Page:The New Yorker 0001 1925-02-21.pdf/28

26

The New Yorker 0001 1925-02-21 (page 28 crop) (cropped) 7.jpg





F you like your novels professionally clever and intellectual, the new one for you is Aldous Huxley’s. There are at least three of this much-talked-about young Englishman. No. 1: The literary cut-up. No. 2: The young man of learning, who shows it off. No. 3: The very promising writer, afflicted with a mocking distrust of his own gifts.

To us, “Those Barren Leaves” (Doran) is Huxley trying harder than before to get the trio in step and make it do something. Your pleasure in following his effort will depend on whether it flatters or irritates you to pick your way through miles of his mind’s choice furniture, and to listen to hours of “classy conversation” among some variously faking “moderns” gathered at a castle in Italy, More than one of them is partly Huxley either airing a line of talk or scoffing at an aspect of himself: for instance, young Chelifer, a futile and disillusioned little poet who has to live by editing the Rabbit Fanciers’ Gazette. Mr. Cardan, sponge and cynic, begins as a mouthpiece, though he ends as a living being in a fine sardonic episode. Then there is Miss Thriplow, novelist and chameleon, who even in the throes of a, to her, most poignant night of love must make notes for impressive “copy” for her next book.

“Those Barren Leaves” may disappoint devotees of Huxley No. 1. It ought to encourage the rooters for No. 3.

Two solidly interesting new novels are “God’s Stepchildren” and “The Matriarch.” Both are by women, both trace families through several generations. There similarities end. “God’s Stepchildren,” by Sarah G. Millin (Boni & Liveright) is a powerful story, the story, simple, direct, unfailingly real and not for a sentence dull, of what comes of white-and-black matings in South Africa. It is, of course, tragic. “The Matriarch,” by G. B. Stern (Knopf) is high comedy with humor, anand [sic] exuberantly done inside chronicle of an upper class Jewish family, whose principal branch gets from Austria to England and there smashes under the age-cracked Anastasia’s ruinous matriarchy, after which one of her granddaughters picks up pieces to carry on. We can think of no novel not longer that sets as many good characters going and reconciles you as quickly to keeping track of them.

If you are fond of satire, your best fun in that line may be Rose Macaulay’s “Orphan Island” (Doran). It has a truly Swift-like scheme and beginning. But the glass is filled up with club soda and grenadine story-telling—not to our taste, which prefers the Swift brand neat. Also, only the cheaper half of that promising scheme ever comes to much. Anyone can play with the poor old mid-Victorian United Kingdom. To have played at the same time with present-day attitudes, in contrast, is the chance the author gave herself and very largely missed.

A far deeper performance, but harder to read and more limited in appeal to Americans, is “Mr. Trimblerigg” (A. C. Boni), in which Lloyd George is taken to pieces by the “tribal god” who made him, Laurence Housman being the god’s amanuensis.

It was painful, but when Cashel Byron’s Confessions—that is, Jim Corbett’s memoirs—were running in the Saturday Evening Post, most males observed reading that scholarly weekly were glued to them, as we were, and not to any hitherto unpublished poems by Milton that the Post may have staged as prelims. Plainly, Jim’s book, “The Roar of the Crowd” (Putnam) is really his, whoever helped him with it, and we enjoyed even his alibis.

And we have had a grand time reading Felix Isman’s history, “Weber and Fields” (Boni & Liveright), though we never saw one of its subjects choke the other but once in our life. It is Broadway’s own story of Broadway’s palmiest days.

Bok the man admits he wearied of Edward Bok the editor. He squelched him by retiring. But Edward the editor gets even by editing parts of Bok’s “Twice Thirty” (Scribner’s) and making Bok present himself in an Edward’s-Home-Journal good light. However, the memories of Presidents and such-like are Bok’s and are attractive reading.

Frank Harris used to write brilliant books, and thirty years ago was a great editor. Now, in old age, he is down to writing his extremely private life. Installments of it have leaked in from France, and we’re told that on dark nights, what with the ships bringing them and the outbound city garbage scows, the Rum Fleet’s judges of literature have been getting all mixed up.—

It is understood that patriotic New Yorkers have uncovered the existence of a prohibition enforcement ring. Prompt action is promised.

Statistical Note: If all the illicitly-carried flasks were laid end to end on the Lincoln Highway, it would be a terribly foolish thing to do.