SURGEON TURNED AUTHOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22819, 28 August 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

SURGEON TURNED AUTHOR

Dr. Cronin's New Novel

A LONDON writer expresses the opinion that Dr. A. J. Cronin's new novel "The Citadel," is partly autobiographical. There are certain similarities, he states, in the careers of Dr. Cronin and his hero. Readers may therefore be interested to have a few details about Dr. Cronin's life before {hev start on the book. ' . Ho was .born in the littlo Dumbartonshir© village of Cardross in 1896, and christened Archibald Joseph. Ho was an only child, and his education began at the village school. In 1914 ho entered Glasgow University, served in the R.N.V.R. during the War as a Surgeon-Sub-Lieutenant, and graduated M.B. and Ch.B. in 1919. Ho took two hospital appointments and in 1921 ,went into practice in South "Wales. In 1924 he became a Medical Inspector of Mines and personally inspected over five hundred collieries.

"I had sometimes," Dr. Cronin savs, •"to crawl on my hands and knees—and tho mine .no more than a rabbit warren, dripping water, jagged rocks above it—half a mile from tho pit shaft." In 1926 he began to practise in London. In tho spring of 1930 ho had a breakdown, and in Juno lie went with his wife and two sons to a farm on the chores -of Loch Fyne near Inveraray. Famous "Hatter's Castle" A novel had been in his mind for Borne time, and in three months he had finished it. This was his famous "Hatter's Castle." It made his name and turned him from a doctor into an author. "The Citadel," itis stated, is a direct exploitation of his specialist knowledge. It is a book about a doctor, and has an autobiographical ring. We meet a young Scotsman who has just taken his certificate and is starting as assistant- to a doctor in a Welsh mining tbwn. He finds that his chief is paralysed, and that all the work falls to the assistant. Realism begins on tho first page; people, places, weather, things and conditions—all are presented with a clear, calm directness which commands the reader's interest. It is as individualised as life itself, and tho medium of art and the writer's personality aro almost eliminated. Almost, but not quite. For soon wo discover tho benevolence of the author, and hi's hard-won philosophy, forged by compassion on the anvil of professional experience. He has seen most intimately the suffering of men and women, and how it has been aggravated by their folly, ignorance, and pretensions. He has seen how his own profession, a universe in miniature, is built up of two kinds of vitality, service oh the one hand, and selfish fear on the other.

Without over-simplification of types or issues, he has shown how a doctor cannot follow the spirit, of mammon and Temain a real doctor. His "hero, young Andrew. Manson, has a grand beginning, finding both a sense of vocation, and a wife who believes_ in-' it and devotes herself to lxini and'his great .work: Into Harley Street "She succeeds almost too well, for ho attracts notice, his work is rewarded, and .soon he sets up in London, with a practice that grows and carries him into Harley Street. There he finds the temptation of and tho slow corruption of wealth:—' And yet, though he tried very hard to convince - himself, his heart was not in the work. He could not recapture the spontaneous. enthusiasm of his inhalation investigations. He had far too much upon his mind, too many important cases in his practice," to be ablo to concentrate upon obscure signs which might not even exist. No one knew better. than ho how long it took' to examine a case properly. And he was always in a hurry.

Those fatal last words: how universal they are. The hurry which is alienation,; dishonesty, spiritual death. Does not every writer know it, every housewife, every worker? Andrew is saved. But he has to pay a heavy price. Two major disasters converge upon him simultaneously, and he is deprived of the two threads by which he has made his way along tho dark tunnel of life. Now ho must go alone, much more warily, more slowly. Wo leave him in the darkness, gathering himself up for lonely journey. Tho pangs of this second-birth havo been terrible; but he has submitted with humility, realising that "unless ye be born again . . ." "The Citadel" is a'valuable book. It is informed by wisdom and nobility. "The Citadel," by Dr. A. J. Cronin. XGollancz.).