Little Man, What Now?
by (Simon and Schuster, $2.50) is one of the finest and most heartening books of the year. It has an epic quality not easily discernible in its somewhat oversimplified, shorn, staccato style, but irrevocably, insistently uppermost. The figures of Johannes Pinneberg and of Bunny, his wife, are epic figures, and their story the epic of the heroic unemployed all over a suffering world. It may be more true to call the book an epic of the human spirit, of its resiliency and humor which flower not only in eternal hope, but in the eternal capacity for happiness in something tangible on this earth.
Indeed, the atmosphere, the spirit, the light streaming over and through these terse, objective, simple pages, transcend the story itself, so that one does not think primarily of manner or even of matter, excellent as is the first and all-engrossing as is the second. One knows that the dialogue is superb, and congratulates Eric Sutton, the translator; that the characterization is swift and sure and dependent not so much Upon the author as upon the persons themselves; that the incidents such as those of the dressing table and the baby’s tooth are in themselves admirable; and yet these singly somehow play a modest part to that which together they create— the unextinguishable spirit of the book horn of the unextinguishable love of two ordinary yet. extraordinary human beings, none too good, surely none too bright! Not does the author need to acquaint us through his own words with his notions, his ideas, his ideals. For he has chosen that more difficult but better part: to let his people have their way with him, to lead him whithersoever they will.
MARY ELLEN CHASE