Life, 1927-02-10 · page 27 of 43
Life — February 10, 1927 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains literary reviews and humor cartoons satirizing early 20th-century male behavior. **Literary Content:** Reviews of "The Two Sisters" by H.E. Bates and Thompson's "Life of Eugene Field," praising Bates as a promising young author discovered by critic Edward Garnett. **Cartoons:** 1. **"Welfare Worker"** (top): A social worker interrogates a prisoner caught imitating signatures on checks—satirizing petty crime and bureaucratic welfare investigations. 2. **"Men at Their Meanest"** (bottom section): A series mocking drunk masculine posturing. The "hero" brags about consuming gin and engaging in crude pranks (rubbing butter in hair, destroying a piano), while his listener offers deadpan, sarcastic responses. The satire targets male boasting about alcohol consumption and destructive "fun" as signs of immaturity and stupidity rather than admirable behavior. 3. **"Isn't It Silly"** (bottom right): A man questions calling a woman a "skirt"—likely satirizing reductive objectification of women, though the exact critique is unclear. The humor relies on readers recognizing and judging the foolishness being depicted.
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Life Life and Letters E. Bates (Viking Press), is n excitingly beautiful story containing liter- ary qualities which make for greatness not to be expected from a nineteen-year- old boy of this materialistie day andage. Its youthful author is the discovery of Edward Gar- nett, one of the first English critics to sponsor Conrad, Gals- worthy and W. H. Hudson, and this first novel indicates that he isa rare find. Its sinister back- ground is’ time- less, its plot one of simple, almost i trag- f are not told where the strange Lee fam- ily derived — its income, what kind of clothing—beyond the pale green dress in which Tessie ran away to the dance hall—it wore, why— beyond the ancestry—it” confounded the villag- ers with an exotic market list ra ing from red peppe: Ve Te TWO SISTERS,” by H. Prisone: IMITATING frequented doorstep on that terrible night when the brothers were bat- Uing in the dining-room; after Jenny's swoon, his request for her di ly cccentric father is left hang n the paragraph which con- tains it, and we know only that his arrival changed the lives of the four children with a sweep of dramatic intensity which made the omission of Chapters 6-8 from the copy which I read (one of those binding-room crimes from which we poor review- ers frequently suffer) almost unen- durable. They are the chapters upon which Mr. Garnett lays special emphasis in his foreword, too, and yet in spite of their absence I was able to grasp something of their Welfare Worker: axp wat are YOU IN HERE FOR, MY MAN? ANOTH TURE ON A CHECK, conclusion, after discovering that it was Jenny, and not herself, whom Michael loved: “You will be able to go about with a smile...y ou wonderful, —for- tunate thing!” If you are looking fora modern story full of drawing- conversa- night room tion and club grounds, Two Sisters” not your dish. But if you are interested in poignantly beautiful literary performances — well, you won't have to read far- ther than page 24, where Jenny rests in the church, to get exactly what I mean. . CAUGHT I HAVE now finished SI Thompson's “Life of Eugene (Appleton), and am sorry that re- cently, when I was in the midst of it, I rather slanted elsewhere in’ this journal at its subject for his fond- ness for practical joking, masquer- ading, ete. There were tears in my (Continued on page 36) \’T IT SILLY, CALLING 25 Men at Their Meanest E: Say, I was a yell over at Joe's last night. Twelve quarts o’ gin and I killed ten of ‘em myself. JUST A SHELL OF HIS FORMER SELF. 1 said some awful funny things, too. When I'm plastered, I think up some wows— You: What with? He: You should ought to of been there. You'd of died. Me and Harry found some butter in the ice box and rubbed it into each other's hair. You: Very subtle of you! He: Yeh, the boys just about split laughin’ at me. Joe's wife got a little sore when we busted the piano but I kidded her out of it. Boy, sure put away plenty! Lucky itv good stuff—I just about died after a little party coupla weeks ago. You: Don't let that discourage you. Keep right at it! Robert Lord. REEN: What does that’ man want for mounting your leopard ? Brown: He demands spot cash. I A GIRL A skirt! complexity of feeling from Tessie’s He (contemplating it): yes, 17 18, SORT OF, WHEN YOU COME TO THINK OF IT. comicbooks.com