SOME of my New York friends have been speaking in a large way about Serenade, the new novel by James M. Cain (Knopf, $2.50). Serenade is, if you will excuse the pun, a grown-up fairy tale. It is written by one of the shocker school, one of the well-trained colloquial novelists who use an effect for exactly what it. is worth and who know at precisely what moment the text is going to jump up and hit the reader in the eye.
Serenade has to do with an American singer, a barytone who studied the opera with some success in Europe until he met an American Prince Charming who was so charming that the singer lost ambition and his voice. Down on his luck, the singer his name is John Howard Sharp— returns to this country, drifts on to Mexico, and has so lost hold of himself that he is about to hire out. as a bouncer in a house of prostitution. But at this point he falls in love with a big, beautiful Mexican doll. I bey spend an unconventional week-end in a near-by church, and as a result John Howard Sharp discovers that he can sing again. From then on, his rise is meteoric. He goes through Hollywood, through the Metropolitan, through the radio world like a rocket, always carrying with him his big, dumb Mexican, Then, just as the brothers Grimm would have it, he meets Prince Charming again, who tries to put him back to sleep.
The story is told in an easy, conversational patter, and the musical details have a kind of rhinestone glitter. But seriously I doubt if a more improbable novel has appeared since Beverly of Graustark. Could any Prince Charming so control the universe as Winston Hawes? Could any resourceful man sink as low as Mr. Sharp does in Mexico? And do tell me what the singer and his doll found to talk about in those long hours in Hollywood and New York before the lights went out! Why, this is Richard Harding Davis made up with mascara and evil-smelling lipstick. To have such a book applauded and applauded by the Gothamites proves, I suppose, that there still are ways to fool a city slicker.
