Books: Message Disguised

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ALL OR NOTHING—J. D. Beresford—Bobbs-Merrill ($2.50). Mr. Beresford's novel is the development of the spiritual life of James Bledloe, commonly known as "Lucky Jim," the inheritor of an immense fortune, the husband of the only woman he has ever loved, the father of children whom he adores. But all the assets which are the envy of his fellow men mean less than nothing to him because he has never been able to find an active interest in which to centre his life and energies. After years of aimless and dissatisfied existence, he becomes, solely by inner awareness, the prophet and agent of a new religion which derives from the verse: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" He gives away his fortune, withstands the accusation of insanity, and finds a new completeness of life for himself and an incredible number of disciples.

The book is not properly a novel. It is the material for a biography and the exposition of a theme. Even the development of the latter is ineffective because the validity of the theory Mr. Beresford has had to expound is vitiated by the wholly improbable fictional details. It is the work of a man who is either inherently not a novelist or who has repressed the qualities of a novelist in order to propagandize. From a literary or moral standpoint it is a cowardly performance: fiction used to disguise a message, without regard for the abstract rights of the novel as a specialized form of literature.