Page:The Borzoi 1920.djvu/173

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POSTSCRIPT
135

"The Gate of Ivory" is Sidney L. Nyburg's latest and by far his most ambitious novel. The scene is the Baltimore of not so many years ago, and the story of Eleanor Gwynn, irresponsible, but brimful of audacity and charm, and Allen Conway, is close enough to the facts of a famous Maryland scandal to start it fairly on the way to the success I think it deserves. Two twenty-five, but as is likely to be the case with many books, the price will have to go up with subsequent editions, as a considerable increase in binding costs is expected this fall as well as some increase in printing.

I have the greatest confidence in Floyd Dell. He's a different fellow, though, and doesn't seem to have anything like the same kind of confidence in himself. But anyway last year I got him to write "Were You Ever a Child?"—essays on education as charming as their title, and now—at long last—I have his first novel. "Moon-Calf" is a real book or I'm sadly mistaken. It's by far the best first novel by an American that has ever been offered me. The scene is our Middle West, and the story—obviously autobiographical—shows the influence of H. G. Wells in a way that marks, I think, a new note in our literature. Anyway I recommend "Moon-Calf" to every reader who cares a damn for my opinion of a novel; I want the book to sell so that Floyd Dell may be amply encouraged to do its sequel (when you read it you'll see it has to have one). Probable price two-fifty.

Andre Tridon's "Psychoanalysis and Behavior" is rather more of a real book than his first. It has a more organic unity—reads easier and is all in all a more finished product. Incidentally—though Tridon told me once that he was going to rewrite his first book every year for a different publisher—"Psychoanalysis and Behavior" duplicates none of the material in "Psychoanalysis." The price is two-fifty.

The Atlantic Monthly occupies a unique position among our magazines, and most publishers, I think, realize the recom-