BRIEFER MENTION
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The House of the Enemy, by Camille Mallarmé (12mo, 256 pages; McBride: $2) is a highly-seasoned Spanish dish, served steaming hot with passion and with a dash of Benavente sauce. What there is about these La Mancha amours which renders them such family affairs is still more or less of a mystery; marriage seems to be an avenue of intrigue dotted with in-laws. Aside from its violent story, which doesn't quite compel credence, this novel has colourful moments and a quick-paced narrative style.
The Puppet Show, by Martin Armstrong (12 mo, 153 pages; Brentano: $2) zigzags between fine, full-bodied descriptive prose and somewhat frail excursions into the fantastic. When Mr Armstrong looks at life realistically, he writes in vivid and incisive style, but when he interposes the rose-tinted spectacles of allegory, things seem a little out of focus and not half so much worth looking upon. One would suggest more work in the mood of his admirable Old Alan and The Emigrants, and—if he insists upon being intermittently fanciful—fewer fables and better ones.
Loyalties, by John Galsworthy (12mo, 110 pages; Scribner: $1). There is less of thought and of meaning, less of dramatic vigour and power about this play than about some of its predecessors. The author has nothing cither new or significant to say regarding loyalties; he tends toward the commonplace both in plot and in theme; and one misses the energy and the vitality of Strife, Justice, and The Mob.
Oxford Poetry—1921 (12mo, 64 pages; Appleton: $1) and Oxford Poetry—1922 (12mo, 48 pages; Appleton: $1) are collections of poems written by Oxford undergraduates during the last two years. Although these "poets of promise" can boast of such men as Robert Graves, Louis Golding, and Edmund Blynden in their host, there is not one unusual poem in either volume. And their fulfilment has been like their promise—conventional, dull, servile boot-licking of a hackneyed muse gone in the mouth.
In The Roving Critic, by Carl Van Doren (12mo, 262 pages; Knopf: $2.50) "the sense of the vividness of life" is proclaimed as the all-inclusive standard by which criticism should judge other forms of literature. The author does not realize that vitality and verisimilitude are the easiest of qualities to simulate. He has the habit, at once wasteful and penurious, of stating a thought without either working it out or provoking the reader to do so. His ideas, expressed in ungainly and distorted prose, are sufficient to enliven the briefer papers, but they lack the durability, logic, and subtlety that differentiates criticism from the more evanescent book reviewing. He seems the victim of time, space, and "aliveness."
Disenchantment, by C. E. Montague (12mo, 280 pages; Brentano: $2) tries to do for the conduct of the Great War what Gibbon did for the Church, with much the same manner and a fraction of the brilliance. The fact that the author's allusive, elaborate, highly polished weapons are turned against the conduct rather than the cause definitely places him.
