St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 11

SATITRTJAY. APHIL, 85. The Daily POST-DISPATCH alone has 57.000 MORE CITY Circulation than BOTH other evening newspapers COMBINED ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH 11 Reviews of the New Books and News of the Bookmen Paul Bunycm Br James McCain fefI-jD Byrne F. Scott Fitzgerald Snappy Historian of the Jazz Age F.

Scott Fitzgerald By RALPH COOHLAN. AHLE-TALK of G. B. (Scribnera) is (rr4ta llrnokrr, a sprightly book of converaations between IVE years ago he v.rte: George Bernard Shaw and his biographer. 4 "His lips moved lazily over her face.

Archibald Hend-rson. Every suoject from iou lane so good. he sighed." sox to sex is discussed with the Intellectual fresh Now he writes: ness and vigor that Is peculiar to the tJreat Vega-tarian. Here follow a few brief excerpts: AMFJlICAJi AITHORS. Henderson: "Surely you know Edith Wharton?" Shaw: "I seem to have heard the name, but can I waa thirty thirty the promise of a decade of lonelinesa, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief caa of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

But there wa Jordan beside me As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell laxlly against my coat shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her baud." Tius the differenec between 'This Side of Paradise" and "The Great Gatsbv." not connect anything with It." "Wllla Cather?" Shaw: "Never heard of her or him. "James Branch Cabell? Shaw: "Not Cable no. of course not. Is he a Senator? No; that Is CaW, Isn't It? I am afraid I am out of it." "Sinclair Lewis?" Shaw: "Nice chap. 1 met him with Mary Austin i IN her story, "The Treasure," Selma I-Lgerloef caught once more the soul of her people.

Her story Is laid in the sixteenth century. It deils with a period when Scotchmen served as mercenaries In Swedish wars. Three of theee men rob and murder Pajitor Arne and his entire household. An orphan he took into his home hVies from the murderers. She falls In love with one of these murderers without knowing his Identity.

Iater she receives a message from hec murdered foster sister that her lover was one of the three who murdered the Arne household. Elsaltl. that is the name of the survivor of the wholesale butchery, upon learning who her lover is. struggles against the Idea of denouncing him to the authorities. She cannot give him up.

As is usual in such cases with the sophisticated ejt well as with the simple, she finds reasons for not denouncing him. She Is certain no good purpose can be served thereby. In that she is true to life. Human beings have ways of Justifying the wrongs they do. But.

being pictured true to life, the girl cannot think of herstlf married to this ruffian after all. no matter how much she loves him. She finally does denounce him and hopes he will elude the authorities. Thus her duty will have been done and her lover escape punishment. It w-ould not be fair to rob the reader of the pleasure of finding out what really happens.

The story attracted Gerhart Hauptmann's attention to the extent of making a poetic drama of It under the title, "A Winter Ba'-lad." "The Treasure." (Doubled ty. Page Co.) is translated from the Swedish by Arthur C. Chater. THERE is a magic in Ireland that her poets never tire of singing, and Donn Byrne's name today leads alt the rest. His Is not the eerie twisted magic of Jamas Stephens nor the archaic self-deception of Yeats, but the freah sunlit enchantment of the fields and hills and woods, and the gods that have grown up with them.

And In every scene, described with deft Irish Imagery, there la a spectator to draw some good from the sight which role Is assigned most recently to O'Malley of Shangana-rn, a very gallant Irish gentleman, sprung of a long line of soldiers and sportsmen, with a surpassing love of all the things that com out of Ireland even her plentiful whisky. And that is part of the. tragedy that is compressed into "O'MalKy of Shanganagh" (The Century Co.) tragedy as stern and unalterable mn that of the Greek, but closer and more human. It is the story of a man who is broken by his love for a woman, young and beautiful and true, but who becomes a shadow in his arm because of her great love for the Englishman's God. This tragedy of the woman who is right In so many ways but wronr In one.

is told, not Introspectlvely. but In Its effect on life and actlorr formula not popular in this egocentric day. but still able to arouse "the emotions of pity and fear." For neither by the clumsy method of analysis nor by the realistic habit of giving detailed scene after scene does Donn Byrne show the growth and movement of his story: rather by symbols built up of symbols, scenes ia which little action occurs, but years of living and feeling are r-vealed. in the effect of beautiful or or gay things on his persona their swift unconsidered reactions to the little, things of life In such manner conveys what he Is too skillful to narrate or scribe. Because of the beauty In th telling the contrast Is doubly sharp between the happiness that is O'Malley'- for awhile and th dreary processional of his day aff er It has passed.

The words at chosen mot only for their dictionary meaning and aptness of alliteration, but with a sense of the associations they have gathered in their long literary history and in the speech of the people, which I more poetical than that of th schools, richer and racier and her distilled until only the clearest po. etlc essence remains. It Is a stvl that Is Imaginative, alike in describing the beauty of Venice thit passed like a pageant of the Renaissance under O'Malley's eyes, or the hard, avid coruscation of Monte Carlo or the sunny languor of the Midi. But spring in IreKod Is the best nnd saddest of all. 5 ihlt- I I i i xs' I -iff tSr1 1 1 1 "I V-TfSt I II 1 'til I 1 A I I-; 4 tUT t'V JtJS II Says George Moore 0 i vkth Br.NVA-V, by James Steven.

Knopf, 5 VCE; asain the inscrutable rld- Odle of the artist: Art. we hear, j. a matter of culture, tradl-background. Without these. could a Huneker or a Cabell been produced? Obviously.

all. The thins ia absurdly ar And so one cuts the theala to c'f and trims off the edges, and Lstes don the corners; and then it falls ignobly to pieces. For there are Bret Harte. Mark, in and Jack London, all of them BMhorn back of the earn, all of lacking those three prere-' culture, tradition, and yet all of them Titam 'i artist go. And now comes an-t-ttT of these great unwashed, wending at the gate: and.

unless lif omens fall, he will presently be a bay leaf on his brow. This James Stevens, as nearly a) ere can Juige. Is in his early thir-He first got lno print about year ago, in the American Mercury, with a preposterous yarn the 'Black Duck Dinner." Enc then he has been heard from and then. Before then. how.

ever, his career was anything but literary. Born in Iowa, he took to hoboing as a boy, end at this profession, his chief achievement item to have been a sobriquet, jinpanoose Jlnimie." Then for dim years he v. as a teamster. Then the war, and he was a Sergeant of inUntry. Then he was a lumher-)ck.

and in this esthetic occupation he heard the call to literature. All this has a proletarian look te it. From his picture his face fcu the same look. It is no face tf a sweet dreamer longing for the finer things of life. It is the face of a man who has been hobo, teamster, lumberjack, and Serjeant of infantry.

It is well to bear these things ia mind If his book is to be appreciated in all its puzrllng contrariness. For he has produced one of the most beautiful pieces of writing that has come to us in many a long day. It is beautiful a story, it is specially beautiful uprose. He has taken Paul Run-yan, legend.vry hero of the lumber camps, and made of him overnight as outstanding figure in our literature. The difficulty of the Job enormous.

The saga of Paul Buitytn exists only in bits and raji. as rouph men tell it and wte.ll It It could have been ruined, the one hand, by oversentl-are-iixing jt as a fairy tale and. a lie other hand, by cheapening rfth overemphasis on the fear-fuJ and wonderful exaggerations ftt are a part of It. He does wither. tells it simply.

But there Is simplicity and simplicity. His Is tie simplicity of a subtle craftsman. He pets into his tale the KTiple. solemn guile of the men ho fashioned it: In the reading Bunyan is not only Paul Banyan, but the rou-th pathos of i thousand lumber camps. There humor In It.

but the weary, nr. ionic humor of a man who only mils inside, the humor of an Anatole France. The story Is not for a second to be confused' with fantastic Hiawatha stories that are set In the American scene but are of it. It is woven out of the ul of America nnd as such must Wanked as a real American epic. after Main Street: and he gave me Babbitt." H.

"Zona Gale?" Shaw: "Sorry. No." "Sherwood Anderson?" Shaw: "My mind Is a perfect blank." "Theodore Shaw: "Frank Harris used to talk of him; but I never read him." "Upton Sinclair?" Shaw: "Yes, 1 know Upton. More power to his elbow! An American Defoe." "Stuart P. Sherman?" Shaw: "I thought he was dead. General, wasn't he?" Henry?" Shaw: "I swallowed six volume of his stories at a gulp.

I have no criticism to make; they are hors concours." L. Mencken?" Shaw: "An amusing dog, and a valuable critic, because he thinks it more important to write as he feels than to be liked as a good-hearted gentlemanly creature." "Eugene Neil?" Shaw: "I have seen a couple of his plays and read some others. They depend to some extent on false acting. However, that is true of some very famous plays. Mr.

O'Nell's dramatic gift and sense of the stage are unquestionable; but as far as I know his work is still only a Fantee Shakespeare, peopling his isle with Calibans. I wonder what sort of a job he would make of a civilized comedy like Mollere's (The sort of is Mr. Shawn. Ed.) r.KMK. "I once wrote that at least I was sure of a place In the biographical dictionaries a thousand years hence as: "Shaw, Bernard: Subject of a bust by Rodin; otherwise WAR.

"America eDtered the war to take Germany's scalp under all sorts of romantic delusions and pretexts. The Ku Klux Klan lynches and flogs and tars and feathers becauae It likes these sports; but It has to find patriotic excuses for believing that negroes should be outlawed. Catholics exterminated, and inconvenient people taught klan manners. Americans at large rushed to the front because they wanted to fight, to indulge in virtuous indignation, to see the Old World, to escape from their homes and have adventure of all sorts, to strike a blow for their Ideals, and to prove to themselves and to others that they were not cowards. Also, of course, because they could not help themselves.

But under all these heads It Is truer to say that they entered the war to risk their skins than to save them. But in modern states the people have no choice. They are told they are at war and must go to the trenches. If an individual American ot- 17 HEN Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, to employ the full name of this white-headed boy. announces a new book.

10.000 lipsticks remain poised lr. midair. Ten thousand Tapper hearts pump Mood with varying degrees of acceleration. From 10.00C throats, deb. sub-deb.

post-deb. "Mjr dear, he's the one who wrote 'THIS SIDE OF Only he isn't. F. Scott has taken on restraint and maturity pains. Once he petted with Joyous abandon "the girl with green as they sat In someone's limousine outside the Country Club in Louisville." He "found It rather fascinating to feel that any popular girl he met before eight he might quite possibly kiss before II." But that was In F.

Scott's salad days. That was when he turned out the novel which made his fame. It should have made his fame. Despite ail Its crudities and immaturities. It wai lush, bursting with life, sparkllngly original.

Moreover. "This Side of Paradise" focused the thought of a whole nation on the problems of "flappers and parlor snakes" which it had known before simply as Its daughters and eons. Some of the old-lady magazines are still debating these problems with tiresome gravity. "This Side of Paradise" was erotic, not I'ke the laborious smut of Hergeshelmer, or the vulgar gibberish of James Joyce, or the poisonous truck of Ben Hecht, or the Intricate ribaldries of James Branch Cabell. Rather, its eroticism was of a much healthier port, naively confessed, proceeding from an abundance of vitality.

Its eroticism came from a more or less true picture of manners as they existed In the war period. There was much clean, wholesome girlhood and boyhood In "This Side of Paradise," alongside shoddy petting parties). As for F. Scott, he was looked upon as the keenest interpreter of his own generation. Some day perhaps he will return to his original and profitable theme.

Just now, as he approaches his twenty-ninth year, he is more Interested In the doings of the young married set on Long Island. Flappers, have been et aside. rp HE GREAT GATSBY' (Scribner') la a thin novel, not longer than 211 short page. It lacks the lyrical and poetic outbursts of Fltx- gerald's earlier work. You may search In vain for one of those chapters In which he was wont to divert the straightaway prose Into dramatic form.

You will not find any long-winded, sophomorlc, philosophical muslna-s with which "This Side of Paradise" was cluttered. "The Great Oatsby" is compact, economical, polished in the technique of the novel, as snug as a good seagoing ship. Nothing disturbs the quick flow of the yarn, even though it Is told in the first person from a detached point of view. That seemed to us an awkward way to go about It: nevertheless it is well handled. Thia shows Iltx-gerald's development In his craft.

What he has lost In effusiveness. In buoyancy, he has gained In cleaner workmanship. Just at the moment we are inclined to think that the exchange represents a net loss. Certainly "The Great Gatsby" lacks power. Just euch power as might have been supplied by Fitiger-ald's old abandon.

Gatsby was born James Gatx of North Dakota, a young man whose mainspring of life is an Ideal love. "He had no comfortable family standing behind him." In fact, Daisy "was the first 'nice girl he had ever known He found her excitingly desirable." Gatsby met Daisy in Louisville under the protection of his uniform. True to the theory that proximity gets the kiss, ehe married another man while he was in Europe. UPON Gatsby's return, he sets about a mysterious career which brlnsg fabulous sums of money. That is how he wsj able to buy a rococo mansion in West Eck.

Long Island. Jui-t across the bay from East Egg. where Daisy lived with her husband. There are great saturnalias at Gatsby's house, messy and luxurious parties to which everyone Is welcome and a strange and motley crowd responds. Fitzgerald describe these affairs with faithful detail.

It is Gatsby's way of having Daisy blown In upon him. IN 184g Karl Marx and his coworker. Fried rich Engels, startled the world with their Communist Manifesto. It was In that little brochure that a couple of phrases ushered in the economic Interpretation of history, also known as the materialistic conception of history. In brief, Its originators contend that the religious and philosophic Ideas of a given period are the result of the economic system of that period.

What Marx conceived to be true of philosophy and religion, V. K. Calverton In "The New Spirit" (BonI Llverlght) asserts to be true of literature. He believes that changes Jn literary movements come with economic changes. He brings as proof of this point the ideas of tragedy which prevailed In days gone by.

For Instance, In feudal times literary critics believed that tragedy y4 By IJ. S. I India wears a stomacher or a kirtle now ijects on the ground that he will perhaps be shot is difficult to imapine any by the enemy, the reply is that jr ne reruses ne will certainly be shot at dawn the next by hi I adays, or dances barefoot in the i griiiien fields? Even natural things wax and wane in humcn lovor. The' human being (unless perhaps it is George Hernard Shaw) possessed of the temeritv to friends. In this sense Americans may be said to have risked their skins to save their skins.

But camel, the eiloffer, the nepte, make there would have been plenty of volunteers with- way for scarlet popples and b.ir- only be portrayed as happen-j Ing to "people worth hlle." Such people were the Kings and Princes and nobility. The masses were I not material out of which tragedy berry hedges; the hlrds of Ella- compulsion, as there were at fi rst 'England beth's day seem to have hushed nd their personal motives cannot be disposed of a. cf Real Detective Story cMctiWtrS cf aMMtlMllliiiHMH mere elf-preservation. The psychology of war is argue with George Moore upon any subject. Yet.

here in Amer- lea. separated by the ocean from Ms wicked wit and his withering scorn, one may even dare to say 1 that the theory' on which he has founded his "Anthology of Pure Poetry" Bonl and Liverlght) is I interesting but illogical. In a preface full of informal much more complicated than that. War fever is a curious disease and very infectious." JOYCE. "Most of the people who denounce 'Ulysses' their songs, while new singers make the forests sweet with harmony.

The flaw in George Moore's theory is that he does not escape in the least from subjectivity. Ex- could be made. If a Princess was seduced there were tragic elements in the situation. But a peasant girl had no rights which anyone had to respect. Nor was purity expected of would say that no treatment of sex is in the inter- her.

Such were the Ideas of the feudal system. The literature of jthe system reflects that period. 'With the rise of the capitalist sys-Item came a new claxt; which served Read at Least Spring one Is from Putnams remlniscence upon several sub- ternal things are made into poems 1 est of public morals If they would think out their Jects. Mr. Moore declares that pure rhrough the route of the heart of own position: and that answer would at once re-poetry is entirely the poetry of ex- man.

and that is the only thing duce them to absurdity. 'Ulysses' Is a document, ternal things: "Ideas, thoughts, which does not change. Mans The question is: Is the document authentic? If reflections," says he. "become com- ideas and his material possessions having read scraps of it. reply that It Is, mon qul.

kly. an idea Is mine to- differ from his grandfather's and then vou may rise up and demand that Dublin be day. yours tomorrow, and the day1 his trrandson's. hut he is the same rared to the ground and Its foundations sown with after tomorrow It Is on the barrel tremulous being, filled with strange sait organs Shelley wasted half his iOVes and jealousies and fears and -AnA I may say. do so by all means.

But that life writing about liberty; Words- desires, and living In a world which doe8 not invalidate the argument. Suppress the WKrth of hl writing he paints with the colors of his book ad have the ribaldry unexposed; and you ars Two of These Books NXTMEKOUS TREA8TTBX Dv Rottrrt Kenble wianrepeare never own Ait of nrotec ni mora s. If a HE WAS A MAN In he meantime, Nick, the teller or tne taie. pe- protecting as muterlal for the novel and the drama. There Is no doubt that the author Is right about this phase of his subject.

But when he starts out to quarrel with the whole world because everyone who dares be a critic does not use the "scientific" method, he gets into metaphysics. If there Is anything he dislikes. It is metaphysics those of others. His own he cannot recognize aa such. Wl-W Tl.

"Il-1 Ills HiniS It thr.ncht arA I come the Instrument by ruin a. auu therefore he was the ereatest r.f Is the beauty in Ariel's song in man holds a mirror up to nature and shows you the bee. the cowslip, the owl. thejthat it needs washing not whitewashing It is no bat and the blossoms, i is it in the I uae breaking the mirror'. Go for soap nnd water." heart which knows that I AND "Merrily, merrily shall I live now Henderson: "Will you write any more plays?" L'nder the blossom thar hanrs I chaw "Will a duck swim? How can I hetp it?" Ky lUxv 'Wilder very fine novel." wrote William McFee in the New Tork Sun, of this robust story of modern America them all.

In putting his theory into practice. Mr. Moore Invited Walter de la Mare and John Freeman to dine with him. and. over the coffee, they selected examples of pure noetrv renew their jcqualntance.

Daisy is a cousin of Nick's. Gatsby Is his friend. As an undercurrent to this grand passion of Gatsby's is Daisy's husband's affair, with a slattern a coarse and repulsive assignation. In the end Gatsby, who it turns out has made his money by bootlegging on a grand scale and In- 1 PAUL PALMER. on the i shady i as judged by George Moore stan various other 1 dulging dard.

The result is a volume of 1 "Simon Collet I'rtrr" and "ltrrnmp'nte." The love story of a balfcaste of the South Sa Islands. MM ROCKINO MOON liy Hnrrrtt Willoughby An epic romance of tb Far North. IJ.00 OAK AND IRON Jly Jo met Ji. i entry A fine, human tale of th North west. By the author of "The Way of the etc transaction, dies by a madman's FAITH OF 3UR FATHERS lyrics, supposed to be free from IV i i bullet without retrieving his lost Shakeepeare leads In Just Published lexe.

The slatern is killed In an numbers, followed by Blake, Cole-automobile accident. Daisy and her ridge. Foe and others not so large- ly represented, husband go merrily on in their lda ag Mj yiow av(r8 patched-up marital existence. changing things. Milton's liberty.

Altogether It seems to us this Shelley's liberty and the liberty of. IV.rothy WaJ worth barman. QThe revealing story of a young minister's gallant trujrgle with the politics of his church $2.00 THE VIKING rKfc. J--" is the name of a new publishing huse just founded in New- York by Harold K. Guinzbure and George S.

Op-penheimer. Here follows their birth-blurb: Our alms axe briefly: To limit our enterprise to a few each season and to have those few-represent the best. To follow in the trails of others provided they lead to fertile shores. To acclaim treasure when we find it but to avoid calling brass gold. And to establish a trademark that will be known as a slvn of irood books and con book is a minor performance.

At tVv moment Its author seems a bit CHAOS AND Last Hope Ranch by CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER BACKFTJXROW By O. D. Eaton A realistic novel of Michigan Farm CREED bored and 'ired and cynical mere is no ebullience here, nor Is there any mellowness or profundity. For our part, "The Great Gatsby" might Just as well be called "Ten Nights on Long Island." say. James Joyce, are fruits pluck- i ed from very different branches.

The morals of the Ausustan aire are now as obsolete as the patriotic jingoism of Victoria's day. Romance lone since pave way to real- i Ism. and now realism seems to be giving way to romance but not to the same fainting, sighing ro- mance hich young Werther sir- rowed to make fashionable. But do not external thlnns change life. 2.no BURNED EVIDENCE James Prlmman.

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