conversation of concierges which is philological on one side and lyric on the other—and you may be sure of being well rewarded. So many Americans risk a stroke in mid-July by climbing up the steeps of the Basilica and—what is more serious—run the risk of a bad dinner on the Place du Tertre in order to see Paris in her grey and violet mists; why not traverse the charming pages of Max Jacob and find it there, without trouble?
M Abel Hermant has just issued the first two volumes of a series entitled Le Cycle de Lord Chelsea. It is not, be assured, a Wagnerian Ring. Le Suborneur, le Loyal Serviteur are charming and easy narrations, pursued with the impertinent grace of a master and held together by the personality of Lord Chelsea. Here we find again the type—perverse, ironic, cultivated, and in a literary way demoniac—which tradition has perpetuated with us since the eighteenth century, coming through the Goncourts. Is it necessary for me to note the novel of a beginning writer of twenty—Le Diable au Corps, by Raymond Radiguet[1]? His publisher, I should fancy, has taken good care that this author should become known to the American public. But I would like to say how much—once your attention is attracted to the book—it is worth while. This story of the love of a boy and a woman whose husband is at the front is done with a definite grace, a solid writing, without external effects, and the difficult and hardly pleasing subject hides its harshness in the most redoubtable and charming ingenuities.
Louis Aragon, whose talent is known to the readers of The Dial, has published Les Aventures de Télémaque in which the gods frequently take on strange appearances to come and visit us. In Malice, MacOrlan, an alert Latin, master of his nerves and of his talent, isn't abashed to seize his phantoms by their feet; he plays them a thousand tricks, takes off their shrouds, and in the morning we remain alone, with a beautiful book in our hands.
Joseph Delteil, a new name' gives us his first novel, Sur la Fleuve Amour, which presages an endowed and powerful novelist afraid of none of our recent liberties.
You must not believe that my stopping here means that the basket is empty. But I think that with these books your diversion is assured for a few weeks; and I hope that this letter with its news will arrive where it should—in the bosom of faithful friends.
- ↑ Awarded the Nouveau Monde prize for this year.
