Life — July 22, 1920 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

160 The Latest Books HE GRE. N AMERICA? STORIES:, AN ANTHOLOGY, by William Dean Howells. (Boni & Live- right.) The twenty-four sel do not include anything by O. as it happens to be known that this is due to Mr. Howells’s decision, and not to copyright difficulty, the omi haps as significant as the presence in the hook of samples of Thomas Bailey Ald- rich, George W. Cable, Sarah Orne Jew- ett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Charlotte Perkins Stetson. We un- derstand that Mr. Howells regards O. Henry as scarcely more than a fad—a bad influence that will pass! Characteristic is his choice from George Ade of “Effie Whittlesy and not one of the slang fables; from Frank Stockton, “ The Christ- mas Wreck” instead of “The Lady or the Tiger?” More perplexing failure of H. C. Bunner to But Henry James is here between covers with Bret Harte, which is surely as it should be. The “reminiscent introduction” is like the pleasant approach to a deep but some- what narrow vista. sion is per- is the gain admission. Woman Triumphant, by Vincente Blas- co Ibafiez. (E. P. Dutton & Co.) Trans- La Maja Desnuda, After her death the artist, Renovales, discovers love lation of TUNING UP—FOR AN OVERSEAS FLIGHT for the wife whom he neglected, hated and finally forsook in her lifetime. Ob- sessed by the artistic beauty of the nude, he finds it expressed to perfection in a celebrated painting by Goya. The repellent nature of the story is either enhanced or redeemed (according to one’s viewpoint) by passages of that descriptive writing in which this Spanish novelist so excels. — DRESSED FOR THE OCCASiON The Skeleton Key, by Bernard Capes. (George H. Doran Company.) hopes raised 1 The high G. K. Chesterton's intro- duction are scarcely realized. The most serious defect is Mr. Capes's failure to place in the hands of the reader those clues which are ultimately to disclose the murder of Annie Evans, It is the read- er’s privilege in tales of this sort always to have the evidence and always to find himself “baffled” by it. On the Trail of the Pioneers, by John T. Faris. (George H. Doran Company.) Excerpts from the diaries and stories of migrants to the Far West. Has the vivid- ness of first-hand and actual instances, but lacks the vividness of imagination; one gets an enumeration, but no pano- Contains useful bibliographies. The Explorer, by W. Somerset Maug- ham. (George H. Doran Company.) An inexpert carly novel; we don't rama. know whether Maugham wrote it from his play of the same title or th about, but the play was much the better. The story really begins on page 141, and is highly interesting, though irritatingly interrupted by long dialogues in Maug- other way ham's best social comedy manner. The Great Accic by Ben Ames Williams. (The Macmillan Company.) In an Ohio “city” of five thousand, nominally dry, young Wint Chase, ex- pelled from college for drunkenness, is (Continued on page 172) comicbooks.gom I