Books: Manhattan Night

PAY DAY—Nathan Asch—Payson & Clarke ($2.50).

Jim was the kind of Manhattan clerk you see in the subway—talking loud and big, ogling flappers, staring down anyone who dared to meet his eye. This story tells how he spent a day, a night. As Jim is a perfect type, except for being a little more galvanically lively than the ordinary, his is a story that tells much about Manhattan, about the hundreds of thousands of Manhattanites he represents. He works because he has to, in order to have fun—also because he has to. His fun may seem cheap to you; it was expensive to him. One night cost him most of a week's pay; taking a lunch-counter waitress to the cinema, then a round of speakeasies, taxis, dancing, drunkenness, a fight; home again in the subway to catch two hours' sleep before the office; his mother's light still on.

Mr. Asch has crammed a lot into this staccato, cinematic account—none the less a faithful picture for being jumbled, strident, cacophonous, blaring. Pay Day has this advantage over the newsreel any Manhattanite, any urbanite, performs in every day; it has been edited, cut, captioned by an author-cinemartist. The result is a good movie.

Author Nathan Asch, 28, was born in Poland, came to the U. S. when he was 13, went to school, college, worked in Wall St., became an author at 23. Other books: The Office, Love in Chartres.