Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District

Winnetka Weekly Talk, 23 Jul 1927, p. 35

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32 WINNETKA TALK July 23, 1927 I NEWEST BOOKS AND BOOK REVIEWS i H i BOOK SHOP FOUNTAIN SQUARE EVANSTON A Review List of Some Good Books The Harvest Moon J. S. Fletcher Terror Keep Edgar Wallace Doubleday, Page 8 Co. ...$2.00 The Small Bachelor P. G. Wodehouse PEI EEE ER Doran Love Is Enough Two Volumes Francis Brett Young Alfred A. Knopf Bernard Quesnay Andre Maurois Appleton The Tavern Knight Rafael Sabatini Houghton Mifflin Co. ...$2.50 Roman Summer Ludwig Lewisohn Harpers aes. Jonson Charles Lindbergh: His Life Dale Van Every and Morris DeHaven Tracy Appleton .........a:%. $2.00 Marching On James Boyd Scribpers:. ov 0. . evn $2.50 People Around the Corner Thyra Samter Winslow Alfred A. Knopf ........$2.50 Lord's--Book Shop--Just Inside the West Davis Street Door DID YOU KNOW-- That Stephen Graham has com- pleted "New York Nights' and de- parted for Bulgaria where he ex- pects to begin work on his next novel? That prominent statesmen and literary lights figure in "Men of Destiny" by Walter Lippman which will be published next month? That the Bordin prize of the French Academy has been awarded for a book containing a biography of Shakespeare and a critical study of his writings by Clara Longworth de Chambrun? Cash prizes aggregating $1,000 are offered for the best poems on the subject of Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis in a contest arranged by Mitchell Kennerly, president of the Anderson Galleries. The first prize is $500, and there are two additional prizes of $250 each. The judges will be Mitchell Kennerly, John Farrar and Christopher Morley. The winning poem, together with the hundred best poems, will be published by the George H. Doran Company, and a copy of the book will be mailed free to each con- tributor. Interesting New Fiction Oil Upton Sinclair ......ay- $2.50 The Malletts Be H.:¥oung ov, $2.00 The Sombre Flame Samuel Rogers ........... $2.50 Giants in the Earth O. E. Rolvaag ..... ues ..$250 The Mating Call Rex-Beach:......:.- 20%. $2.00 But Yesterday Maud Diver ....... 0. $2.50 Biography, Travel, etc. Bouquet C.B. Stern =.-...... .»- coe + $93.50 The Mystery and Lure of Perfume C. J. S. Thompson .......$3.50 Fire Under the Andes (American Pen Portraits) Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant... iii. $4.00 Frantic Atlantic Basil Woon v.00 vi i ivsy $2.50 9 630 Davis Street Downtown Evanston Phone University 123 Recent Novel Written With Characteristic French Subtlety and Frankness "ARTANE"--Claude Anet. Claude Anet has written in "Ariane" a book whose theme as stated in the author's preface is "lovely only." The preface which--because of its faintly self-congratulatory tone, so hard tc keep out of prefaces--the book would have been better without, goes on to say, "I was attracted by the idea that love is in itself a subject, perhaps the subject par excellence, and that be- tween two higher beings the conflict when love unchains is sufficient to bring a dramatic interest to life; I therefore wrote this story to illustrate by a striking example the idea I had formed of a drama of which love was the all." In Ariane, the witty beautiful pas- sionate Russian girl, the author had a fit subject for this drama. Ariane, a precocious child lived in the pro- vinces of Russia with her aunt, a wo- man who believed in taking ones pleasure where one found it. At sev- enteen Ariane was the most sought after, the most feted young woman of the town and she played with life and the affections of her admirers like the spoiled child that she was. But when she goes to Moscow to | study she meets a man who is a more worthy antagonist at her own game. Then begins the "merciless battle," as the author terms it, the battle be- tween the sexes for supremacy. It is a dramatic conception and M. Anet has carried it out worthily, with a combined subtlety and frankness which we would expect to find in a cultivated Frenchman. "THE IMMORTAL Gertrude Atherton. MARRIAGE" -- There is something to make one stop and ponder in the question, what made Gertrude Atherton choose the story of Aspasia and Pericles for her novel? It isn't her type of story, there is scarcely one of the well known novelists from whom I should less have expected this story. Why should it appeal to the author of "Black Oxen" and "The Crystal Cup?" But since that question is unsolv- able, we can turn to the solvable one of how she has treated it. Not at all as we should have expected it to be treated. Mrs. Atherton is consistent at least in her surprises. The Greeks themselves with their beautiful and sonorous poetry have accustomed us to viewing the whole Golden Age of Athens on a lofty level equal almost to that of Olympus, from which it is difficult to see it brought down. We can imagine as easily hearing about the breakfast egg of Zeus and Pallas Athene as that of Pericles and the wonderful Aspasia. We hear how Pericles fell in love with Aspasia, how he wooed and won her and took her as his wife in de- fiance of the law which he himself had made. We know their daily con- versations, and the squabbles of the children. In other words Mrs. Atherton has made a matter-of-fact story which might have been laid in modern times, she has not given a great or poetical conception of one of the most illus- trious love stories of the ages. --EsraER Coup. Pot Shots at Pot Boilers HE distressing effects of the Big- ger-and-Better movement can be clearly defined in the announcement that Compton Mackenzie is working on a novel that will be as least six volumes long. Inasmuch as a novel, in its highest conformation, is a narra- tion of development of action or char- acter, Mr. Mackenzie is of a certainty going to encounter difficulties in un- earthing sufficient sustained natural manifestations to develop anything but boredom in this sexpartite novel. nm EWS comes to hand that with the publication of "Das Mencken Buch," a volume of selections from Hank's various Prejudices, "Germany is about to take up H. I. Mencken in a serious way." Germany would. mmm 'HE, versatile J. C. Snaith has un- leashed his virile sense of comedy in his new book, "The Hoop." It is the story of Esmeralda Topham Goodchild, a behemoth Venus with a prodigious voice and a hair-trigger temper. A book of huge humor containing no two-faced wit is sufficient proof that the days of miracles are not over and a gladsome relief from the war cry "Let joy be un- refined!" that is the apothesis of the average so-called humorous novel. nm '"'rv"HE Talk of the Town" has pro- .d duced the literary incarnation of "the lonesomest girl in town" in Cynara, one of the two principal feminine characters of this entertaining tale of the Bohemia of Grammercy Park. innmm RDINARILY this column can find but one legitimate excuse for its ex- istence : the delineation of the charac- teristics of a new publication, its per- fections and imperfections as seen when held before our somewhat limited comprehension. But because we chanced upon a very excellent three- vear old book that had been withdrawn from a north shore library only once previous to our discovery, we are with your gentle acauiescence, going to bring this very clever volume fo vr attention. It is "Inward Ho!" by Christopher Morley, a volume that out- Nietsches "Human-all-too-human." The following quotation is by way of being a qualifying round for the enjoyable perusal of the book: "Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in- to the mirror of a subway slot ma- chine? How Nature rode you with an angry spur? How you fell on your knees at night?" and further "You will find few others to share beauty with you; and it cannot be borne alone." Which explains this particular para- graph. wn THER pronouncements so assured, we thought perhaps. . . . But they were critics of literature, not of life." Surely even a misbegotten race such as ourselves, must appreciate some nnite fallibility. B.B "1776 A Day-by-Day Story" which will be published by Stokes this sum- mer is an attempt to give a picture of the American Revolution as it ap- peared to those living at the' time. Jonathan Rawson, Jr. its author, has done this by a use of diaries, public papers, and private letters of the time. Tt should be a very interesting and valuable work. A Ysa

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