THE NEW BOOKS

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 20 (Supplement)

THE NEW BOOKS

THE SUPERMAN. From The Inside. “ONCE WE HAD A CHILD.” By Hans Fallada (Putnam). Admirers of Hans Fallada’s earlier novels will get rather a shock at this one. Both “Little Man, What Now?” and “Who Once Eats Out of the Tin Bowl” dealt with those who go to the wall in modern society; with those little, shrinking figures who creep, buffeted by Fate, into their predestined corners. In both those books the dominant notes were sympathy, understanding and pity. But his latest hero is a different type altogether. He certainly does not shrink: and he is far more buffeting than buffeted. He is strong, ruthless and self-centred; he brushes aside everybody whose will is opposed to his. “I advise you,” he writes to his fiancee, “to think very carefully over what you mean to do. Marriage with me is not likely to be pleasant. A girl like you is bound to suffer for marrying a man like me. I foresee how bitterly disappointed you will be, but how it will end I simply cannot tell.” But when, at the last moment, the girl seems inclined to agree with him, he calmly over-rides her. “As regards your suggestion that we should not marry, in the last six years I have gradually got .used to the idea. I could not get another girl at such short notice, so I shall come on Saturday as arranged. Yours, Hannes.”

This is the authentic note of the superman of Carlyle and SchopenI hauer. At the very least, it is the cave-man hero of conventional romance. We are given a full-length portrait, starting from childhood, and done from the inside. Hannes is perhaps a little larger than life: but he is consistently, and on the whole convincingly drawn. The surprising thing i is that we do not react to hian as we j ought to react to a superman. That 1 is to say, we neither hate him nor adulate him. We admire some of his qualities and dislike others; and in the end our dominant feelings are sympathy, and understanding, and pity. iSo that the superman turns out to be an authentic Fallada hero after all. For all his ruthlessness and all his strength, we come to see him as just another tragic little figure striving to make his way in an unsympathetic world. But the novel is more than a mere character sketch, more even than an expression of humanitarianism. There is also a background; and for English readers it is a grotesque and rather fascinating background. For Hannes was born on the island of Rugen, off the coast of Pomerania. It is a wild and gloomy countryside: “in such a climate,” says the author, “a man either gets to brooding and seeing ghosts, or he amuses himself and his neighbours by the buzzing of the bees that he keeps in his bonnet.” The bees had buzzed furiously in the bonnets of Hannes’ forbears; and the first part of the book re-tells the tales that were told concerning them. There was one, for instance, who deliberately chained himself to his bed and allowed the rats to gnaw him to death. These weird stories are told with force and skill; and the result is the building up of an atmosphere which, though difficult to describe, is unmistakeably powerful. Again, there are the contemporary inhabitants of the island. We are told a good deal about these. Some of them are almost as eccentric as the hero's ancestors: and they are all revealed in the Fallada manner, from the inside, and with full understanding and sympathy Altogether, this novel is not unworthy of its author. The English reader will probably like it less than

THE LIGHT OF REASON. Stimulating Essays. "IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS.” By Bertrand Russell (Allen and Unwin.) The chief charm of Bertrand Russell is his lucid common sense. In this .volume, as in “Sceptical Essays,”, it is his object to turn on current social and political problems the searchlight of calm and logical thought. This must of course remain to some extent an unattainable ideal. None of us can consider the problems of the present quite as dispassionately as we can discuss the decline of the Roman Empire. Lord Russell,, though he strives hard to be scientific, Would be the last to deny that the opinions expressed in these essays are largely coloured by the peculiarities of his personal viewpoint. At the same time, he comes perhaps closer than any other writer to the impersonality and impartiality at which he aims. The result is that the reader is continually being surprised, if not shocked, by his conclusions, and yet convinced by the logic of his arguments. This is no doubt for us; and it is certainly exciting. For instance, few readers would at first thought agree with the theme of the title essay, that the modern worship of industriousness is stupid and socially harmful. Yet consider the inconsistencies to which it leads. “Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad .... The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work . . . Seriousminded persons are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema. But all the work that goes to producing a cinema is respectable, because it is work, and because it brings a money profit.” Perhaps you think that you can find flaws in this argument. But that is because you have not heard the full strength of Lord Russell’s case : and you can only do that by reading the whole essay. Succeeding essays deal with Fascism, Communism and Socialism. Fascism is analysed and shown to arise partly from a distrust of democracy, partly from the worship of the superman as advocated by Nietzsche, Carlyle and others, and partly from the relaxing hold of certain classes upon economic power. The dangers of the undemocratic aspects of Communism are fully emphasised; but finally Lord Russell comes down very definitely on the side of Socialism. The essay in which he puts the case for Socialism is an admirable example of the best sort of propaganda: clear, dispassionate, and perfectly fair. • Other essays discuss such subjects as the nature of western civilisation, comets, the chance of the human race being vanquished by insects, and the human soul. All of them, serious and trivial, are entertainingly treated. Humour, since it demands a sense of proportion, is perhaps most common among the clearest thinkers. It is the combination of the two in Bei:trand Russell that has made him one of our foremost writers. —D.H.M.

its predecessors: it is too much off the beaten track of our experience. And, apart from that, there are touches here and there that are hardly likely to be true to anyone’s experience. But the quality of the writing, and the narrative power in particular, is undeniable.

—D.H.M,