NON-FICTION,FICTION: Melba

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IN A GERMAN PENSION—Katherine Mansfield— Knopf ($2). With this volume Katherine Mansfield's admirers complete the sheaf of sensitive writing that was confined, by her death three years ago, to five slender books of sketches and stories and one book of poems. It is her first book — a collection of miniatures written at 19 for the Athenaeum and published in book form in 1911, two years before she married John Middleton Murry, critic and editor. She later disowned what was for her a display of immaturity and youthful bitterness, refusing to capitalize, with a new edition in 1914, the odium into which Germany had fallen in her country. There is immaturity, there is bitterness, in her descriptions of thick-chopped Teutons at their meat, discussing their internal disorders, their women, their business, their beer. But also there is the early mark of the writer's unique talent— some say genius— "to reach and bring before us the in-between spaces and things and thoughts," excitingly, yet so quietly. Many readers to whom Katherine Mansfield's artistically superior later work seems attenuated sometimes to the vanishing point, may even find these girlish outbursts the most downright readable of all.

Gross

NIZE BABY—Milt Gross—Doran ($2). An astonishing number of seemingly sane people are going around saying to one another: "Nize baby. Itt opp all de crim from whit, so momma'll gonna tell you a sturry." Here is the explanation, in book form. Author Gross conducts, with brush and typewriter, a Sunday "feature" for the New York World entitled "Gross Exaggerations," a feature consisting of four floors of a Ghetto tenement, with thin walls and a dumb-waiter shaft. Of all the conversations overheard, none mangle the President's American more ingeniously than the mealtime tales told by the topfloor parent to her offspring. Try this bit: "... a Ferry-Tail from Jeck witt de Binn-Stuck. Wance oppon a time, was leeving a werry, werry poor weedow witt a son from de name from Jeck. Hm!—sotch a lazy sheeftless goot for netting wot he was. A whole day henging arond witt de loafers in de front from de poolroom instat wot he should look for a dissint job. So dey hed it one seengle cow wot he became gredually wery skinny from lack from narrish-ment, so dey decited wot dey'll gonna sell de cow. [Nize baby, take anodder spoon Chucklitt Putting.]

"Pot II

"So Jeck was motching witt de cow to de mocket he should sell de cow so he mat gredually in de rote a man wot he was kerrying a beg from binns. So he sad: 'Goot monnink, gimme a binn.' So de man sad, 'A binn you want, ha, you frash keed? Hm!—sotch a crost witt a noive wot dem keeds got nowadays. Dees is werry wellyible binns. From one binn you could make at list a gellon binn-zoop. Eeef you'll geeve me de cow—I'll geeve you de whole beg from binns.' So Jeck, dot dope, sad: 'Ho K. De dill is on!!' So dey made a trait. . . ."

"Pot V