Books: Culture Pearl

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ALONG THESE STREETS—Struthers Burf —Scribner ($2.75).

Maxwell Struthers Burt of Philadelphia and Wyoming knows how to write an almost convincing simulacrum of a first-class novel. Self-assured but not glib, he respects and admires the English language, has a plentiful supply of ideas, puts enough complexity and contradiction into his characters to keep them from being stereotypes. It is like the creation of a culture pearl: an irritant is carefully introduced into the oyster, which then obediently builds up a globe of pearly substance, as smooth and gleaming to the casual glance as the real thing.

Hero of Along These Streets is Felix Bartain Macalister, scion of a solid old Philadelphia family. Shy, thoughtful, idealistic, Felix is afraid of women and in some unexplained way his physical economy is adjusted to do without love: he seems to be oppressed by a fear that he, like a salmon, will die after mating. But as the story progresses he comes to know women better and to fear them less. On page 434 he almost has an affair, and on page 540 he actually does. In the end he marries, after much soul searching.

Author Burt is an excellent reporter, and he is at his best in describing the Philadelphia phenomenon—the mingled ugliness and beauty of the city, its noble traditions and wasted opportunities and decay, its kindly and brainless aristocrats, the weird customs and stately orgies of its men's clubs, the gastronomic peaks of its cuisine. "In all the world," says Felix's lawyer at lunch, "there is no equal of Philadelphia strawberry ice cream. In fact, I might say that outside of Philadelphia no one knows what ice cream really is."