FICTION CH RONICLE
BENYA KRIK, THE GANGSTER AND OTHER STORIES. By lsook Bobel.
Edited by Avrohm Yormolinsky. Shocken. $1 .50.
THE SKIN OF DREAMS. By Roymond Queneou. Tronsloted by H.
J.
Kaplon. New Directions. $1.50.
PLAYING FOR KEEPS. By Roger Voillond. Translated by Gerord Hopkins.
Houghton Mifflin. $3 .00.
ALL HALLOW'S EVE. By Charles Willioms. Introduction by T. S. Eliot.
Pellegrini
&
Cudohy. $2.75.
STALINGRAD. By Theodor Plievier. Tronsloted by Richord ond Cloro
Winston. Appleton-Century-Crofts. $3.00.
One hears everywhere that the publishing business is in a
bad way, not near bankruptcy, but surly and sour and toughened by
the disappearance of the recent golden days in which anything would
sell. Book lovers, literary agents, and writers are despondent. It is
rumored that only good sellers will be allowed, but looking over my
list of books one sees that the editors, like the betrayed wife, have been
shielded from the scandal which the neighbors are talking about. The
ardent old publishing schizophrenia is still active; irritable, impatient,
and parsimonious as the giant may be, the wrinkles of folly, conscience,
or pride, whatever lucky derangements keep unprofitable books on the
stands have not been wiped out by the shock of reduced sales. Anyone
would publish Mann or Gide on the one hand, or Taylor Caldwell on the
other, but how are we to explain, if a literary civil war is really upon
us, the appearance of a dim apparition like Charles Williams, not a
classic nor even a figure, and furthermore not even alive, so that there
can be no sweet editorial hope that he will hit the chips one day?
Certainly none of these books, with the exception of the popular
Stal–
ingrad,
will be widely advertised or sold, but that, if it is true a book
has to sell well up into the thousands to break even, adds a lovely, murky
background to the whole proceeding, deepens and darkens the final
occupational secret which we are happy not to be able to penetrate.
Nearly all of the titles have some support: an introduction by
T. S. Eliot, the dignity of a foreign literary prize-all except the best
of them, Isaak Babel's thin volume of short stories,
Benya Krik, the
Gangster,
which seems forlorn and isolated, an orphan hiding in the
darkest corner of the library. Babel is a magical Russian writer, a
pure and stunning talent ennobled by an indescribable sincerity of
feeling. Most of these stories are extremely brief and the brilliant ef–
fects he achieves, often in less than five pages, are at least mentionable
as a phenomenon. "Gedali, founder of a Utopian International, has
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