Books: Urbane Mirror

SOUND WAGON — T. S. Stribling —

Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

The U. S. has not yet had an urbane satirist. It has had bucolic satirists, like Finley Peter ("Mr. Dooley") Dunne and Mark Twain, bull-roarers like H. L. Mencken, splenetic idealists like Sinclair Lewis, ironic fantasists like James Branch Cabell and Robert Nathan. But last week critics hitched up their chairs, clapped on their best glasses and took a good hard look at Thomas Sigismund Stribling's latest novel, Sound Wagon. Before reading it, few would have admitted that Author Stribling might be capable of urbanity, let alone sustained satire. After reading it, many might have allowed that here at last was a U. S. satirical mirror with a sufficiently high polish to be called urbane.

Young Henry Caridius, having failed as a lawyer in the great city of Megapolis, is running for Congress on an independent ticket against both Republican and Democratic machines. By an accident he is elected, finds himself beholden not only to the machine he thought he was fighting but to the racketeering element. His newfound law partner, Myerberg, makes short work of his scruples: "When a reform movement elects one of its members to office, that ends it, there is nothing more for it to do ... the reform has won." Learning every minute. Caridius commutes by plane to his seat in the House, makes valuable new contacts in Megapolis. Most immediately valuable is Banker Littenham. who lets his beautiful, ambitious daughter Mary become Caridius' secretary, lets Caridius in on some easy money. Banker Littenham. like all his fellow-characters, is according to his lights extremely upright: "He never entered any major financial operation without resorting to prayer, very earnest sincere prayer. He explained to God what he was going to do. And by the time he could make the deity understand it, he himself had a comprehensive view of the whole matter."

Once in Congress. Caridius has little to do but carry on his clandestine affair with his lovely secretary and let his new friends advance his career to suit themselves. Typical among his Congressional causes is backing a bill (sponsored by a socially ambitious Western lady) to carve the Rocky Mountains into statues. All goes swimmingly until his two principal backers, Racketeer Joe Canarelli and Banker Littenham, fall out. Caridius' naïve distress is as usual allayed by Myerberg's realistic explanation: "That's the trouble with Joe, he expects from other men the same absolute unequivocal performance of their word that he gives to them. That's all right among racketeers, but he doesn't understand that in respectable financial circles any contract for future action is contingent on the question which would be the most profitable, fulfillment of the contract or defending a lawsuit."