Books: Book Fair

In Manhattan during the past fortnight more than 150 writers of varying prominence mounted the stage of a skyscraper auditorium and talked with characteristic author's abandon about themselves, their books, literature and each other. In Boston for six days nearly 60 authors followed each other on the platform of an improvised exhibition hall on the top floor of the Boston Herald-Traveler Building. Reason for this heavy concentration of literary talent was that the New York Times was sponsoring its second National Book Fair, the Herald-Traveler its first Boston Book Fair. The Manhattan show, held on the 38th and 39th floors of the International Building in Rockefeller Center, could claim such celebrities as Fannie Hurst, Emil Ludwig and Pearl Buck. The Boston Fair had H. G. Wells as lead-off man, with Robert Frost No. 2.

On the program in Manhattan were 27 novelists, 18 critics, ten poets, 19 journalists and political commentators, ten scientific writers, three authors of travel books, two biographers, four preachers, six publishers, four authors of garden books, one artist, 28 assorted authors and illustrators of children's books, one humorist, one cabinet member, one university chancellor and one ranee.

The ranee was Sylvia, Lady Brooke, whose title is H. H. Ranee of Sarawak—a mountainous little Borneo state which her husband's family has ruled for three generations. Because she is writing a book about Sarawak, has published her memoirs, the ranee could qualify as an author among such full-time professionals as Stuart Chase and Frederick Lewis Allen, such part-time writers as Secretary of Agriculture Wallace and Astronomer Harlow Shapley, all of whom attended the Fair. Since no fine horizontal line was drawn to distinguish low from high brow, nor a vertical one to set the boundary between Right and Left, listeners at New York's Book Fair could hear New Masses Editor Joseph Freeman as well as Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, profane, pugnacious Novelist James Farrell as well as amiable, yea-saying Dr. William Lyon Phelps. So many had listened to them at the end of the first week, despite repeated demonstrations that many were far better writers than talkers, that Fair officials guessed the attendance would top last year's total of 85,000 paid admissions by 50%.