Books: New Books: Sep. 22, 1924

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Occasionally an author really shoots across the sky with all the brilliance and success of a comet. Such an author, it seems to me, is Michael Arlen (Dikran Kuyunijian—American spelling). You may like his books—or they may annoy you. At least they are arresting; they have caused a sensation in England and are rapidly becoming the thing to talk of in America.

Rapidly, we are coming into a wave of the purely artificial. Wasn't this inevitable after the muddy baths of realism and naturalism into which we were plunged of late? It is the crisp phrase, the daring image, the subtly concealed idea that demands our atten-tion—and Arlen, with none of the prurient phrases of Van Vechten nor the difficult nuances of Huxley, is like to become the Harold Bell Wright of the hypersophisticated.

Arlen's life is semidetached, like his characters in These Charming People and The Green Hat. He has a gesture of romance, even in the accident of birth. Is it not strange that so many foreigners bring to the English lan- guage a style that, while thoroughly English, has a touch of color in world-grouping that makes it richer than much purely native writing? Arlen was born on the Danube and moved to England when he was quite young. He went to school fitfully, was educated partly in Switzerland, came back to London and was exceedingly gay. He danced, dined, traveled and indulged in some quiet writing. That he takes his writing lightly is not true. He has been known to destroy a novel that he did not believe to be up to his standard. Only think of that—destroying a novel!

I have never met Mr. Arlen; but he is arriving presently (in November, I think) in America. I shall meet him with pleasure and expect to be destroyed immediately by an epigram!

J.F.