Books: New Books: Sep. 22, 1924

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

THE DARK CLOUD—Thomas Boyd— Scribners ($2.00). Because the skipper used to lick him, Hugh Turner ran away from his ship at Quebec, got down to Detroit by river. He met a man named Durham who was a gambler and decent and who in his spare moments punched tickets on the Under- ground Railway, the Negroes' accommodation train. They made out pretty well together, keeping away from Federal officers, until one day a Southern gentleman shot Durham in a card game. After that Hugh shipped on the Bald Eagle with Captain Hargusson and went up and down the Mississippi. That is about all. Mark Twain, conjurer, used to tell about the Mississippi; and every page or two, he would come out from behind his screen and have a cigar with the reader—or a drink, maybe. Mr. Boyd does not use tobacco, in a literary way. His style is as impersonal as the river, and as grave. But, on that unlaughing surface, a boat is reflected, slipping down the river under a moon like a golden poker chip; people on board eating, drinking, fighting, making love—ladies in lace pantaloons—bad men with aces in their cuffs—all dead, long ago.

KEEPING THE PEACE — Gouverneur Morris — Scribners ($2.00). Edward Eaton's maternal parent was known in her family as "dear Mother." She was a sweet, soft and pious woman, whose sweetness drove one son to follow the sea, whose softness bred moral degeneracy in another, whose piety did its best to force Edward, an artist of sorts, into the clergy. This jauntily unpleasant book is an attack upon a type of woman to which the term Victorian has often been applied, always inaccurately, since lust, ignorance and bigotry are not the peculiar property of any particular period.

PALLIETER — Felix Timmermans — Harper ($2.00). Bursting with healthy blood and full-blown appetites, Pallieter, simple, lighthearted Flemish farmer, wallows joyously in Life— snuffing its smells, slobbering over its flavors, smacking his thighs over its rich sensations. He swims naked at dawn in his river, cries over the beauties of sunsets and spring flowers, rides a huge mare bareback through a thunderstorm, rolls exulting in new snow on Christmas morning, devours gigantic meals, gulps down gallons of wine and other drinkables. The story—what there is of it—covers that year of Pallieter's life when he found Marieke, a rosy Rubens virgin, married her straightaway, had by her a lusty set of triplets, departed with her into the wide world "as the birds do and the wind." Suspense and tragedy are wholly absent from the book.

Author' Timmermans just shouts aloud, in an excess of good spirits, that life at Mother Nature's breast is a glutton's feast for body, mind and soul. It is grand philosophy, stirring tonic for city-pale people. Author Timmermans is Belgian, his gusto unfeigned. The illustrator, Anton Pieck, contributes fetching garnitures, one per page.

Michael Arlen

He Is the Harold Bell Wright of Sophisticates