Life — May 27, 1897 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

THE PERILS OF SUMMER RESORTS IN FICTION. | I’ it were not for i winter sanatoriums | \ and summer re- IX sorts the Ameri- \ranw can writer of fic~ tion would be hard pushed for subjects. Of course he has - long made good use of ‘local character” in the novel of provin- cial life, and every State has its own pet to whom it “ points with pride.” But that sort of thing is consid- cred rather narrow nowadays; the newest novelist wants to show that he is a citi- zen of the world, a man who travels and compares civilizations —the American Bourget or Loti. No State or village is big enough to hold the rising American novelist. Between trips, though, he may condescend to study his fellow-country- men-and-women as they flock together at summer hotels or pay large sums for board at the Florida palaces in mid- winter. M*. HOWELLS is not a ‘rising novelist” or a new convert to the latest method; he has always been fond of summer resorts as a stage: for his studies of American life. toga, Ni: Is, thé White Moun- tains, Magnolia, and a fine lot of pean resorts have appeared in_ his stories. His latest, ‘The Landlord at Lion's Head” (Harper), follows the course of the development of the very novelist, en « . gara Fi Suro- -LIFE: BOOKS FOR SUMMER READERS. latest thing in summer hotels, from a White Mountain farm-house to a fluted and columned affair, built in what the delightful philosopher of the story calls the “runnaysonce” style of architecture, like ‘one of them old pagan temples. Anybody who thinks about it at all knows that what Mr. Howells is really after in a story is case the hotel business is simply in! dental to Jef’ Durgin. And, by the way, one learns that for purpo! tion Harvard College is divided into two grand divisions—Jays and Gentlemen. To the former class Jef’ avowedly be- longs, and Harvard rather intensifies it. Anybody searching for a delightful pic- ture of the “ pure democracy of ¢ college life" won't find it in this story. If Mr. Howells is an accurate observer, the genus Snob has made something of a hole in the pure democracy idea. ‘o those who say that nothing ever happens ina Howells story, we beg to point with satisfaction to the obvious presence here of several acute jags, a damn or two, a country girl and a city girl both kissed by the same man, a horsewhipping, a choking spree that was almost fatal, a fine funeral; and at the very end the heroine tells the man that she expects to marry, after “ thinking it over;” that she must always call him “Mr. Westover"—thus restoring the balance of proprieties in a tale that sev- eral times threatened to be a little near the ragged edge. Mr. Smedley has taken advantage of all these threatened improprieties for stirring pictures. * * * R. STEPHEN CRANE has never hesitated in his short career to use strong language and shed blood when the occasion required it. Butin “The Third Violet” (Appleton)—a sum- mer resort story—he testrains himself Man, and in this 's of classifica- wonderfully, and invents a new kind of “strong dialogue” in which every critical and emotional situation is closed one of the following explet Shut up! Hush up! with Atthe Hemlock Inn and the “begrimed building " where the Bohemians | New York, that was the acme of force in repartee. There is the usual table d‘hote restaurant, studio supper of im- pecunious artists, benevolent, passionate but virtuous model, and haughty, rich girlto marry the hero, who paints Sul- livan County haystacks with great skill. Nevertheless, Mr. Crane has the knac of making old situations very entertain- ing, and he can make you see what he Whether he produces a good, bad or indifferent story, he knows how to write effectively, ved in sees with clearness and force. T is not likely that the Southern Pa- cific Railroad will use Beatrice Har- raden's story, ‘Hilda Strafford” (Dodd. Mead & Co.),to boom Southern C fornia—cither as a health resort, a field for business enterprise, or an all-year- round ‘ Paradise” for lovers of nature. In the brief compass of this story the heroine quarrels with her husband be- cause of the bleakness and depressing effects of the California landscape, the lemon groves are ruthlessly slaughtered by a great flood, and the weak-lunged hero dies! What have Mr. Lummis and his Zana of Sunshine got tosay to that series of catastrophes? Have we been misled all these years about ‘* Our Italy,” and is California really a bleak and howling wilderness, fatal to health and matri- monial happiness? Or docs Miss Har- comicbooks.com