Judge — April 30, 1932 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE JUDGING THE BOOKS SINCE the erage life of a book nowadays is about 90 days, they do say it definitely marks a person who announces in the very best circles that he is just reading and enjoying yesterday's best — seller Sure as earth, some br nt younsy snoot will up and say quite fridiy- airily “Oh! are just getting around to that!” As for a semi-pro book reviewer suddenly to announce in print the same fact about a book five months old—it is not only inex- cusable but a crime punishable only by sentencing him to witness twenty consecutive performances of a Ziegfeld opera. But such are the facts and we plead yuilty. The book is “Return to Yes- terday” by Ford Madox Ford, pub- lished in January, and all we can say in defense is that we have just one pair of ey one lame brain and the hell with you if you are a brilliant young snoot. Besides we are reading for the ages and the ages are a long, long time. Also Mr. Ford's book is not one to be gobbled up and hur- riedly digested for the next discus- sion at the next weekly Tuesday Pickle and Literary Society meeting. you is the leisurely, informal, mag- ificent autobiography of Mr. Ford life in letters, a life that covers two important liter: generations and includes people like Conrad, Crane and Henry James. Like one of those curtains pe ng the town’s celeb- rities with which they sometimes raise the second acts of t musi- cal shows, you can’t take it all in in a few sparse minutes. You ought to be allowed to take it home and study it over. Now go ahead and sentence us. A NOTHER book we'd like to sneak in a small late appreciation for is Robt. Bur I Am a Fugitive from the Georgia Chain Gang.” If you want a true running ount of an ironic working of justice (Ah! Justice!) and a picture of some mod- ern prison tortures that would shame an inquisitor, this should make your heart beat for the very misfortunate Mr. Burns. As for horror more on the imagi- native side, we heartily whoop up Dorothy S. ’s “Second Omnibus of Crime”; and “The Supernatural Omnibus.” Both are wrist-breaking jumbos, and quite a muckel for your two-fift, As for “Yu’an Hee Scx Laughs” hot from the tripewriter of Sax Rohmer, Tled Shlane hee niuts. V HY the adden hasn't found his w into the pages of mighty novel of olympian bunk wouldn’t know. Aside from a few non-conclusive melodramatic smacks at his life-work as expressed in the tabloids, the page is blank, waiting for some Dreiser to come along and crowd the magnificent Body Builder onto it. Now one Georgette Carnes) has produced “The Great Day,” su; posedly a pretty tight sardonic pic ture of the Macfadden factory and a side-view of what takes place in private lives of the slob-sisters ¢ brothers who work for the mighty muscle-man. An important idea, no doubt, but after an unusually good start, one t peters out, despit« lot of tricks, such as reproducing pages and pictu from tabloids themselves, to things up at the end. Why don't a whack at it Mr. Lewis and help make us ar Influence. —TED SHANE The motorists are comin'!” comicbooks.com