BRIEFER MENTION
En Route, by J.-K. Huysmans, translated from the French with a prefatory note by C. Kegan Paul (12mo, 463 pages; Dutton), illustrates, by the very fact that a new American edition is called for, the longevity of books, however beautifully composed, which have sincerity and passion for their foundations. The passage of Durtal to his faith, after the evil days of La-Bas, is a profoundly interesting and moving journey. The translation is excellent.
The Judgment of Peace, by Andreas Latzko (12mo, 280 pages; Boni & Liveright), will disappoint the readers of his volume of powerful stories, Men in War. A full novel, it is devoted to the reactions of a musician whose disillusion with patriotism takes the form of an acute resentment at war's invasion of art and of the normal privileges of artists; but his story fails as art because it is forever running into bald propaganda, as propaganda because its grounds are emotions instead of thoughts.
Outland, by Mary Austin (12mo, 306 pages; Boni & Liveright), is a utopian interlude between two contrasting love affairs of the same couple. The owlishly academic lovers are sent not so much back to nature as to a never-never-land, where only man is vile. Upon closer acquaintance the Outlanders prove to have a psychology so close to the human that it helps the lovers find themselves. The book is generously supplied with atmosphere and adventure.
The Strangers' Banquet, by Donn Byrne (12mo, 352 pages; Harper). Here the case Capital v. Labor, the romance of ship-building, the love story of a "good" woman, and the cunning ambitions of a "bad" one are juggled with all the exaggerated intentness of purpose of a vaudevillist. The stunt is marked by no genuine interest in the problems it exploits, but by a prurient pleasure in what the author so likes to call "the putrid," by self-righteous sentimentalism, and by snobbery. Donn Byrne made literature once, and a few unrewarded literary echoes still attend his steep descent to the House of Mirth.
