Book Reviews
“The Boy Grew Older” is a tale of paternity told in the terms of a sporting-writer. As a story of paternity it is rather appealing; one cannot help but feel a warm sympathy for this bewildered, clumsy, kind-hearted reporter who takes it upon himself to rear his infant son, after his dancer wife has deserted them. The very theme plays (not too delicately!) on the chords of human compassion. But as a story told in the terms of a sporting-writer, it is not so successful. The style shows lack of careful writing. It often verges on sloppiness. Mr. Broun imposes upon a public which has raised him to popularity, in writing in so slipshod a fashion. Besides, the story in itself deserves a finer exposition.
Peter Neale is the writer of a sporting column in a New York newspaper. He falls in love with Maria Algarez, a dancer, and chiefly by virtue of the fact that he praises her as much as she demands, persuades her to marry him. When their baby is born, she runs away to Europe to have her career, unfettered by the cares of maternity. Peter unselfishly devotes himself to the care of the boy. It is his ambition that he shall grow up to be a Harvard athlete, and finally inherit his father’s column. The war comes, and after it there is a meeting with the mother again—with the final decision of the boy’s career.
In an incidental way, Mr. Broun’s often-exercised delight in making Harvard appear superior to Yale comes into the story. Father and son help vanquish Yale. We mustn’t mind that, if it pleases him! Besides, occasionally Mr. Broun achieves an amusing paragraph by his obsession—as when the father, unable to recall the words of a lullaby, sings the baby to sleep with Harvard’s song ending:
“And if any Eli—”
“And if any Eli—”
“And if any Eli—”
“And if any Eli—”
The song had to be cut short; the baby must not learn Harvard men’s words of profanity at such an early age!
Whatever faults the assiduous critic may find, “The Boy Grew Older” is an amusing story—and that’s the greatest reason for buying new novels, anyway!
C. G. P.
In writing a review of a sea story it is customary to hail in the names of several other sea-writers—either for laudatory, or for defamatory, purposes; or for no purpose whatever—but to hail them in, nevertheless. The process usually proves little more than the truth of the ancient observation that comparisonsareodious—and odiousness is associated with reviewing quite enough as it is.
The name of William McFee is great enough to stand alone, in the world of books. He writes of the sea with a sureness born of first-hand knowledge, for he was a sailor before he was an author.
“Command” is a story of the life aboard a ship in wartime. Spokesley, the hero, a British second officer, is called to duty in the Aegean immediately after becoming engaged to a girl in England. There was little love wasted in the betrothal, and therefore Mr. Spokesley has few qualms when he becomes really, passionately enamoured of a girl of the South. This is the barest hint of the thread of the plot. “Command” offers a great deal more—pictures of the torpedoing of a ship in mine-strewn waters, of a collision with a warship at night, of the surging life in sea-ports along the Mediterranean—so many that the story is in danger of growing tedious with too long sustained excitement.
The characters are memorable. Not so much by their descriptions as by their actions are they impressed. Mr. McFee has taken so much pains, by inserting a preface to the effect, to assure his readers that the story is purely fiction, that one is tempted to wonder which of the characters are drawn from life.
“Command” is, to be dogmatic, Mr. McFee’s best book; though various people will at once proceed to deny that, they will certainly agree that his work has been so uniformly good as to place it very near the top.
C. G. P.
To say anything critical about Mr. Morley’s book is like saying anything critical about “Jurgen”—it is impossible—and “Where the Blue Begins” hasn’t even the depths of salacious possibilities which permitted the columnists to fill their columns in the days of Cabell’s first prominence. In fact, it is nowhere so deep as “Jurgen”, yet it is another of those books out of which you may get as much as you bring to it, though you are acutely doubtful throughout whether the author intended half the thoughts he has created within you. But “Where the Blue Begins” is a delightful fantasy for anybody. The whimsical adventures of Gissing are just the disorganized evening-hour adventures in which anyone with a mind is apt to indulge.
“Where the Blue Begins” is an evening-hour book, or rather, a book for several evening-hours. When the fatigued upper-classman has his to-morrow’s Freshman calculus laid aside as a bad job, and has lit his pipe in complete acquiescence to the fact that his brain is in a fog, let him prop his feet against the new University fire-screen and seek happiness with Christopher Morley. But leave a call with the janitor for chapel time next day. You will never know when Morley stopped and your own dreams began.
D. G. C.
The unusual imaginative mind of Hearn, through Irish and Greek parentage, and exposure to Japanese culture, combined weird romanticism and realism with a strange mysticism. To this variegated composite, he added a background of concepts formulated in England, the United States, and St. Pierre. These impressions, visual and mental, produced spontaneously literary projections ranging from “Stray Leaves from Strange Literature” in 1884 to “Japan, an Interpretation” in 1904.
Professor Erskine of Columbia University compiled this volume from Hearn’s lectures delivered at the University of Tokyo in1896-1902. The major division includes analyses and studies of Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, Morris, and Meredith. Corollary to this, are notes upon Rossetti’s prose, and Meredith’s “The Shaving of Shagpat”. A consideration of the harsh Scotch conservatist, Robert Buchanan, and the contemporary poet of quiet effects, Robert Bridges, conclude the volume.
Hearn discerns Rossetti’s thoughtful melancholy, sensuous touches, and mystic feeling. The pictorial quality and medievalistic setting of the poet and the painter’s verse are traced artistically throughout the shorter narrative poems, “Rose Mary” and “The Bride’s Prelude”. The technical construction that underlies the poet’s exotic color and temperament, is emphasized by Hearn as a proof of Rossetti’s energetic intellect.
Swinburne is classified as the greatest English verse writer, scholar, critic, and living dramatist. He is a pessimistic evolutionist preaching almost an immoral law, contrasting vividly with George Meredith. As a further contrast the problem of evil is approached by Swinburne much in the same way as the German philosopher Nietzsche. The music of this poet’s verse, the brilliance of his language, the value and beauty of his diction are revealed logically and enthusiastically by Hearn.
Our critic finds an optimistic pantheism and an intense individualism in Browning and paraphrases excellently some of his poems, but there is, unfortunately, no consideration of Browning’s paradoxical interpretation of Love. William Morris’s “refuge from life” in art and artistry in Norse subjects are translated into expressive prose. “No man ever worked harder for romantic literature and romantic art, and few men have made so deep an impression into the aesthetic sentiments of the English public.”
His interpolation of minute textual explanations diverts the reader’s attention and destroys the general poetic illusion. In addition, there is a failure to note nuances of character and a desire to substitute phantasy for somberness. His book is overcast with an occasional lack of logic and frequent overwriting, but his simple yet analytical paraphrasing, keen and emotionally appreciative imagination, and unbiased, reasoned opinions make the volume first-class criticism in technique, style, classification, and general achievement.
T. A. Z.