PORTRAITS OF NOVELISTS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27149, 19 September 1953, Page 3

PORTRAITS OF NOVELISTS

J ’ Esquire. A Portrait Form ® f • Novel. By Philip Hamburger. Robert Hale. 114 pp. * 9 S Son „ By Roger Lancelyn Oreen. Max Parrish. 266 pp. Call w I Ju E w’ e r i £” <!e - By Erskine Caldwell. Hutchinson. 160 pp. Ph?fF rin A ed om the “ New Yorker,” Philip Hamburger’s portrait of che successful American novelist J. P Mard. “ an extremely smooth and “f* 1 Piece of writing. It is written m Marquand s own manner and reads ar ‘ y one of his own 29 "‘hittinv an^ Seri J ls , which have been g tte bookstores” approximately once every two years ever t> I^ te Geor B r ' Apley" won the Pulitzer Prize m 1938. The reconstruction of Marquand’s personality is in a sense not difficult to do, for he is a protagonist in all his books and “S. a , c , tual struggles with his father. W 1 u-a- B° s t on , poverty and ambition are well documented. But Ssi- in ri ght and understanding that Fnilip Hamburger puts into this study make it outstanding even, among the many excellent “profiles” he has written for the “New Yorker.” His * s to take the present successful figure of Marquand and place him in the position of being interviewed by a young journalist, whose gauche and conventional questions set the novelist to meditating on his own life and travelling again in memory over the road he has come. Scenes of the pressent alternate with the past; at one moment we are present at a meeting of the Book-of-the-Month Club judges (a twenty thousand dollar a year job) with attendant luxuries, at another back at the old yellow home at the mill where Marquand’s days began, and the whole builds up to a wonderfully full many-faceted account of the authors life. The facts are all true i and the interpretation of Marquand’s i complex character is as convincing as lit is daring and perceptive. I A. E. W. Mason was one of the outstanding storytellers of his time. It is not surprising therefore that his own life should have been a rich and varied one from which he could draw material at will for his short stories, novels and plays. Educated at Dulwich College and Trinity, Oxford, Mason began earning his living on the stage before changing to the writing of novels. Success was not -long in coming. His second novel, “The Courtship of Morris Buckler,” took the public by storm and opened the doors of the literary world to him and with them the doors of society as well. His friendships grew and increased, he began to travel widely and from experiences abroad produced “The Four Feathers” and “Fire .Over England." He took to politics and was returned as member for Coventry, but feeling keenly the futility, pettiness and lack, of individuality in party politics turned to the stage once more, this time as a playwright. The 1914-18 war found him in the secret service. He left no record of his duties, other than three short stories of secret service work in the Mediterranean. After the war, a further period of successful writing left him in ill-health, seeking more than anything for a home and roots, for he had no family. He had travelled too much and had left it too late in life to settle down. A new outlet soon turned up in the medium of the film. With the filming of his books Mason’s income increased considerably. but by then he was an old and a sick man. 111-health dogged him until in November. 1948, he died. Little has been written about Mason either critically or biographically. He left little material about himself; but he had a host of friends. Frojn these friends and from extracts of Mason’s books Mr Green has pieced together a very interesting picture, not only of Mason but of the time in which he lived.

“A frank, personal narrative by the author of ‘Tobacco Road’ ” is the enticing legend inscribed on the dust-jacket of Erskine Caldwell’s autobiography, but readers hoping for revelations will be disappointed. This bare, restrained and purely factual narrative about the life of the well-known and highly successful American novelist and playwright might just as Well have been written by someone else for all it tells of Mr Caldwell’s inner life or feelings, or even of his real opinions about anything but inessential matters. Certainly, seen from the outside only, there has been enough to write about in so varied a career. Brought up as the son of a pastor of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church in the “Tobacco Road country” of East Georgia, Caldwell has been everything from millhand, chauffeur and milkman to journalist, reviewer and successful writer. And his career has provided plenty of anecdotes which, of course, he tells well. But there is no attempt in this book to sort any meaning out of his experience: in fact, there seems to be a cautious and timid veering away from everyth Frig but “safe” material details and generally acceptable and far from profound statements about his aims as a writer and his sympathy for the underdog.