Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1905 — THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN [ARTICLE]

THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN

Booth Tarkington, of Indianap. olis, not only Indiana’s biut we might almost say, the nation’s present greatest writer of fiction, is out with a new book, published by Harper & Brothers, of New York. Its title is “The Conquest of Canaan,” the Canaan in this case being an India: a town, not specially located butoi abmt 30,000 population. The story is heralded by some of the critics as “The Great American Novel” and no doubt it is a very notable book and bound to be a big seller. The story deals mainlj with the trials and adventures of two young people, Joe Louden and Ariel Tabor', both of whom get the hot end of the poker through kid hood and youth, but who jointly and sevejjally consummate the Con quest of Canaau in later years Joe especially has a tough time during all his earlier years but he coma'' out on top in the end. The story is of absorbing interest and no doubt will soon be dramatized though it has Out few sensational situations; being much tamer in that respect thau “The Gentleman From Indiana.” There is practically neither any shooting nor killing, the one ca«e being a rather common-place kind of a killing which is told about but not directly depicted. The nearest approach to a real villian is a wealthy and overbearing old scallawag named Judge Martin Pike, whom the whole community bows down to but who gets what is coming to him before the story ends. The weak points of the book, are that it fails to in some few respects truely depict things as they are iu any Indiana city ol today, with 30,000 people. There is only one hotel in the place and the entire business and professional population is in sight of thejai and court house. Everybody know,everybody else and stick theji noses iu their business. The whoh population rallies to the chas. when a dog has a tin kettle tied t« its tail. All of which would bettei fit a place of 300 rather than of 30, 000 people.

Just as untrue to actual conditions is it for Lawyer Joe to per mit his client Happy Fear, to go to trial for killing Cory in a countv where there wasjsuch a rabid rav ing prejudice against them both asis here represented. Nor to havt gone forward with the trial when the principal paper in the place has for weeks loudly demanded the hanging of the accused man and the mobbing of the lawyer; and when the jury is openly howled at on every side to convict the prison er, every time they go outside the court room.

There is no city in Indiana, nor ever has been, where a trial for murder would have been begun and carried out under such conditions. Just as far also from the reality ol things in modern Indiana is the author’s depiction of the policy, the news and the editorial writings of |Canaan’s leading newspaper, the To csin.