B 0 0 K S
SIX AUTHORS IN SEARCH OF THEIR FUTURE
Edwin Berry Burgum
Six recent books* may be taken as a cross section of the autumn out–
put of fiction. They have but one quality in common. They deal for
the most part with life in the city. Otherwise they differ in method,
in attitude, in milieu. And yet all but one of them have been praised by
well-known reviewers. D e Voto has become a best seller in Boston;
Halper has drawn a full page of enthusiasm in the
Herald Tnbune
from
Sinclair Lewis, and Waldo
1'
rank has been preferred to Proust in Buenos
Aires. Obviously the different critics have different standards. And a
belated reviewer of the novels finds himself as much interested to examine
this diversity of attitudes as to express dogmatically his own conclusions.
From this point of view the novel on the list that has been praised
by nobody of importance forms a special case. Bodenheim's
Slow Vision
brings the critic into a realm which he is usually too busy and too super–
cilious to explore.
If
it must be classified, it is "pulp" fiction. There is the
same fluent slovenly expression, impersonal, standardized, never halted by
any concern for the right word. There is the same garrulity of exposition
as t hough the author had written whatever was flowing through his con–
sciousness until stopped by the discovery that part two had grown as long
as part one. There is the same predominant concern with sex. But
accompanying these very limitations, there is evidence that Bodenheim is
trying to escape them. In a cliche, he shows himself aware of the growing
class-consciousness of the proletariat. By the time the novel is finished , his
hero has begun to wonder if his low wages and frequent loss of jobs an: not
the fault of the capitalistic system that can be overcome only by organized
resistance. And it promises well for Bodenheim's future work that he
does not present these glimmering:> of new ideas in the mind of his hero
in t he form ·of irrelevant propaganda, but tries to show them as part of
his day to day experience of li fe. It goes without saying that he has not
succeeded. He has fa iled partly because. the habit of pulp fiction has kept
him too much absorbed in sex and 'the woman's point of view,' but in part
• SLOw VISION,
by Maxwell Bodenheim. Macaulay.
$2.00.
T HOSE WHO PERISH,
by Edward Dahlberg. John Day.
$2.00.
WE AcCEPT WITH PLEASURE,
by Bernard De floto. Little, Brown.
$2.50.
THE FOUNDRY,
by A /bert Halper. fliking Press.
$2.50.
C ALICO SHOES,
by James T. Farrtll. flanguard Press.
$2.00.
T HE DEATH AND BIRTH OF DAVID MARKAND,
by W aldo Frank, Scrib;urs.
$2.75.
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