BRIEFER MENTION
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The Florentine Dagger, by Ben Hecht (12mo, 365 pages; Boni & Liveright: $2). "Melodrama," someone has said, "may be a drunken plausibility," but it is hardly that in Hecht's new book. He has raided the roadhouse of popularity with the dexterity of a mutilated poet. Across the cadaver of a Broadway mystery story he flings the violent costume in which he dances best—and the effect is an accurate and illuminating portrait of Hecht. His glittering manikins are fantastically wilting tinsel, cinema apparitions that collapse with the turning of each page. The book is a danse macabre of Hecht's literary ambitions.
Grey Towers, anonymous (12mo, 286 pages; Covici-McGee: $2) might be characterized as the small boy's pea-shooter in the act of being matriculated in one of our larger universities. It demonstrates, with a great deal of ardour and some effectiveness, that universities are controlled by human beings whose weaknesses are not altogether academic. This has long been suspected, and doubtless will continue to be the case much after Grey Towers is out of print.
Modern Swedish Masterpieces, selected and translated by Charles Wharton Stork (12mo, 257 pages; Dutton: $2.50). What technical discoveries are offered? Has this particular mode of expression been driven further? What contributions to noumenal knowledge have been made? These are the likeliest questions an Anglo-Saxon, grounded in his own culture and familiar with general European literature, would raise when reading an anthology of Swedish short stories. The stories of Söderberg, Heidenstam, Siwertz, and Hallström indicate a literature of normal vitality and controlled execution, but produce no fresh conquests. Simple ironic tales, historical or costume chapters, "sophisticate" dialogue, and allegories are all done acceptably by them. Unfortunately, Mr Stork's ability to recognize masterpieces is, judged by his conduct in American literary life, somewhat open to question. Consequently, one's curiosity as to significant activity in contemporary Swedish letters remains unsatisfied.
Children of Men, by Eden Phillpotts (8vo, 471 pages; Macmillan: $2.50) and Brack, White and Brindled by Eden Phillpotts (8vo, 344 pages; Macmillan: $2). The first of these books ends the author's series of Dartmoor tales. He draws here so largely upon Hardy and even upon George Eliot that one has the feeling of having traversed his ground before in greater company. The situations are well handled, and the backgrounds convincing. The English countryside, however, seems to be as unpleasantly populated as the English town in Gilbert Cannan. The second book, Black, White, and Brindled, presents a series of short stories entirely different in character and with a setting as exotic as the earlier one was dull. The dazzling white and blue of the West Indies, the atmosphere of negro laziness and sudden, mysterious crime, come as a surprise—even a pleasant surprise—after the grey inevitableness of Men. The tragedy in the first is a creeping palsy which claims its victims and leaves no hope. In the second book, tragedy is only a way station, an obstacle, beyond which the heroes of the various stories find their way to peace and some degree of happiness at last.
