Forgot."
About the middle of the book I her hand, near the dead body of
Good or Bad, New Murder Story Is Different
wasn't sure if it was very lor pretty bad. The effect . “ie same when I finished the last same When § suisbed the ask page guessed from the title, is about al lady who forgot. What she couldn't |
s » . SHE WAS found with a gun in
{her artist-lover. Her story that she 'had a total mental black-out is ‘accepted by a jury, in view of a psychiatrist's testimony that she is {a neurotic. Although the jury finds her innojcent ‘the lady herself isn’t so sure. She sets'out to find out if she did |kill the guy, which leads to some rather interesting reading. - NO ORDINARY mystery novel ‘with a murder; a chase and a smash “crime-doesn’t-pay” - ending, “The {Lady Forgot,” ends with the mur{derer and the lady having pleasant conversation. Nobody ever “pays,” jand po one much cares. As I said before, I'm not sure whether its good or bad.” At any rate, it's different.
Selects Ross Novel
“The Left Hand Is the Dream-
IN THIS environment, Johnny er” g novel by Nancy Wilson Ross, Schwartz, orphaned son of an irre- [scheduled for Feb. 4 publication by sponsible, charming, hard-living| william Sloane Associates, has been thresher father, grows up. Adopted chosen February selection by the
Farrell's Book Stirs Protest in Canada
FURTHER WORDS in the recurrent book-censorship controversy |hard price for their initial cowardare being written north of the border. From the Vanguard Press, publishers of James T. Farrell's “Ber- |symbolizing the price all people of nard Clare,” banned in Canada, comes a report of strong protest against [the world are now paying for in-
Book Find club.
shocked and weary European for a unawakened but sensitive American woman. In the novel these two characters are asked to pay a
ice and years of half-awareness,
difference and torpor.”
Is Due in March
Two important titles are an-
One is “The Art of Poland,” an all-around survey of Polish art, including the much-disputed Polish
rootless, purposeless existence which |is Dr, Irena Plotrowska, formerly of is the lot of s0 many of the in-|the University of Poznan, habitants of the industrialized ur-
next May.
Reprint of 'Yank' Features Released “The Best From Yank,”
y's
Publishing Co. “of Cleveland.
It is pe
[rie Sppesrancn,.
The publishers describe the novel as concerned with “the love of a
‘Negro Handbook’ Is Due Jan. 20
“The Negro Handbook, 1946-1947," comprehensive manual of facts, statistics and general information on Negroes in America, will be released Jan. 20 by Current Books, Inc., A. A. Wyn, publisher,
_|Advertising Layout.”
long experience, a lot of the prin-
"lelashes.” Build towards attention
movement, emphasis, unity, specific
It's that kind of book—|""
reprint series:
Following two previous volumes, cne in 1942 and one in 1944, the forthcoming handbook covers the period since the 1944 edition, including the first complete summary of the N 's role in world war II. Flore Murray, the editor, is a member of the staff of People’s Voice and has spent 12 years in newspaper work. She prepared the 1944 edition of “The Negro Handbook” under a Rosenwald fellowship in journalism.
» - ol Science Book Reviewed Ives Washburn, Inc. reports that the new up-to-date edition of James Stokley’s “Science Remakes Our
io] Tells
“TECHNIQUE OF ADVYERTISING LAYOUT." By Frank .H. " Young. New York, Crown Publishers, $5.
“ALWAYS KEEP the layout sim-
“That's . ond of the “slogans In Frank H. Young's “Technique of
It reminds me of my pal Harry Alexander in the composing room when we're getting The Times Book Page - together Saturday morning. ‘For Harry knows, as a result of
ciples you find described in Mr. Young's treatise, o w . DON'T PUT “art” where it rather than distraction. Those things are important In advertising layout, since the suc cess of an ad depends on its power to capture and hold atiention. In numerous illustretive drawings, Mr. Young, director of the American Academy. of Art, gives examples of good and faulty layout. Example: Electric iron ad with the iron “toed out,” corrected by pointing it in toward the ad. a 8, HUMAN VISUAL attention being as flighty as it is, advertising experts have to- contrive means of keeping the roving eye from jumping too quickly to the next ad. Hence the need for books such as Mr. Young's. Mr. Young discusses such principles as “attention, value, balance,
appeal, simplicity,” and so on. He applies the theoretical principles to specific problems: Admirably printed and with. coplous illustrations, including 12 full-color ‘plates, “Technique of Advertising Layout” should appeal to anyone interested in commercial art—H. B.
FROM "THE YEARLING" — One of Edward Shenton's decorations for "The Yearling," Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ best-sell-ing novel, now available at $1.49 in Grosset & Dunlop's
Tip on a Mystery
| "DANGEROUS LADY." By Octavus Roy Cohen. New York, Macmillan, $2.50.
By DREXEL DRAKE SCOTT HENDERSON scented | {something mysterious in the dazzling girl's insistence that she could not become his wife, even though she loved him. The girl, who had just come back to Cherokee after many years in Cuba, was equally vague about a series of murders in which she seemed to be the pivotal center. Henderson - persisted in makifig himself an unwelcome aid to the girl, with the result that he solved a deep’ puzzle with doubly gratifying success. Romance and sinister skullduggery blend smoothly in this tale of country club and night-spot episodes.
"Lydia Bailey’. «
Seen as Beer-Sellor
Kenneth Roberts’ “Lydia Bailey,” reviewed in The Times 10k Page last Saturday, is almost sure to be the first best-seller of 1947, according to Doubleday, its publisher. Doubleday reports “tremendous orders and re-orders” from all parts of the country for this novel, Mr. Roberts’ first in six years.
Reveals Author Never
Saw Motion Picture According to a release from the Philosophical library, New York publishers, Miguel Unamuno, author of “Perplexities and Paradoxes,” died without ever having
Pins AMBOY ues:
{Fr. Flanagan of Boys Town would
World,” just published, includes two additional chapters on loran, penicillin, airborne television, streptomycin and other war-time devel-
seen a moving picture. “He disapproved of the cinema and refused to link it with the arts,” the publishers state.
——————————————————— ——————————————————————————
EAR
ROEBUCK AND CO
Indiana’s Most Popular
The other is “The Great Beyond,” latest work of Maurice Maeterlinck, who is planning to return to Franoe
best~ selling collection of the army weekfeatures, is-now published for a limited time at $1.98 by the World
Originally published at $3.50, the book 1s fe ‘making ha frs pops
opments.
Federal Income Tax Returns Gross Income Tax Returns and Accounting Service WM. J. CASTLEMAN at the PENN-MARK BOOK SHOP 46 N. PENN. ROOM 316
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tempered by good nature or simply
“The real Brooklyn is no more a laughing mattef than any other congested urban area. Like Manhattan, like Chicago, like even Indianapolis, in a smaller way, Brook-
are both repulsive and suggestive of social waste, social tragedy. Those slum ‘areas spawn crime inals, a fact familiar enough to anybody who reads the papers, What remains obscure in the popular mind is just why one slum youngster, Tatler han another, becomes a killer.
Concern Adolescent Gangs That is the subject of “The Amboy Dukes,” by Irving Shulman, and “Burial of the Fruit,” by David Dortort, two current additions to what may be a widening bookshelf of juvenile-delinquency novels. Both books “are concerned with adolescent gangs and with what the ruthless boy-world (not unlike the Nazi-world) does to potentially good characters. Both are set in Hook lyn. Mr. Shulman's Frank Goldfarb becomes a member of the ‘Amboy Dukes, a neighborhood gang, at the age of 14. He is not, as the Rev.
say, 8 bad boy. He has moments of tenderness, towards his sister Alice, for example, moments of decency. Alice and Prank take a Riverside dr. bus ride, noting Rolls-Royces on the drive, yachts in the North river. Alice is wistful over the contrast between the drive and their slum-tanement. os i. Brooklyn, Prank
Grim Passage On the threshold of manhood, Frank is barred from what he might find constructive work by two things: First, the necessity of finishing school; second, the futility of getting a job, even if he could get a work certificate. Both his parents|. have war-plant jobs that keep them away from home most of the time. There’s plenty of money. In a grim passage, Mr. Shulman describes the school room where members of the Amboy Dukes reduce the male teacher to a state of frustration bordering on hysteria. Mr. Bannon wants to wallop the ringleaders. The law forbids him. I might add parenthetically that legends about high schools in some of the tougher New York, districts concern the periodical, and appar-
bitter,
When Prank and his egregious|M pal Benny visit Mr. Bannon after hours in the deserted schoolroom, their impudence provokes a scuffle. Benny rashly fires the home-made pistol Frank has been toting (all the Dukes carry knives, blackjacks or guns as a badge of manhood), and Mr. Bannon drops dead.
Story of Suspence The rest of Mr. Shulman’s stark novel is a story of suspense, mounting fear and double-crossing until the law catches up with Frank. A more terrible retribution in the person of “Crazy” Sachs, completely vicious character, overtakes Frank as the police are closing in.
“Burial of .the Fruit” (Hyman) Halpern, central character,
weight of an unjust society. Honey is a killer, He's mainly because, as Mr. Dortort represents him as meditating, “All your life the forces of evil have been battering you around, and if you're not hard enough, if you don’t learn how to fight back, viciously if need be, you don’t stand a Chinaman’s chance, and you're doomed to strangle and to die in your youth. You learn that much, growing up to manhood in the east end of Brooklyn.” Like “The Amboy Dukes,” Mr. Dortort’s novel is full of unsavory characters: Gangsters, muggers,
addicts and morally illiterate adoles-
cent girls. Incidentally, speaking of the
“molls,” if Hollywood were permitted the courage and the accuracy
Tmt FOR
oi pol
when pronounced by stage or radio
¢| West Coast,”
|. By wing h
“BURIAL OF POE THE FR FRUIT." "iA novel By David Derfort, Now York, :
‘BROOKLYN 1s & national byword, and not. Just. Deosuse of the
Outsiders associate the place-name with linguistic quaintness (“toity-toid street,” “ersters”), with & mythical sort of ely toughness
with the mirth ‘the word provokes comedians.
to depict molls- in something of their true light, crime pictures might become, as they should be,
{repellent rather than SujeEtaiping.
Using ‘a flashbaébk technique, Mr Dortort represents his hero as having been the victim of circumsstances and ' environment from childhood, A lurid, “traumatic”
nesses a Jack-the-Ripper attack is included, evidently to make the impact of slum life seem more irresistible; I find it a little hard to accept Honey Halpern as being a twy-na-tured blend of almost poétic sensitivity with unexampled brutality. In one passage, Honey drives out into the Long Island countryside, parks the car and walks into a field, “Again he filled his lungs, opening his coat wide, feeling alive and intense in every inch of his body. Then, carefully, he slid to the rough, knobby earth and smelled its fragrance. He breathed deeply of the earth, and there was the heady smell of wine in it, and the strong smell of death.” Tendency to Over-Write That sort of experience, stacked up against Honey's behavior in less salubrious surroundings, might seem more plausible if Mr. Dortort had curbed what I think is a tendency to over-write. Such imagery as: “Pee Nots was down on the weedy grass, rolling like a wave-tassed log, the laughter spuming out of him uncontrollably, a flow of usty lava” is a-trifle confusing
current importance. Both deserve reading. Mr, Shulman writes more economically, allowing charaéters and events to portray themselves, with a minimum of comment. He sees his subject clearly. In this field, trenchant reporting is apt to be more effective than “literary” writing. Mr. Dortort wants to be vivid, and so he takes his hero through sequence after lurid sequence, winding up the novel and Honey's life in a crescendo of sordidness. :
clinical than fanciers of gentle romance will enjoy—H. B.
Revised Travel Book Due Next Tuesday
“All the Best in South America: V " a book of travel in. formation by Sydney Clark, will be puilished next Tuesday by Dodd,
or to the author's earlier “West Coast of South America,” the new book is described as “an extensive post-war revision of the original volume.”
Novel Depicts Hight of Killer
“He Ran All the Way,” novel by Sam Ross, will be .published Jan. 24 by Farrar, Straus. Depicting the flight of a killer, the novel has received [rSinasy critical acclaim, actording: to publishers.
Mr. Dortort is somewhat more in- ‘ clined than Mr. Shulman to preach.| ° I'm afraid that's a weakness in “Honey” Mr. Dortort’s is a slender, wiry, sensitive youth, foredoomed to destructive activity by the crushing
a killer
“Sleds
BOOKWORM
episode in which little Honey wit-
Both novels are on » subject of
Both novels are more ruggedly
rapists, maribuana peddlers andi
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