Books 1927: ELMER GANTRY, MRS. DALLOWAY, MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Bible Boar

Author Sinclair Lewis, whose position as National Champion Castigator is challenged only by his fellow idealist, Critic Henry Louis Mencken, has made another large round-up of grunting, whining, roaring, mewing, driveling, snouting creatures—of fiction—which, like an infuriated swineherd, he can beat, goad, tweak, tail-twist, eye-jab, belly-thwack, spatter with sty-filth and consign to perdition. The new collection closely resembles the herd obtained on the Castigator's last foray, against the medical profession (Arrowsmith, 1925) and a parallel course is run, from upcreek tabernacles, through a hayseed college and seminary to a big-city edifice with a revolving electric cross. This time the Castigator singles out the biggest boar in sight and hounds him into a gratifyingly slimy slough. The tale has an obscure hero, another Lewisian lie-hunter who, to purge the last bitter dregs of pity and fear, gets his gentle eyes and mouth whipped to a black pulp by the K. K. K. before he is released. But the boar is the chief sacrifice and its name has the inimitable Lewis smack, Elmer Gantry.*

Mrs. Woolf's Way

The significance of Virginia Woolf's† last novel, Mrs. Dalloway, was that her "stream of consciousness" method was not only startlingly original but startlingly successful as well. In To the Lighthouse the stream-of-consciousness technique is present as before but its presence is subtler, more diffused. Weaving, stalking, spying from thickets, she discovers the nature of her prey. The actual capture she leaves to those who, reading her book, are her companions in the chase.

Mortal Fairyland

The Magic Mountain—Thomas

Mann—Knopf (2 vol. $6). "An unassuming young man was traveling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks' visit." Soon after his arrival, he perceives that his cigars have a flat taste. Before his three weeks are over, he has a bad cold. Before his return to Hamburg, to a world at war, he has spent seven years in a mortal fairyland.

The author displays an intellect profound, searching, inclusive, an artistry profound and subtle in all his works. [He is] as important a writer as Germany possesses.