Two arguments of prime interest to the book-wise have been front-page news this season. First the question of obscenity in literature has been admirably defined by John M. Woolsey, United States District Judge, with special regard for Ulysses, by James Joyce. This legal vindication of Ulysses is the culmination of a protracted and stubborn struggle against the censors dating back to the victory over the New York Vice Society in the Mademoisell de Maupin case of 1922. Random House, who instituted and supported the proceedings, have now published the first American edition, including in the forematter Judge Woolsey’s enlightened decision and a special foreword by James Joyce outlining the history of his famous book. . . . Secondly, the license of an historical novelist has been set forth by Hervey Allen in his vigorous article, ‘The Sources of Anthony Adverse.’ which appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature for January 13, 1934. This essay, at once a comprehensive bibliography and an absorbing picture of the creative process, should be folded into every library copy of the novel.
Speaking of censors and their condemnation reminds me that the Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, have at last authorized the complete publication of Pepys’s Diary. Wheatley, you remember, used to employ those suggestive Victorian dots. As a forerunner to this edition we have this winter an excellent new bibliography, Samuel Pepys, the Man in the Making, by Arthur Bryant (Macmillan, $3.00). Now there are two difficulties in reading Sam Pepys: first, there is so much of him.— 1,300,000 words,— and secondly, the reader’s perpetual encounter with names that mean nothing. Both of these difficulties are overcome by Mr. Bryant, whose compact and cordial volume covers thirty-seven years of Pepys’s life. Here are Sam’s day-to-day adventures, often in his own words, but deriving warmth and clarity from the biographer’s touch. Here are accentuated Pepys’s gayety, his passionate curiosity, his perpetual good humor, his love of money and solid achievement — qualities, incidentally, which characterize some of the ablest men of our time. I found this a delightfully rewarding book.
By written word and, exceptionally, by word of mouth, good books of the past come down to us. The custom still persists of writing down the words of our oldest citizens, and if a man lives to be a hundred and still retains his senses we give his utterance an especial veneration. The Journey of the Flame, by Antonio de Fierro Blanco (Houghton Mifflin, $3.00), is the stormy story of Don Juan Obregon, born in Mexico, so it was said, in 1798. living on down to 1902, and known always — but very respectfully — as ‘The Flame’ because of his red hair. The story is told as he may have told it when he had passed the century mark, but the words have been transcribed and made legendary until what you have is a romantic autobiography rising from a foundation of fact. The Journey of the Flame is the story of the natural man and the sap rising in him. of his faith and his fights, of his donkey and his leather armor, of his regard for the Spanish dignitaries, of his recollection of the great Missions before the earthquake, of his superstitions and his zest. I can imagine that jaded apartment dwellers would find this book, with its unconquerable vitality, a sure restorative.
