EARLY STRUGGLES

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 154, 27 December 1924, Page 17

EARLY STRUGGLES

THE CASE OF ZANE GREY.

Zane Grey, the American novelist, who is as pbpular in Australia and New Zealand ;. as in his native land is said, to be coming to New Zealand to fish. He has a lovely homo at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California. He is. an instance of a man determined to succeed as a novelist, but at the outset he experienced most dia-heartening-.circumstances. With a,strong belief in his own possibilities, Mr Grey gave up his previous occupation, and removed to the country where for five years he worked; faithfully ■on fiction, only to receive rebuffs from all the pub! lishers to whom he sumitted his work. Hi., this period only one story, "Betty /ane, '.a,httle tale of one of his ancestors,^ appeared in print and he publislied. that at .his own expense. It was Betty however, that encouraged Colonol G. J. J ones , a famous Western-character widely known as Buffalo Jones, Ho take him into Buckskin i'orest, on the north rim of the Grand Canyon,, for .the purpose of gathering material for "The Last of the Plainsmen, a book that told of the experiences of the man who represented a type of pioneer American that has almost dfsappeared Mr. Grey tells.with whafconhdence he offered the manuscript to Harper and Brothers,; and he describes his vmt to their offices, where he met Mr. Ripley Hitchcock, who for many years decided the fate of authors-—' nf AT w-fT u=hered into the presence of Mr. Hitchcock. He handed me my manuscript with a few words of regretand^ he concluded, 'I don't see anytliinc m this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction.' ■■ I was stunned I,could not speak a word, iaking-the manuscript, I went out. A terrible commotion laboured in my breast. When I reached the wide stairway my eyes began to grow dim, my mouth went dry, and my body became c#ld as ice.-

When I reached the corner of Pearl street, I leaned against a tall iron post mere my sight failed me entirely. I clutched the post with one arm and the manuscript with the other. That was the most exceedingly bitter moment of my life. ■

Suddenly, something marvellous happened to me, in my mind, to my eyeRighV to my breast. That moment should logically have been the end of my literary aspirations From every point of view I seemed lost. But someone inside me cried out: 'He does not know ! They are all wrong !' " Back in his country home, -where he was always sure of the sustaining faith of his young wife, Mr. Grey began his first romance of the west. Through a cold winter of extreme self-denial he worked on it and when he made his next visit to Harper and Bros, he took with him "The Heritage of- the Desert." which was gladly accepted.' Since then Mr. Grey has attained extraordinary success. ' '

Mr. J. H. G. Chappie's book, "The Divine Need of the Rebel," receives a notice in the literary supplement of "The Times." The writer of the paragraph lets Mr. Chappie off with the advice that he should read more and think more. *'He is a trenchant exponent of views revolutionary in both religion and politics, (says "The Times,") and he indicts, with vigour both the throne and the. altar—the future hoj>e of humanity lying, in his view, in the abolition of both.- New-Zealand cannot, he cries, become, under Imperialism, 'a land where the miseries of the dead past shall bo impossible." 'It can as a frta republic, but riot otherwise.' He hates militarism, capitalism, and what he calls 'gobbling Imperialism;' and his view of eugenics (derived, he tells us, from 'cii,' well born, and 'genos,' race) is summed up in his chapter heading 'Cradies or Cannons?' Russia, he.seems to think, has shown us that 'God's in His Heaven,' and 'there is a moral power in the universe, or this Divinity is in the mass, in the mind of mankind.' But despite his enthusiasm for the Bolsheviks, he is not himself a meterialist, and ho firmly believes in future life. The book is immature. Mr. Chappie needs more thought and reading. Among other tilings, the latter might save him from such statements as that the word 'Bible' comes 'from the Greek word biblios, which, by the way, is plural, and means books, or that 'the.word evil had a D put before it and became Devil.'- "

Taxes in Columbia, South America, aro so sjnali as to be non-existent. A modern hotel ; on the principal street of Bogota is valued at about 10,000 dol., and the owner is assessed at about 15 dol. a year. Wealthy -persons live in magnificent wellfurnished houses, while the sfcnist outsido is so hideously docrepid that il is almost impossible to proceed faster than ton miles an hour in a car. The streets are not drained for the most part, and in spring torrents pour through them, oausjnfj much detraction, •ooording to one traveller.