A LITERARY LOG

Southland Times, Issue 21419, 13 June 1931, Page 11

A LITERARY LOG

ROLLED BY

IOTA.

BOOKS ON THE TABLE

“My Thirty Year's War” .. .. (Margaret Anderson) “The Finest Thing” (Lewis Cox) “Green Talons” (Gavin Holt)

AT WAR WITH REALITY.

The Little Review’s Founder.

One can read Margaret Anderson’s "My 30 Years War” with steady joy. and under stand how full of bunk are most of the American debunkers, how much unreality passes in the world for reality and keeps artists away from Art. Margaret Anderson appears as a foe of reality, but she has created her own war by creating a foe which exists chiefly in her imagination, so that until she can imagine her foe defeated she cannot acclaim her victory. Probably the lethargy of old age will give her time to appreciate the reality of regrets. Her book is the story of a modern woman’s effort to do something. She presents herself as a female of unusual persistence, who clung as stubbornly to her literary ideas as she had to the childish idea that “ball” was spelt with an “o” instead of an “a.” Like many others, Margaret Anderson sought simplicity and found it. by the simple process of imagining things to be what she wanted or at other times elevating molehills into mountains by the easy method of thoughtcreation. Of course, if you really think there is a mountain in your path, it is a mountain for the nonce, mole-hill or clear board, and until some kind matter-of-fact, earthly soul can show you there is none by walking through the place where it ought to be, it remains to be surmounted or shovelled away by faith. One is almost tempted to examine the proposition further. Faith will move mountains, we are told, but is the faith still real if it move mountains that are not? Is it possible that are raised for the purpose of proving faith? In childhood this mountain-making business is known to exist, known to the adults, who have mountains of their own and do not pause to wonder if they are real or thought-stuff. Margaret Anderson’s realities, if one is to judge her by her book, were often of this thought-stuff, but it is rather difficult because except in the presentation of meagre facts Margaret Anderson has not given us the real Margaret Anderson. She has reticence and, unlike the Mannin brigade, spares us intimacies intended to shock, but she is unfair to Margaret Anderson, presenting her to us as something rather less attractive than she really is. Having decided to fight realities, she now is convinced she has fought realities, and therefore, she is the sort of veteran she thinks should emerge from the war. One thing about the group to which she belongs invariably surprises me. They rush whooping for simplicity, and, therefore, run their dialogue without quotation marks. What do they gain outside of inward satisfaction at breaking from a convention. But it is a printer’s convention and it is useful. The struggle for simplicity and art merely makes it more difficult to read their stuff. Ido not recall one book in which the omission of quotation marks has not led to momentary confusion in the dialogue passages—confusion as to which character is speaking—and I defy anyone of the anti-quotation markers to demonstrate any advantage to them or me in that. And Margaret Anderson uses quotation marks to enclose titles!

This book would be of absorbing interest if Margaret Anderson did not appear at all, because it takes us into the American world of letters, into the whirl of the arty groups in Chicago, New York and in Paris, making contact with men who are known the world over. Margaret Anderson was a young lady who entered journalism in Chicago against the wishes of her family. She was not an artist with a mission—but a girl eager to be like Clara Laughlin, the literary editor of a religious weekly called the Interior. Actually she became Margaret Anderson, who, after writing brilliant slashing criticisms of books she hadn’t read, emerged to establish the Little Review, a publication which did an immensely fine work for the revolutionaries until it was burnt at the stake for hitching its wagonette to the maddening madness of James Joyce, that exploiter of “new prose” whose psychology is as much bunk as his literary method. It is a pity that the Little Review should have gone to martyrdom for such a cause as “Ulysses,” but Margaret Anderson is quite satisfied—so that’s that. Her life with the Little Review was precarious and exciting. She was caught up youthfully in the thrilling .useless whirl of anarchism and joined forces with Emma Goldman, who seems to have found their friendship useful. But having freed herself of those people who talk because they don’t want to work, she developed. At all times Margaret Anderson was attractive—on that fact she is unblushingly positive, and she used her attractiveness without a twinge of conscience to help along the Little Review—it was all for the Cause of the "new prose”—the ultimate ,of which .seems to be found in the idiotisims of Gertrude Stein and the jumblings of Joyce. She met dozens of the literary fellows, and she pins them in her book, and does it effectively even where the claws push through. What a relief to read an Anderson after Mannin, although the pair have one of two things in common. But Margaret is a healthier warrior, and a better friend of truth. But, like Ethel Mannin, feline as well as feminine. In these pages one sees at close quarters Edgar Lee Masters, Ben Hecht, the Floy DeUs, Scott Fitzgerald, Dreiser, with his twirling handkerchief, Ernest Hemingway, the amorist, Rupert Brooke, Carl Sandburg, Jane Heap, the weird, strong partner, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Joyce, Jem Cocteau, that insufferable poseur, and a host of others. For the most part she is kind but not always. On the other hand she is not petty, and she is observant. Thirty years of war is a long time, but one can see that Margaret Anderson loved it all—whatever she was as a warrior, she is a happy veteran and it really doesn’t matter what she fought for—she made a good fight of it, and she came through with laurels, with a few thanks to Jane Heap, that better soldier—because strictly between ourselves Margaret was physically lazy and mentally fond of ease. She loved to talk for the sake of talking—that is the lazy mind, especially when there are pen and paper at hand to use. In spite of the Little Review, Margaret Anderson was lazy, and she could have saved that part of the literary circus of the United States if she had been more persistent in her effort, even if she remained as stubborn in her ideas. But there, the book is on the table, and it is filled with people all of them interesting. Go to it. “My Thitry Years’ War” is published by Messrs A. A. Knopf, London.

BY THE BAY OF BISCAY. Into the lives of John and Pamela Dely, into their honeymoon is projected the rich personality of Cyrus B. Pladsom, an American bachelor millionaire with expensive and catholic tastes in women. Pamela is something new in his experience and he sets out to direct circumstance so that jealousy and disappointment may throw her into his arms. The opportunity seems to promise results. John and Pamela are very much in love, though tormented a little by the knowledge that both are the products of unions shattered by divorce. John’s divorced parents seem to have a habit of meeting quite often, and one of these fugitive meetings occurs at Biarritz, the headquarters of this story, "The Finest Thing,” by Lewis Cox. Interest is added to the scene by the use of motorcars to take the reader into the Basque country in northern Spain. The author deals effectively with scenes and people in this portion of Europe, especially with these independent Spaniards. Yvonne Etonian, a Paris mannequin of dubious morals, is employed by Cyrus to entangle John so that her faith in him may be broken down. It is a long job, but sometimes exciting and the distance it goes toward the achievement of its purpose is a matter for the reader to discover for himself. Lewis Cox has turned out an excellent novel, quite different from "Arab,” but in its way equally interesting.

“The Finest Thing” is published by Messrs Mills and Boon Ltd., London, whence came by copy.

WELCOME REAPPEARANCES.

Gavin Holt’s "Green Talons” has been included in the Hodder and Stoughton reprints. It is a first-class thriller with Professor Bastion as the principal figure. Every one of the Bastion detective stories has added to the reputation of the author, and in this excellent company “Green Talons” has a place in the front rank. It is just the book for travellers and for those who like exciting yarns on windy nights. When she wrote "The Forerunners,” Annie S. Swan produced a novel rather away from her usual line, both in theme and in plan, but it was one of her most important and one of her most popular, so that its re'-appearance in cheap form is welcome. It is a story in three parts, dealing with three generations of a family, and carrying the story from the days of the Covenanters down to the period of the Great War. In each generation the family fought stoutly for its faith and suffered for its courage. The two first parts supply the foundation for the modern portion in which the old spiritual fire flares up again. The book is very human, and it tells a noble story.

LONDON’S TASTE.

The following were the books in demand in London early in May: Fiction.—Naomi Royde-Smith’s “The Delicate Situation” (Gollancz); M. Barnard Eldershaw’s “Green Memory” (Harrap); Susan Glaspell’s “Ambrose Holt and Family” (Gollancz); J. J. Connington’s “The Boat House Riddle” (Gollancz).

Miscellaneous.—Andre Siegfried’s “England Crisis” (Cape) ; Eric Muspratt’s “My South Sea Island” (Hopkinson) ; J. Middleton Murray’s “Son of Woman” (Cape); “Everyman’s Encyclopaedia” (Vols. 1 and 2), (Dent.)

SAWDUST.

A novel entitled “Gin and Bitters” described as a parody of Somerset Maugham’s "Cakes and Ale,” and written to “avenge” Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole, who are supposed to be attacked in Mr Maugham’s book, has appeared in New York. It is stated that the nom de plume of the author, “A. Riposte,” hides the identity of a wellknown English novelist. Mrs E. W. Savi, who has issued a new novel called “Idol Worship,” writes about Indian life from first-hand knowledge. She was married at eighteen and spent the next twelve years of her life in Bengal, at Udhua Nullah, on the Ganges. And another twelve years passed before she finally returned to England. It is reported from Nice that Mrs D. H. Lawrence, widow of the famous author, intends to return to the ranch in New Mexico where she and her husband lived for several years. It Is also stated that Mr Lawrence’s body buried near Nice, will be exhumed and reinterred in New Mexico. A first edition of George Gissmg’s “Workers in the Dawn,” published in 1880, fetched £llB at a recent London sale. Canon Hannay (“George A. Birmingham”) and J. F. W. Hannay are not the only father and son to publish books recently on the same day. Sir Leonard Hill, the distinguished physiologist, and his son, who writes under the name of Marcus Magill, did the same thing. Sir Leonard’s was a book of fairy stories, ‘The Monkey. Moo Book,” and Mr Magill’s a “thriller’’ entitled “Murder Out of Tune.” Both write only in their spare time, Mr Magill being an accountant.

John Galsworthy has returned to London after an absence of several months in the United States. He is engaged on a sequel to his new novel, “The Maid in Waiting.” John Lane hopes to publish the biography of Marshall Lyautey, which Andre Maurois has written, towards the end of June.

Miss Ena Limebeer, the author of a new novel, “Market Town/’ was at one time a school-mistress in a small town in Bedfordshire. She was born in London thirtythree years ago, and comes of a Devonshire family of Huguenot descent. In private life she is Mrs David Metrany. 'Bernard Shaw is likely to write a preface for the correspondence between him and Ellen Terry, which we are to have in the autumn. When Mr Shaw sits down to a preface, it generally ends as a book in itself, and this preface will be interesting as well as long. Meanwhile Constable is getting out “The Omnibus Shaw,” a single volume containing thirty-nine plays. There will be another novel soon by Frau Baum, who had so great a success with "Grand Hotel.” Mr Geoffrey Bles has already received the manuscript, and he thinks it promises to be at least as fine a novel as its predecessor The scene is laid in a little, old-fashioned German town where, one evening, three untisual people arrive in a car, after an accident, and they are the chief characters.