ALTHOUGH publishers have cut their lists down 40 per cent since the expansive days of ’29, their concentration of ‘big’ books for the Christmas trade still gives to the bewildered buyer an impression of altogether too much to read — and to the winded reviewer the feeling that though he reads as he runs he never will catch up with the procession of colorful new titles. We shall have to postpone till the next issue our discussion of William Faulkner’s extraordinary novel, Light in August. Nor have we space for any more than mention of Sherwood Anderson’s Southern novel, Beyond Desire, or the harrowing account of Moscow in 1917, Lances Down, by that onetime Polish Lancer, Richard Boleslavski. We look forward to reading Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow, by Carl Sandburg, and that monumental biography of Porfirio Diaz which Carleton Beals, who knows Mexico inside and out, has been working on these past two years. But these must wait.
Riverhead, by Robert Hillyer (Knopf, $2.50), marks the first appearance of a poet in fiction. This New England narrative is decidedly off the beaten track; its lucidity is nicely balanced by the fantastic; there is an undertone of allegory which, lest you take it too seriously, suddenly gives way to mockery; there is satire which is at its best when social, as for instance at Mrs. Cogswell’s dinner party; and there is a charming love scene in a canoe built for two. A fresh concoction to be taken lightly by those who enjoy deft, capricious prose and who will give poetic license to a theme never intended for realistic construction.
In his new novel, Flowering Wilderness (Scribners, $2.50), published this Armistice Day, it strikes me that John Galsworthy is repairing the fences of Mr. Kipling laid low by Gandhi and other anti-imperialists. An English poet, wandering in the East, is captured by a fanatic and saves his life only by embracing Mohammedanism; he returns to England apparently unashamed: publishes a long poem crystallizing his experience, and falls in love. At this point Mr. Galsworthy rallies the relatives of the girl in question — the retired generals, the country aristocracy, the London Clubmen. To have done what Wilfred Desert did was to flout the Services, to disgrace England ’in the bazaars.’ No matter if he was an atheist, and so dodged the pistol ironically; the England which Mr. Galsworthy arouses holds him for a self-confessed coward and casts him out.
The social portrait of London to-day is drawn with that fidelity in small things which Mr. Galsworthy paints so brilliantly. Dinny Cherrell, the troubled fiancée, is a darling; ‘Foch,’ her spaniel, is one of the world’s best. But as the delineation of an attitude of mind this story is marred by too great stress, by an almost total absence of humor, and by a waning power of sympathy (a rare weakness in this author’s works). I personally feel that the situation in which Galsworthy places the poet is altogether too presumptuous, and that the hue and cry which pursue him are too theatrical for belief. This I say reluctantly and with the allowance that an English generation older than mine may find in this novel the truth and stricture that we need.
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