Judge — December 1932 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

Judge’s Mystery Solving Department JUDGING Conducted by Inspector Dart of the Rebus Squad Poli ot tReet ance pr which while it held us intent Tae to the story to the Finis sign, left Please Take Notice us a bit condescending as to the orig- It seems impossible to make the public understand the inality of the idea of the piece itself. true functions of this department. We do not handle We had read it before. Hamsun excise cases and if the party who sent us this letter and Rolvaag and every other Scandi- wants the place he mentions put out of business, we sug- navian you could think of had con- gest that he does it himself. Somebody will want us to tributed his version of the thing. mind their baby, first thing we know. The characters and their trials were always the same; it fell into the earthy class and always got the Nobel Prize. These, however, have proved minor considerations. We've grown a little older since we wrote those harsh words and we now realize that the simple human quality you found in “The Good Earth” counts. We are humble in our apologies. As every other writer of an earth novel, Mme. Buck felt she could not leave her characters, an epic con- cluded. Heroes have sons and sons have sons and the public wants to hear more about them. So she sat Bhs herself down to the task of bringing A up the sons o: ang and tracing BUSINESS Ze ANI their fortunes after the old man died. “Sons,” therefore, begins at the deathbed of Wang, the earthlover, and continues just as we’ve outlined, for the length of a good solid book. Again the story is in idea a cliche (who said life itself was a cliche?— those are fighting words) but the writing and the characters and the information about China are para- mountly interesting. We again got Buck fever from reading it and are looking forward to the Sons of Sons. Like all second books in a trilogy, however, this one isn’t quite as good as the first. Usually the sons of the father aren’t as interesting. They invariably dissipate the old man’s fortune and that isn’t as fascinating as watching it being built up. Yet “Sons” is more of a man’s book than “The Good Earth” and more irven- tive in many ways. We wish Mrs. Buck would do one thing in her next book and that is, try not to be so much the spellbinder in her swing in writing. It is easy and satisfying to the eye and brain yet all the time you feel she is de- liberately being a wee bit conscious | of her ability to write like the Hebrew prophets. (Solution in next issue) HE historical novel, since Shaw started his glorious debunking of history, has become a thing of joy and beauty to behold. No longer is it impossible romantic gilt and tinsel in which historical celebrities are (Last Month’s Solution on page 28) blown up into impossible movie pro- portions of virtue, the events gar- comicbooks.com