What London Is Reading

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 286, 3 December 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

What London Is Reading

8y... Charles Pilgrim

• could Hamlet's complaint that "the time is out of joint" be more justified than it is to-day. It is commonplace to say that the moral values and assurances of the last century have almost entirely disappeared. Men and women are distractedly trying to find something to cling | to. Tlii* distraction lias never ltoon more tensely shown than in a now American novel, "The Bridegroom Cometli" ((Jollancz), l>v Waldo Frank. Mr. Frank writes the story of two sisters. MaiV and Martha Donald, and of a {Treat deal of life in Xew York. His writing is dist .'acted and overstrained. We have Mary, an exponent of the religious, , mythical temperament, striving after a lasting, impersonal faith. Martha is presented to us as one of those women 1 for whom personal love is enough. She loves and marries a successful bootlegger, whom she adores with a doglike 1 devotion. When the bootlegger is shot ) she commits suicide. That is all her life, i Hut Mary is not so simple. She begins 1 in ardent Christianity, passes through ■ experiments in sex and winds up in an attempt to find all she wants in ;i reeoni ciliation <>f Christian and Marxian i Communism. * Obviously, the author ln'licves himself ' to have a strong Communist and Left ' Wing message for the world. But all 1 his novel conveys is a realistic impression of that earnest uncertainty which is torturing the mind of so many strong young people to-day. For this reason, if for this reason alone, the book is worth reading. The Pkople's Conductor .Sir Henry J. Wood, who has travelled with his baton to conduct orchestras all over the world, has just celebrated his , juhilee as a musician. Very properly he has written an autobiographical work in "My Life of Music - ' ((io4lauc/.). Sir Henry has clearly felt that a musician is popularly estimated as a musician and not as a private person in his home. The pages of this 4>ook are sprinkled with interesting and amusing anecdotes about other musicians or notable persons who more or less directly have found contact in the musical world. There is no boasting in the soul of Sir Henrv Wood, but his simple narrative showVbeyond doubt that the British public and the public far beyond Great Britain owe

him an enormous del>t of gratitude. He has been a tireless worker aiwl pioneer. It has been his mission to make known the works of new composers and he has carried his mission with liim wherever lie has gone. On Foot Mr. J. B. Morton is. known to a multitude of liewspajxr readers as '"Beachcomber." But he has a sterner and solider "personality. This personality comes out in "Pvrenean" (Longmans). •It would not he too much to say that this will l>e treasured as a literary masterpiece to he set beside the best of Hilaire Belloc. Mr. Morton gives us an account of a walking tour which, as a young man, lie took through the Pyrenees. He walked from Roussillon by .devious and dangerous paths into Spain and back to France and St. .Jean <le Lux. As he writes the story of this walk, lie shows that walking is the only way to go. He shows, too. a wonderful power of observation and a full store of historical knowledge. He walked with gusto and he writes with gusto. Characteristically, he airs his prejudices against many things in the modern world. It is J. B. Morton all the way, and he is a splendid companion.