Monday, Jun. 17, 1929
Leading to Nothing
SLEEVELESS ERRAND-- Norah C. James --Morrow & Co. ($2.50).
This book had the allegedly unique distinction of being officially suppressed in England before publication. That great defender of public morals, Sir William ("Jix") Joynson-Hicks, went so far as to post a detective for two nights outside a closed bookstall displaying a sample of the horrid menace. Other sleuths called on reviewers. Only one review appeared.
How long U. S. moralists will permit the volume to stay at large depends a good deal upon the U. S. publisher's ability to bring it to wide attention. It may have the makings of another sensation as profitable, if not as genuine, as The Well of Loneliness. But the shortcomings of this, like so many other "scandalous" books, is that it is pretty dull stuff.
It is the story of a loose young London lady who chances, the very evening her man friend has sent her away, to meet, in a Lyons Tea Shop,* a selfish young architect" who has just discovered his wife with another man. The loose young lady, Paula by name, has resolved on suicide. The unhappy architect, one Bill Cheland, has no plans at all. She takes him in tow through a series of brandy-soaked London night holes, and home to bed, where they swap their life stories and discuss suicide, all quite platonically. Next day they set forth to the country in a hired automobile and for no visible reason get mixed up with a second-rate theatrical company in a seaside town. Ultimately the young man decides to give his wife another chance and the girl drives herself off a cliff to death.
The title of the book is lifted with arresting simplicity from the Oxford Dictionary and means "ending in nothing, or leading to nothing." The style is a limpid tincture of Ernest Hemingway and Michael Aden at their most lugubrious.
* cf. Childs Restaurant.