The Fruits of the Earth
by. Knopf, $3.00.
At regular intervals during the past few years, there has appeared some book by André Gide which should have been published in English years ago. The Fruits of the Earth was the fruit of a voyage to North Africa in 1893. The Arab world appeared to Gide a terrestrial paradise, and he wrote his book in a mood of great exaltation. It is a prose poem on the theme “exuberance is beauty”; a rebellious and exaggerated affirmation of the senses which contains passages of great beauty. At the conclusion Gide, characteristically, advises the imaginary disciple he has been apostrophizing to “throw away this book” — other attitudes towards life are equally valid.