NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17732, 7 April 1923, Page 13

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

AMERICA BY AN AMERICAN. When America entered the Great War she found it necessary to introduce herself to her new friends. Since her own Civil W;.r she had hardly been anything to European nations but a place in which men "got rich quick," and forgot in a year or two the land from which they came. So Mr Waldo Frank, among others, was given the task of explaining this "great big something" to France. The idea was that, in addition to official accounts sent through official channels, Franta should have something direct and ii.dividual, and Mr Frank says he was asked for his story (by FrenchmtJi themselves), not because he was as authority, but because it "seemed roa sonable to spice the mass of American conformist utterance abroad with a statement that could not even remotely be suspected of an official stana, " It is not recorded What kind of "an impression the book made on the people for whom it was first intended, but re-issued now for the whole world it_ leaves us cold and confused even with the glowing foreword by Mr Hugh Walpole. America is, of course, Sa big order for 250 pages, and Mr Frank gets his Continent in only by cutting away the material facts and concentrating on the spiritual. "For us of the younger generation, America is a promise and a dream," and it is a dream America that tho reader primarily gets. But he does not get it clearly, perhaps because dreams are so often rambling and obscure. There is a great deal of this kind of description: "America is yet in tho inchoate state where it has subjective meaning only. America is a complex of myriad lights playing upon myriad planes." It is just about as difficult to catch Mr Frank's dream there as it is in this further flash: "To bound it [this sprawling continent] ia to stifle it, to give it a definite character is to emasculate it, to offer it a specific voice is to strike it dumb." So we have Chicago as the City of Hope, "for the reason that there, Despair has simply not yet altogether won. Chicago is still fluent, still chaotic." But New York has "set." New York is "so perfectly Industrialism's flower that no flower is left." Fortunately, the chapters on the men and women of letters are more luminous than those on cities, and on culture in the abstract. Thoreau is lifted to his proper place as one of the greatest men America has so far known, while another chapter contains some suggestive remarks about Whitman. But. we should not like to think that America as a whole, or in detail, can be revealed only in such sentences as this: "The one-time hierarchy of values in the world is the hierarchy of consciousness." Those are the opening words of the chapter on America's most American poet, and a fair indication of the extraordinary lengths to which this unhumorous rhapsodist can go. "The New America" is by no means valueless, but it would nave been easier to read had it been written either in plain English or "pure" Americanese. (London: Jonathan, Cape. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.) . NOVELS. It is difficult to give an honest opinion of Miss May Sinclair's latest book, "Anne Severn and the Fieldings," which is also a fair opinion. When a novelist has once written a supremely good book further books are judged by that standard, and if we say now that "Anne Severn" is not as good as "Mary Olivier" we may give the impression that it is not a very good j book at all. That, however, is the very opposite of the impression wo i wish to give. "Anne Severn" is as far ahead of the ordinary novel as a first-class orchestra is ahead of a village band. The earlier chapters are masterly. Miss Sinclair depicts children of the cultivated middle class with a skill that is not equalled in contemporary fiction. Here also, as in "Mary Olivier" and "The Tree of Heaven," the central female character —heroine is not the proper word for her—is matchlessly drawn. But about halfway through the story the impression comes that the author is in difficulties. Characters have been created, and there is no way of keeping them true "to character, and the situation in which they have been set. Anne has been reared with three brothers, all of whom love her in a brotherly, and two ultimately in a f loverly way. She in turn loves all three as a sister, but one only, and not the most worthy, witha real passion. But, unfortunately, this one, in a mood little better than pique, though there is tenderness in it also, marries someone else, as worthy morally as Anne —and the Gordian knot is cut at last in a manner that suggests sheer desperation. Being as good as she is, Anne could not go happily off with another woman's husband —even though, realising that she is no longer first, the other woman urges her to go. Nor could the hus"band, whom suffering haa gradually changed from good-natured kindness to real unselfishness, suffer less going off like that than remaining. It is a remarkable achievement to have given to this quadrilateral problem in the first place —for we must not forget the other brother —so complete a suggestion of reality; but the way out is confusion. (London: Hutchinson and Co. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.)

Who is the author of "Jenjay Essenden"? Unless you know that yon cannot know who writes "Clair de Lune,"-and it is improbable that you can pet any very clear impression of the quality and style from a necessarily brief notice. The book is just goo.' enough to tempt a reviewer to cut it up, which means, of course, that it is almost sure to be eagerly read. There is much smart talk, a good deal about art and music, and a quite admirable picture in one place of a man who is brave enough to win an M.C., but too cowardly to play tho game at homo, mean- enough to be a bully, too mannerly to take advantage of a situation in which his rival could not compete with him on even terms. The story begins in London, but ends high among the Pyrenees, so that here also there is an attraction for those who like storm and tempest without to accompany violent turmoil within. But it is taking risks with a hero to have him soundly thrashed by hia brother-in-law, and we must leave it to each reader to say whether Evelyn survives the ordeal. (London: Constable and Co. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, for the Australasian Publishing Co.).