Judge — October 1933 — page 3: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGING rue BOOKS WE DO not think that for sheer sense of war horror Laurence allings’ giant photographic history, The First World War,” begins to ap- proach the little collection that appeared unprepossessingly last spring and gave us, when we looked into it, a severe cz of the williams. But we do think it will serve its purpose, It birds’ eyes the whole war with Mr. Stallings’ usual ironic eye. Of course, Mr. Stallings is essentially pseudo-bit- ter and a romantic—and one cannot help feel that some of the anti-war sentiment that saturates the whole book is a bit self-imposed. For there is a slightly mfd. literary flavor to the that caption his photographs. course subtitles And, of at times the pictures in the book —especially the ones that depict terrible death—have a Vanity Fairish soft-focus pretty pretty tinge to them. One gets the feeling, as it were, that this is no book of anti-war sentiment but a picture hook. However, there it is for you—a large thing full of truth and shame and horror, the story of a stupid escape from reality. It will probably do more good to spread anti-war propaganda than « hundred thousand pacifistic words—we hope: HEN you have finished looking over Mr. Stallings’ book and you want to clinch your feelings that war is what Sherman said it is, take a peek at “Old Gimlet Eye” the adventures (« told to Lowell Thomas) of that boy scout, that masculine Carrie Nation. that reticent hero, that fighting devil dog, that perfect guest, that interna- tional diplomat extraordinary—our own Smedley D. Butler, who, it seems, has gotten to the stage of pinning medals on himself. HIL STONG probably writes the coolest. and calmest. prose There is no strain, no effort, no fire- works. He just moves along at a steady, simple pace. He neither sets his com- mas on fire with overheated descriptic nor dampens his pages with intricate, depressing Freudian speculatio: nor works like a Hemingway for anticlimac- tic effects. He just sort of writes. His “State Fair” was a perfect example of this remarkable pace and restraint. Now you can get the same effect and enter- tainment from his “Stranger’s Return, another Towan farm interlude. Tho this book hasn’t the story interest and utter ingenuousness of “State Fair” there is a capital portrait of an oc- togenarian Towan codger—an interest- ing old coot—and, of course, there is the sense of contented writing. All of which brings us up against an important new road that literature is taking. N OTHER words, literature seems definitely, for the time being at least, to have picked up its heroes and heroines, sophisticated defeatism and mother complex themes and moved them all down to the farm. It seems t_ modern cities and the calf of gold e been too much for it, and the point to get back to the good clean smell of the barnyard. So we find ourselves up to our neck in farm novels and for the next few years we will probably 1 expected to escape from reality throu re medium of Miss Hurst's rhapsodies about how rough a cow's lick is on the of one of her heroines, or how Mr. Hemingway's hero fed the pigs and thought how badly he felt with that dragging hangover. So, in addition to the number of farm novels already on the market, expect to see the following titles announced: “Frank Merriwell 1 the Mortgage”; “The Rabinowitz rls and the Hired Men"; “Sex and Hiram” by Havelock Flt Comes to the Squire” (by Will of course, you dope); and “The er’s Daughter” by Donald Henderson What we're going to need is a rm novel relief. HICH. brings us squarely face to ace with Louis Bromfield’s “The Here again is that inevitable story of several generations, presenting the inevitable cross-sectioning of Amer- ican life, done with Mr. Bromfield’s painstaking dull artistry. Bromfield always seems such an earnest fellow we blush a litde at not being able to give him our attention and entire love. We k him at best a superior Delineator author and not a Balzac. But the book is a best seller—so he should give a rap for the opinion of this old dogsbody OY get out the crepe band and hang it on our hat:—Mons, Wodehouse’s ther,” a carbon copy of ish Preferred” with the humor c ted, is pretty hea ly that but a gifted colleague on Yorker took it to pieces to show us how funny it really was (which it wasn’t) and also psychoanalyzed Mr Wodehouse to prove that he was really a funny man. Then to cap it all, Time ‘Time Stands Still”) thickened the gloom by referring to him as “Funny- man Wodehouse.” How they missed calling him Funnymans we don’t know. “ce O Matter Where” by Arthur Train. A first class Satevepost author goes back to the soil with typical Satevepost results:—the author gets a lot of money, the Satevepost a lot of sales and the reader a lot of yawns. —Trep Sane. Percy Crosby Cartoons Humor 2.00 Volume 11” x 14” in size, finely bound in stiff board covers. Con- tains many pages of cartoons, as well as humorous writings dealing with some of the most timely topics of the day. Percy Crosby, Publisher McLean, Virginia Enclosed please find $2.00 for which send me copy of “Always Belittlin’ Name Address —and sportswomen pronounce this @ paradise for those who love out- door life... 18-hole championship golf course, a 3-acre fresh-water fast tennis courts, saddle horses—all within a luxurious pri estate with the secluded, old-world atmosphe! of a Queen Anne NEW LOW RATES. 50 minutes from New York by train to Scarborough Station, via New York Central. Buses meet train. Exce! automobile roads in all directions. Booklet. Telephone—Briarcliff 1640. Brinclitflodge BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. Onnership Operation CARL WILLMSEN, Resident Manager PALATINE HOTEL, Newburgh, N. Y. Same direction manor. comicbooks.com