Caste and Outcast*

A Sinbad of Hindus Writes an Autobiography

The Story. A Hindu of Brahmin parentage, born and brought up in a small village near Calcutta, Mukerji, in Caste (the first section), is able to give a most interesting and obviously veracious account of a certain section of Indian life--something of which even the cleverest of Occidental writers have been able to describe no more than the externals. " An intricate and age-old pattern of life, from sudden sunrise through fervid noon to the heavy fall of night and silence."

His mother was unlettered but deeply spiritual--fantastically wise. His father, " a kind of god to us," practised law, but was also a skilled musician. " During his vacations we used to go in a cart drawn by bullocks from the court of one Rajah to another, where he sang." Young Mukerji himself was initiated (at the age of 14) as a Brahmin priest and passed through the requisite two years of wandering pilgrimage, begging his way through India, seeking the knowledge of God--a pilgrimage most fascinatingly described. Later, he gave up his priesthood, to become fervently interested in the movement for Indian nationalism--and went to Japan to study textile engineering and Western business methods--and from there, still restless, journeyed on to America, landing in San Francisco with $15, an English vocabulary chiefly acquired from Milton and Shakespeare, and the intention of entering the University of California. The Arabian Nights' Entertainment of his first American experiences is described in Outcast, the second half of the book.

Penniless, he was forced to work his way through college as a dishwasher, waiter, etc. In the intervals of studying 14 hours a day, he became acquainted with a group of delightfully crazy anarchists and socialists, carried the soap-box from which they poured forth extraordinary denunciations of capitalism, marriage, etc., and, later, passed the hat. He was clubbed in a police attack upon a socialist meeting, overworked in the asparagus and hopfields of California and once was forced to act as an interpreter between Salvation Army workers and a group of Mohammedan laborers who " told filthy stories in Pushtu " (which sounds singularly evil). His one and only lucrative job evaporated when he discovered that, quite without his knowledge, he was being used by a group of fake-spiritualists to add, by his turbaned presence, proper mystic color to their meetings. Altogether, he saw Amerca as few foreign visitors see it--and in the " Epilogue," where he treats of the differences and likenesses between West and East, he has some very sane and original things to say.

The Significance. In the first place the exciting and vivid recital, told with candor and humor, of a pilgrim in search of true wisdom, West and East--a recital punctuated with adventures as odd as any of Sinbad the Sailor's. In the second, an illuminating and informative exposition, both of the India that tourists never see, and the America of which many of our self-elected " leaders of thought" still deny the existence. Most interesting of all perhaps, the reactions of an Eastern mind to both Oriental and Occidental civilizations and ideals--set down without hasty intolerance or propagandizing.

The Author. Dhan Gopal Mukerji, graduate of Calcutta and Leland Stanford Universities, is now 33 years old. He is known as a publicist and lecturer, and is a familiar figure at Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Stanford and many American colleges and universities. He is also the author of Kari the Elephant.

Good Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

AFTER ALL--George F. Hummel--Boni and Liveright ($2.00). Favorably reviewed by a number of critics, compared by its publishers to the work of Rabelais, Samuel Butler and Anatole France--here comes another wipe in the eye for poor old Marriage! The autobiography of the sentimental egoist with artistic leanings, who describes his love affairs with florid self-consciousness, his business success with heavily condescending satire, and his ultimate renunciation of that success for Art with awe, has been done before and very much better and enough. There is no doubt that After All will interest a large reading public; it contains practically every ingredient of a fairly popular success.

But as a contribution toward any discussion of marriage itself, the book is futile--the one case described in any detail is too abnormal to be of any value except to support the time-honored contention that if you marry a woman ten years older than yourself, it may not turn out so well. As a novel, After All is lumbering and fumbling when not rococo with imitation sententiousness.

A GENTLEMAN OF SORTS--Everett Young--Henry Holt ($2.00). Andrew Croy, wealthy young New York lawyer with genuine French ancestry, complete distrust in women and a fervent resolve to erase the memory of certain little indiscretions of his mamma's by becoming quite the genuine frankfurter in New York society, thought his life was simply ruined when circumstances that should have been within his control but weren't forced him into a marriage with Mary Kate Cohalan, a charming little stenographer with no more ancestry than a four-leafed clover. So he took himself and Mary Kate to France, resolved to load her with jewels and subtle reproaches, while he forgot his sorrows in helping reconstruct the French countryside. Mary Kate, however, was received in the snootiest French society with whoops of high-bred and genuine pleasure--she proved to be a real lady instead of a manufactured one--Andrew came at last to the knowledge of how he had misjudged her--and, after many complications, the two were happily reconciled. An excellent, interesting, promising first novel that deserves a large reading-public.

* Caste and Outcast--Dhan Gopal Mukerji--Dutton ($3.00).