Judge — October 1935 — page 3: what you’re looking at

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

Judging the Books HE best thing about humor is that it can survive capitalism, commu- nism, stuffed shirtism, brown shirtism, death and taxes, and so the best thing about Robert Forsythe’s unkind essays, “Redder Than the Rose,” is that the humor in it survives its frankly com- munistic intent. Mr. Forsythe, whom we understand is none other than one of our colleagues in comedy, in Mos- cowitchy whiskers, has some pertinent things to say about the wind and the windbags of this world and he manages to say them with full rancour filling his sails. In quick succession he does away with such anti-communistic forces as Mencken, C.C.N.Y., anti-militarists, Mr. Hearst, F.P.A., Mr. Woollcott, Hank Greenberg, Gott, Mae West, Gov. Mer- riam, the Socialists, Little Flower La ardia, and if given time, we feel Mr. Forsythe will undoubtedly do away with himself. However, we're happy to say he does his damage in such an amusing way we were almost tempted at book end to become a revolutionary ourself. All very salubrious, to say the least. The chief fault of the book is that it's not quite up to the snuff of that great master of invective and ridicule, that old capitalist who's been a success at Mr. Forsythe’s own game, Henry L. Menc- ken. Had Mr. Forsythe Mr. Mencken's ability the book'd be up in the tall brack- ets of humor but then that’s like saving if Mr. Mencken had Mr. Forsythe’s Aunt’s pants he'd be his Uncle. Also, at times Communism gets in the way of the cracks, which is very bad for the cracks, Offhand we'd say that Mr. Forsythe, by smacking them till they’re red, has done more for his cause than all the frizzle-haired, wild-eyed clucks who throw themselves under the police horse hoofs on Union Square, shouting, “The revolution’s hirr!” Down with every- thing, we shout, but up with Forsythe. I “Land Under England,” a gifted oung Irisher, one Joseph O'Neill- me-lad, has brooded forth one of those shillin’ shockers in the H. G. Wells over- heated imagination style, wedded to one of those social shockers of the bleak school. As such it is, and it isn’t. An- thony Julian, young English inventor, armed with an electric torch and a bag of sandwiches, takes a Cook's tour into the underworld beneath England, a place his family has always believed inhabited by descendants of Roman legionaries. ers, hideous fungi and objects that would fit in any competently arranged . z00. Eventually he finds his peo- nation of punys, living in dark- ness and fear and presaging the sort of thing England today is likely to come to if a Hitler got running things. The book is full of editorial significance and is well in the tradition of English litera ture in which young authors wave the flag and feel the surge of emotion at being British—a strange thing for a young Irishman. To me there's enough hell on the surface of the earth today without going underground for it. But read it. E CAN only join in the sadness of the critical craft over the pass- ing of Willa Cather, one of our four- star literary ladies, from lively liter: ture. “Lucy Gayheart” reads like a museum piece written in 1902. To us it is writing stuffed by an expert taxi dermistress of prose. True, the prose is neatly washed, ironed and starched, and Lucy moves through this and that along the bumpy road of love, but prose isn’t enough. Curiously our topnotched Cather’s book reads like a very dull dish of Hollywood mush. Who knows, may- be Willa’s eyes are turned towards her beloved West, where all good writers die. I “Four Roads to Death” Benjamin Appel who gave us “Brain Guy” has done a truly clever thing. He has taken the good old wood-pulp shocker about the expedition for gold into the lost land and tried to give it legs and arms, breath and reality. Though there are terribly good and believable moments the task proves a little too much for him, as we feel it would for anybody. The basic yarn has been dead for too many y and worn thinner than a joke when Ed Wynn gets hold of it. You can't blow life in a kicked-around corpse. But you can't blame Benjy for trying—and there are those moments. HERE are twenty-two stories in the cunning little collection “Winter Orchard,” just ripped from the pen of our Pulitzer Prize gal, Josephine John- son. Seven concern death, five with love’s wreckage, one with blindness and a half dozen with the hell of it all. Three of them break down and are al- | SWEDISH Speak FRENCH «+. in 3 months «+ + Of German, Spanish, Italian, Rus- sian or any of the 23 languages offered by Linguaphone Institute. Thousands of men and women ate finding the Linguaphone Method the simplest, easiest, and quickest way to speak fluently and read understandingly. 150 Language Teachers of the leading universities —Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, The Sorbonne, Bonn, etc.—made Linguaphone courses. They ate your teachers, always at your command, in your own home. THE modern man and woman must speak another language, in order to feel and understand the thrilling pa- geant which the twentieth century is unfolding. . . . Sinclair Lewis, Emil Ludwig, H. G. Wells, Alexander Woollcott, and thousands of others have mastered another language by the Linguaphone Method . . . right at home. YOU CAN ALSO—no special gift for languages is necessary. You learn as easily at 45 as at 12! Some of our best students are folks past 60 years, and children just over 6. Send for FREE book Get the complete story of this world- famous language method endorsed by 11,500 universities, colleges, semina- ries, high schools and foremost edu- cators. Linguaphone Home-Study Courses GERMAN RUSSIAN, DUTCH ENGLISH FINNISH SPANISH FRENCH JAPANESE ITALIAN CZECH IRISH ESPERANTO. PERSIAN HEBREW Call for Free Demonstration at Our New Audition Salon LINGUAPHONE INSTITUTE 39 Rockefeller Center New York Tel.: Clecle 7-0831 On th he meets up with some most cheerful, and warm up the book as 2 a creatu author's disordered a smile on the face of Joe Louis might LINGUAPHONE INSTITUTE agra tiles hh ihines I ieeseold 6 39 Rockefeller Center. New York City imagi ing such things as heat an empty ice-cold armory. Without crt op wigan eae send we eur 3 ack- ing spid- —Tep Suan Free Took 3-10-35 and details of your “Pay as man-h pack-hunting spid: Teo SHANE. Fe Dok Jee Ae TOR SEAT, Volume 109. Whole No. 2683. Published monthly by Judge Magazine, a 404 North Wesley Ave., Mount. Morr Editorial and execut Address York, N. Y. Entered as Second-Class M 1933, at the under act of March 3, 1879. Cop: the UL S. an city ate $1.80 a year; Canada and foreig: copy Fred 1. rt; Jack Shuttleworth, Vice President rank C. Fisher, Secretar e M. rer. 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