Winnetka Local History Digital Collections

Winnetka Weekly Talk, 17 Oct 1925, p. 30

The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

I October 17, 1925 WINNETKA TALK touts Juok [orner Are You Interested in books of Fiction, Biography, Travel, m His- tory? For lists write to ESTHER GOULD c/o your local paper. WARNINGS FROM MR. ANDERSON "DARK LAUGHTER" By Sherwood Anderson Boni & Liveright Wouldn't it be delightful if by some dispensation of a humorous Provi- dence we could arrange to have a de- bate between, let us say, A. S. M. Hutchinson and Sherwood Anderson? Hutchinson, whose human beings walk daintly through life, like certain kinds of water birds who pick their way along the edge of the sea, lifting their feet high, peering timidly in to pick up an unsuspecting fish, and at the slightest hint of commotion spreading their wings and flying away --far away, up toward Heaven. An- derson's characters, dark swooping gulls coming out of a grey sky, flying low over the water, diving now and then swiftly into a wave, then turn- ing and flying for a whole day per- haps, straight out to sea. Perhaps you are faintly disgusted at the timid flapping little bird, per- haps you are terribly frightened at the swiftness of the gull. In "Dark Laughter" as in his other books, Mr. Anderson gives us a sense of impending doom, of forces, under a thin protective veneer, lying dor- mant, ready to rise and destroy. As the ground in France used to be filled with the bones of men so re- cenfly dead, so thinly covered over that not infrequently an arm would be thrust out as if in silent and ter- rible protest against this thing which civilization had done. Bruce Dudley, working in a wheel factory in a little town in Indiana, used to be a successful newspaper man in Chicago. Until he was tempt- ed to leave his old life and his wife Bernice, and venture into that coun- try of one's self, which few men know, behind all deceits and artifices, and near the edge of that black void from which from time to time issues the "dark laughter." It is a powerful story, those to whom it would seem most unpleasant would concede it that. It has something to say and it says it crudely, sometimes with a flash of beauty, always with sinceri- ty and a sort of primitive strength. AN EXCELLENT NOVEL "POSSESSION" By Louis Bromfield Frederick A. Stokes Co. Louis Bromfield is certainly--as they say of football heroes--a novel- ist "to be watched." In this, his second book, "Possession," he has made a long stride forward from "The Green Bay Tree," which was itself a very finished product. Mr. Bromfield has taken this time a much larger canvas, one which might be compared to those of the old painters of the 15th and 16th centuries whose vision was astound- ingly broad and yet who carried out every detail with such perfection that today we study their work with a magnifying glass. ~ The detail of Mr. Bromfield's work is carried out with this sort of per- fection, each character, as he comes under our vision seems to be the hero or heroine of a story--yet the whole has been put together with such a nice balance that from a little dis- tance the plan is startingly clear, Instead of falling apart as a lot of little novelettes, it stands together as an extraordinary strong and closely knit novel. The theme of "Possession" is that of the earlier novel, amplified and carried on in the life of another char- acter. It is that the sons and daugh- ters of the Middle West, children of pioneers, now that there is no more physical wilderness to conquer must find an intellectual or artistic wild- erness. Ellen Tolliver, a passionate, wilfull child, sees in music her escape both from her self and from the commer- cial, hustling, dreary "Town" in which she was born. Her struggle is an in- tensely dramatic one--against her family, against the Town, against all the forces of the world which like a quick sand would like to suck her un- der. Unscrupulous to a certain de- gree, enough so that she can marry the pitiful Clarence just to escape to New York, yet she is not sufficiently unscrupulous to neglect entirely to pay her debt. She pays it in the only coinage that she can, even though being what she is, it is not the coinage her creditors want. It is a foreign currency. It seems that Ellen, even with the people whom she understands and who perhaps have helped her most, cannot come near, The Marriage Guest by Konrad Bercovici The book people have been wait- ing for. The first novel by this brilliant short story writer. A novel of New York--the city of all the world, which Mr. Bercovici knows how to make live for us. At all Bookstores $2.00 ¢ Boni & Liveright, New York AN Just Published b Lord Grey's Memoirs b The Outstanding Book of the Year TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 1892--1916 4 By VISCOUNT GREY OF FALL. } $ ODON, K. G. 4 volumes, $10.00 at all bookshops FREDRICK A. STOKES 3. For Just Publishea the first novel in three years by the author of | IF WINTER COMES ONE | INCREASING PURPOSE ASM.H ucH INSON 4290 at all Booksellers LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY but is always leaning across an inter- vening space, the space created by THE BLACK MAGICIAN her genius. That thing which old "Gramp" Tolliver, a superbly drawn By character, said when she was a child R. T. M. SCOTT "would keep her lonely as long as she : lived." More thrilling adventures of "Se- And in the end, like all great art-|§ cret Service Smith." A story with ists, she is free, free from all the | Plenty of pep interspersed with bonds which have tried to bind her, |$ Oriental Black Magic. $2.00. the people she has loved and those E. P. Dutton & Co. New York who have loved her, even her mother who tried so fiercly to possess her. "But, on the high pinnacle she had built with her own hands she was alone . . . the woman whom Fer- gus had seen for a moment in a queer flash of clarvoyance on the night of his death. She was playing thus when Lily came in quietly to stand listen- ing in the shadows." By the Author of "Abbe Pierre" THE ETERNAL CIRCLE By Jay William Hudson This is a novel for all who have come within the "eternal circle" of love. In pages starred with wit, y | Qwisdom and beauty the author shows what part love played in the lives of two men and two women of divergent temperaments. At all Booksellers $2.00 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 35 West 32d St.,, New York SINCLAIR LEWIS $2 3 ARROWSMITH "One of the best novels ever written in America." --H. L. Mencken. Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York { a One phone call -- and winter comfort The right words spoken to your fuel dealer, now, will take care of your fuel needs for all winter. Those words are "Please have a Chicago Solvay Coke service man call to look over my heat- ing plant and then fill my bin with the size he recommends for my equipment." All winter you'll have a well heated home at reasonable cost. Chicago Solvay Coke costs 30% less than hard coal, yet contains more heat per ton and burns without smoke or soot. Cut the cost of heating your home by phoning your dealer now. He will see that your home will be heated by a clean, economical and popular fuel. Solvay Coke Buy it Burn it ~ Youll Like it E. C. WEISSENBERG Phone 12

Powered by / Alimenté par VITA Toolkit
Privacy Policy