Judge — December 24, 1921 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The very latest and best, authoritative Guide Books to Cuba and the West Indies ¢ interested in, or d the West Indies, 1 do business wit e » visit Cul you will want these books. They are the very latest and best, authori- tative Guide Books to Cuba and the West Indies, including the Virgin Islands, Simply as literature you will gain much from their interes! nd U pictures which for these book: and plates Profusely illustrat maps. on Jai Ki with photograph thoritative i ut easy and pleas binding, Cover A volume to the book on companii deve West ostal, Telegraph and ( days. Pocket cover in colors, 627 W. 43rd ST., NEW YORK CITY | out of the papers. Near Literature and Other Stuff By Water PRICHARD EATON Success. By Samuel Hopkins Adams. Hough- ton, Mifflin Co. AMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS has worked to drive patent medicine and all other fake advertisements He knows the re- sponsibilities and the difficulties of honest journalism, which go consider- ably deeper than mere advertisements. He has written a long novel about these things, about the old Sun (set these ten years, alas!), about William Randolph Hearst and Arthur Bris- bane’s predigested editorials (or so you guess), above all, about the con- scientious reporter who finds, sooner or later, that he has to compromise with his conscience or lose his job. The trouble with “Success” is that Sam knows too much about these things. The publishers say it took him seven years to write the book. It takes nearly that long to read it. ING or Wispom. By Stephen Vin- Henry Holt & Co. jN spite of our best efforts to begin wisdom there, we somehow cannot get up any excitement over Tap Day on the dear old Yale Campus, or care a rap whether Philip made dear old Wolf’s Head. (He did, as a matter of fact.) In his senior year he married a “pick-up.” Why, by the way, are Yale seniors always marrying shop girls and things? He also made the “Lit” and got drunk at Mory’s and studied under Billy Phelps. Later he became a Wobbly, a movie actor, a soldier, and continued to write poetry and impressionistic daily themes. All of this, poetry, daily themes and all, Stephen Vincent Benét has put into his book. It is a kind of lyric hash, that probably impressed greatly the editors of the “Lit,” but strikes the adult reader who was never privileged to get drunk at Mory’s as the prema- ture plunging into print of a youth who hasn’t yet learned that a college secret society has little ultimate effect on the orbit of the celestial bodies. Tue Girts. By Edna Ferber. Doubleday, Page & Co, ‘s7T\HE GIRLS,” by Edna Ferber, is an astonishing achievement. It’s as if George M. Cohan had suddenly written “Don Giovanni” or President Harding had used simple, correct Eng- lish. It isn’t quite a beautiful book; Miss Ferber still trails shreds of her smart Aleck style and strains for 30 effect, and for “action.” Her picture, too, of the old Chicago South Side aristocracy is quaintly tentative. But the futility of the world-old feminine sacrifice of daughter for mother, the tragedy of the virgin, she is keenly alive to, and of it she is splendidly scornful. Her 33-year-old heroine, Lottie, solves the problem by going to France as a nurse, and returning with a baby—“adopted.” But we cannot always have wars, in spite of the Dis- armament Conference. Just what is Lottie to do in peace time? Perhaps Miss Ferber will write another book to tell us. In New England we have such a high percentage of spinsters that a general following of Lottie’s example would seriously overcrowd us Presumably “The Girls” will be re- jected by some of our libraries— though not for that reason. However, a fine, keen, honest book it is. Miss Ferber has graduated from the hocum class. Tue Lark. By Dana Burnet. Little, Brow 0. ARK, hark, “The Lark.” An un- known waif left in a basket at the convent window—mystery. A dreamy girlhood in the convent—innocence. A Cuban south wind and a seduction of the innocent—sympathy plus erotic ex- citement. The seducer’s elder brother gives the afflicted one the protec- tion of his name and takes her to New York—devotion. In an astonish- ingly short time she becomes a star singer at the Metropolitan—romance of “achievement.” Her seducer reap- pears and her husband (in name only) dies of it—drama. She is in doubt whether she has found her soul and keeps her lover (the seducer) waiting, while he employs his time in character- istic fashion—suspense. She decides to keep her soul to herself and gives him her body—“modernism.” The song may be successful amid earthly magazines, but it will never reach the Heaven's gate of literature. Tup Peorie AGAINST Nancy Pre: A. Moroso, Henry Holt & C Hake is a perfect movie scenario. It includes an escape from Sing Sing, when the crook (who, of course, isn’t a crook but a college graduate with a private fortune) climbs into the packing case on a truck, swims the Hudson in the moonlight, is pursued by detectives, and in general has the ON. By John comichooks,