Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District

Winnetka Weekly Talk, 23 Apr 1927, p. 41

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il kind phi iii a WINNETKA TALK April 23, 1927 BOOK SHOP FOUNTAIN SQUARE EVANSTON Telephones University 1024 Wilmette 3700 Rogers Park 1122 Just inside the West Davis Street Door GOOD BOOKS --and New Brother Saul Donn Byrne The Century. Coe .ovvven $2.50 Mother Knows Best Edna Ferber Doubleday, Page ¥ Co. ..$2.50 Mother and Son Romain Rolland Henry Holt 8 Co. ...... $2.50 High Winds Arthur Train TT Re ea $2.00 Cockades Meade Minnigerode Putnam . 35 ed $2.00 Cargoes and Harvests Donald Culross Peattie Appleton .ovion iver $2.50 Evelyn Grainger George F. Hummel Boni and Liveright ...... $2.50 The Drums of Aulone Robert W. Chambers Bppleton ... .. voi coven $2.00 Song of Life Fannie Hurst Alfred A. Knopf ........ $2.50 Bernard Quesnay André Maurois "rae ses ree BILLET FRANCAIS $1.30 24 sheets of tinted paper--in com- posé effect--that are to be written on flat, then folded and the edges sealed--the edges are perforated for ease in tearing open. Lord's Book Shop . | NEWEST BOOKS AND BOOK REVIEWS Zona Gale Lectures on "The New Literature" To the modern novel nothing that is human is unalien. This fact Zona Gale impressed upon her Evanston audience yesterday when she came from her Wisconsin home to deliver the lecture in the Contempora- Thought course at Northwestern uni- versity. Writers of the contemporary novel, Miss Gale reminded, discussing "The New Literature," recognize that there is a great area of life--and so for art-- in the ugly, the commonplace, the un- happy, the sad, the grotesque and that ordinarily called "uninteresting." The new novels, she said, no longer present a happy ending. Also, they are honest. They do not present every- body as either good or beautiful. They have likewise extended their method as well as their material. One new method is to use the whole stream of a character's consciousness--to follow with him through his day and year. The new novel consists of the romance of the mind and spirit of man. There are an endless number of ex- periments in the novel's technic. One is getting rid of quotation marks--an- other is refusing to give a full line to unimportant as well as to important sentences in conversation. Another is getting rid of all inessentials either to meaning or to beauty. An excellent list of 1926-27 books selected by Mrs. Anthony French Merrill is to be found on the club page of this issue. New and Interesting Books Fiction Mother Knows Best Edna Ferber .......$2.50 Bernard Quesnay Andre Maurois ..... $2.50 The Back of Beyond Edward S. White ...$2.00 Pleased to Meet You Christopher Morley, $1.50 Miscellaneous America Comes of Age Andre Siegfried ....$3.00 Power Lion Feuchtwanger, $2.50 Brimstone and Chili Carleton Beals ..... $3.00 Sons of the Eagle George Creel $3.50 The Behind Legs of the 'Orse Ellis Parker Butler, $2.00 The Silver Cord, a Play Sidney Howard ..... $1.00 Chicago, a Play Maurine Watkins ...$2.00 Subscriptions Taken for All Magazines Chandlers Reviews of New Books "THE LINGERING Wood Martin. In "The Lingering Faun" Mabel Wood Martin has written a vigorous and vivid story of the great mael- strom that was Paris after the War. Russian noblemen and women run- ning taxicabs and doing laborious bead work to keep from starvation, idealists pouring in to the Peace Conference to have their ideals stepped on, the maimed and bereaved making a gro- tesque and terrible background. Barbara, the beautiful American, married Prince Serge Petanoff and went to Russia to live. There she came into conflict with all the old tottering unsound fabric of Russian nobility. She tried to change it but she was powerless--and then, she was too late. She and her husband flee the Del- uge and arrive with many of their countrymen in Paris. Mrs. Martin has described vividly the pitiful tor- tured life they lived there, haunted by fear and buoyed up spasmodically by groundless hopes. The figure of the "faun," a mysterious man from the east, an envoy to the Peace Confer- ence, is weakened by a sort of appeal to the supernatural. He represents mankind with his blind power and his dreams. He represents to Barbara an escape from all the futility and horror of her world, she longs only to get off in the ocean or the desert where nothing can ever happen to her again. But there is no escape for Serge. He being part of the old regime must pass away with it and he finally takes his own life. The frozen helpless de- fiance of his reaction is very well drawn. The envoy through a failure of his plans goes away to start over again, and Barbara is left to make a new life, as an American and not as a Russian this time. Winn "MIRRORS OF THE YEAR"--A Na- tional Review of Outstanding Figures, Trends and Events of 1926-27.--Edited by Grant Overton. FAUN"--Mabel "Mirrors of the Year" is original in its conception and in its treatment. It is a new idea to try to catch while they are yet fresh the essence of the happenings of the year and embody them in a permanent form. It is, as the editor of the volume, Grant Over- ton, says in his introduction, "a union of timeliness with perspective." This is a high attempt and the reader looks with slight scepticism on the possibility of its fulfillment. But as one goes along one becomes convinced that through a wise choice of contributors and a consciousness on the part of the contributors of the part they were meant to play, a good deal of that very union has been achieved. The men and women who have written the various articles on subjects of wide and interesting range are people with long experience with their subjects, experience which has given them as is the way of experi ence perspective on things even while they are present. Herbert Asbury, member of the ed- itorial staff of the New York Herald- Tribune, opens the volume with an ironical and penetrating article on "The Triumphs of Journalism," among' which of course are the high lights of the death of Valentino and the case of "Peaches" Browning. He does point out some hopeful trends, however, and Just Paragraphs Anne Douglas Sedgewick, in an in- terview, stated her rules for novel writing. They are so sane that they might do as rules for reading and criticism, as well. "A novel should possess security and unity and be sober and beautiful, if possible. Under no circumstances should it be dull, senti- mental or affected. Life--more abund- ant life--is all that one can ask of a novel." Unlike most of those who lay down rules Mrs. Sedgewick has lived up to them exceeding well in her last book "The Old Countess." Young America has allowed the At- lantic Monthly prize of $10,000 for the best novel submitted to be won by a Canadian. Mazo de la Roche of Toronto, is the winner with her book, "Jalna." In a little autobiographical sketch about Miss Roche her publish- ers go so far as to give out the fol- dowing, "Miss de la Roche confesses that she never sits at a desk, when writing, but that she does all her work on a drawing board on her knees." Really when this can be stated publicly what can we hope for from the future generation? Two Recent Jungle Books William Beebe's books need no in- troduction. Their vivid description, charming narrative and delightful style have given him a public that any au- thor might envy. He published sever- al years ago a monograph on Pheas- ants, and his latest book "Pheasant Jungles" is the story of his expedition into farthest India and Burma for studies of rare birds. This book is even more interesting than his others. His servants are such personalities, and their environment breathes romance. W. O. Krohn's book, "In Borneo Jungles," suffers by comparison. The book appears to be very accurate, but inclined to be too instructive. He re- ports too many of the obvious and commonplace things in this expedition for the Field Museum and is interest- ing only in spite of himself. The im- portant thing in reading it is the reali- zation that one can go down to the museum and see the things he talks about. --ANNE WHITMACK. gives at least a glimmering hope for better things in the future. Mark Sullivan writes competently ot the "Political Year," and Elmer Davis contributes an essay as amusing as his very amusing books lead us to expect on "The State of the Nation." Taking as his text, quotations from the Declaration of the Day of Thanksgiv- ing by our President, he goes about proving that we have found the ul- timate state of blessedness and pros- perity by an invention of the economic fourth dimension--time. In other words when we had not sufficient market for our produce to make for real pros- perity, someone conceived the brilliant idea of selling it off on the installment plan to the America of the future. Who would not admit that this is as fundamentally sound as Mark Twain's community which made a living by taking in each other's washings? But there are far too many good and even brilliant articles to quote from all of them, Louise Bromfield, Kathleen Norris, Clarence Darrow, Harry Hansen and many more--each has "done his bit" to make this a stimulating, clever, worthwhile book to read and to keep on one's library shelves. --EsTHER GOULD. ol

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