Judge — February 1934 — page 3: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGING THE BOOKS HAT with their first of the year hangovers, the publishers hardly be expected to m: starry month in the lit’ry fi they did not disappoint. There is noth- ing on their lists that will answer to the name of wow and yet there is no “Anthony Adverse” to waste the re- viewer's patience and time. Still a month that produces a new Dashiell Hammett cannot be considered entirely dismal. For Dash’s “Thin Man” is out, chockful of menace and | grim harshness. As we've lectured long and loud, nobody can summon up horror or create as cruel a set of characters as Dashiell-boy, His hardberledness is what Hemingway strives for but fails to attain for want of real stomach. 1 the “Thin Man” is no “Red Harvest” is super stuff. Personally we'd like | to see Hammett give over the jig: type of thing as represer by the nin Man” and write straight | from the shoulder detective experience he did in “Red Harvest.” There is also more Nordhott & Hall You remember their “Mutiny On the Bounty” a full rigged sea novel of blus- tery old-fashioned sea life. It was not pre-war Joe Conrad but it was xd y Evening Post Conrad. You remember how Bligh and his 18 men left the ship (and the book) in an open boat. Well, that boat sails into the new book “Men Against the Sea” and re- counts its 3600 mile voyage on the P: cific heir adventures aren't as sati iying as in the “Mutiny” book but they are harrowing, conventional well-knit sea stuff. Just a second while we brush up little trash. Donald Henderson Clarke stopped hitting the mind below the belt and turned his sexy eye on Hollywood The result is “Alabam" a movietown potboiler, thoroughly equal to all other novels about the Lasky milieu. We're getting mighty sick of the drama along Sunset Blvd., unless, of course, the Co- lumbia Football team is involved. As for “L’Affaire Jones” the highly touted Lit-Guild selection, it is easy on the eye and brain. We cannot class it with Anatole France or Jacques Deval as farce humor of the highest degree but its satirical story of Henry George of Go'gia who comes to France to com- ile a cook book and becomes a national em because of a coat he didn’t pur- loin, is no worse than the type of laughs you find in these pages themselves (but not in this column, of course). Still | Hillel Bernstein, the author, has noth- | ing to be ashamed of for authoring the . even tho the ochs-like Times bids him be. It is the deeper humor, if you ph a bit on the laughter of the gods variety. (Next page. please) THE WALDORF -ASTORIA PARK AVENUE -. 49TH TO SOTH STREETS - NEW YO The greatness of The Waldorf-Astoria lies not only in its size... its prestige ... its perfect appointments . . . but particularly in its service establishment, which caters to you, the individ- ual... your every preference and desire. On residential Park Avenue... at the heart of the smart world of clubs, churches, shops, theatres, Pez. ( veellence Year after year of its memorable existence The Plaza has maintainedits positionas NewYork’sleadinghotel,attract- ing guests of prominence from all parts of the world. That indefinable something in Plaza Service has set a standard both here and abroad. Spacious suites of various sizes for winter occupancy at attractive rentals. Rooms from $5. Henry A. Rost, Managing Director John D. Owen, Manager H-PLA 7 dam. FACING CENTRAL PARK + FIFTY.NINTM ST. & FIFTH AVE. comicbooks.com