Judge — January 17, 1931 — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE AUDGING“ BOOKS ost attempts to illustrate some- thing like Herman Melville's loby Dick” prove a wedding of the green-grocer’s calendar art with the football bladder whales of Hollywood. And personally we find ourself rather touchy about “Moby,” it being about front pew in American, if not world, literature. So it took faithful old Rockwell Kent to get out his pe ink-pot and put the pictures piece that touched the right spot. They have that quality of mystical sombreness that sounds off the alle gorical nature of the book and they t at the essential saltiness of the sea stuff. And, to coin a cliche, they actually make you want to re- read th What's that? You haven't read it yet? Well, we'll be— classic. A&A speaking of drawings that have something, Peter Arno’s “Hulla- baloo” picks it up where his “Parade” left off. In a review of that former we grew rather maudlin fact that Arno had ghosted quite a number of other men’s ideas and that, like all comic artists, he would have his day. Then, worn out, he would pass into the oblivion of artis- about tic old men’s homes, full of Arnos-too- in-their-day. Well, after studying “Hullabaloo,” we don’t know. — It's just a feeling and we can’t explain it but the stuff of greatness is there and the drawing is, as much as we of the for using other men’s ideas, haven't It's a we're know matter, persisting. As we all? near-communistic world remember, Arno, by the way, shows a decided preference in this collection to draw his women in flesh tints with glandu- But what's wrong with living in, lar accents. that? As the French fellow, “Boys, woman is a beautiful thing Arxoun Bexserr, a big genius hailer, has tapped a new one for This time it’s Colette whom he calls “the finest woman novelist in Her latest book to be trans- lated for the American customers is called © » Gentle Libertine” and is the story of a girl who experiments January. France.” with Love for a long time and finally decides that her husband, of all peo- ple, just w 2 she is looking for. To old Prof. Shane this is little more than a Gallic novel turned out’ in bushel-baskets and filling the holds of Her ships from France for decades. people are haut-bourgeois, the talk is all of amour. The only distinguishing feature of the book is a sort of D. H. Lawrence preoccupation with the idea isfaction and in’ many ways. the Saxon approach to the prob! ner (hurrah for right living) and more moving. Colette is supposed by the no-alls to know a great deal about the feminine mind, but unless she knows more than she is here she can't even tell Earl nything. We recall we liked ok of hers recently bouts. We apologize for having gone off half-cocked. “Yer Orv Fire Lavorrs,” by Her- bert Asbury, is a history of the brawling, red-shirted, bucket-brigade ays of volunteer flame-squirting in New York. The era had maiden names and golden sun of sexual overmuch when en; nes bursts painted on their flanks and Boss Tweed wore a leather hat is seribed by the author with great charm and history. We wish Asbury'd do a political history of New York now that he's cleaned up the gangs. and anti-arsonys. ‘Tep Suaxe comicbooks.com