Fiction: Recent Books: Mar. 21, 1938

THE SINGLE HOUND—May Sarton— Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). Plaintive first novel by a 26-year-old poetess, in which an aging spinster in a Belgian garden brings peace to a tormented young Englishman, emotionally ravaged by an affair with a married woman.

Non-Fiction

THE STORY or RECONSTRUCTION—Robert Selph Henry — Bobbs-Merrill ($5). Monumental, 633-page sequel to Author Henry's monumental Story of the Confederacy, restoring life and order to the drabbest, most fiercely confused period in U. S. history.

HELEN KELLER'S JOURNAL — Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). A rebuke to self-pitiers is this diary of 57-year-old Helen Keller in the dark days that followed the death (in 1936) of her lifelong companion and famed teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy. Last fortnight Helen Keller undertook her biggest job, a campaign to raise $2,000,000 for the American Foundation for the Blind.

Poetry

READING THE SPIRIT—Richard Eberhart—Oxford University Press ($2.50). Wet-behind-the-ears poems of unusual intensity, sponsored by English Anthologist Michael Roberts (The Faber Book of Modern Verse). Poet Eberhart is a young Minnesotan who graduated from Dartmouth in 1926, bummed around the world to St. John's College, Cambridge, now teaches English at St. Mark's School. Author of at least one unforgettable poem (The Groundhog), Poet Eberhart is one of the rarest human types known—a genuine ham poet.

POEMS—Rex Warner—Knopf ($2). When of late years the Anglo-Communism of Oxford Poets Auden, Spender, Day Lewis broke the ice of post-War English poetry, fellow Oxonian Rex Warner started skating on one of the smaller cakes. More of a country man than an Anglo-Communist, more of an Anglo-Communist than a poet, his best poems are honest descriptions, his worst, honest cant.

THE DAY'S WORK—Oscar Brynes— Harcourt, Brace ($1.25). A fast, comprehensive notation of a fast, comprehensive day's work—Brooklyn's 1934 $500,000 armored-car robbery. Poet Brynes's first published book reveals him as an able handler of 1) melodramatic narrative, 2) a sawed-off vernacular with a hot business-end, cool trigger.

THE CRYSTAL WORLD—Richard Aldington— Doubleday, Doran ($1.75). An author who always manages to seem honester than the words he writes, Novelist Aldington (Death of A Hero, All Men Are Enemies, et al.) here plies his trade-secret with a heavy hand. Twenty-one oozy love lyrics, written in the first person, are followed by a commentary in which he describes the crystal sources of the ooze. For debutantes, deadly poison.