Hoosier's Maine*

MIRTHFUL HAVEN--Booth Tarkington--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Booth Tarkington has never been a socially weighty writer, but his early books had a kind of restless threat in them. His sympathies were evidently with the young man who rebels against the machinery of money. As Tarkington grew older his sympathy with rebels thinned, mellowed or changed into a kind of bantering, gentle satire that implied less of particular criticism than of general tolerance. But in his latest book the criticism is less implied, more explicit, than ever before; his satire less tolerant, less gentle.

The scene of Mirthful Haven is Maine, where Tarkington has spent many a summer (at Kennebunkport) ; the principal characters are Maine natives. Villains of the piece are the "summer people." Edna Pelter is the pretty but declassee daughterof Long Harry, lobsterman and owner of a shack that summer visitors view as an eyesore and a disgrace. Visitors and villagers alike look down on the Pelters: the feeling is reciprocal. But the old Captain Embury, retired sailor, No. 1 citizen of Mirthful Haven, who could always make his voice heard above "the roarin' of the tem-pest," likes the Pelters, likes especially to watch young Edna as she comes out of school across the way. Neither Edna nor her father are particularly reputable, are thought to be light- fingered, but no one has ever got the better of their resourceful independence. Edna adores her father; he likes his dog Prince.

When Edna's step-grandmother offers to give her an education she leaves home unwillingly to be made into a lady. When, several years later, her step-grandmother dies and Edna comes home again, she has changed so much outwardly the villagers fail to recognize her. Complications follow almost immediately. In her absence her father has turned rumrunner; he never tells her, but she guesses it. Worse, in her new-found social world she has met and liked the two sons of her father's most implacable enemy among the summer people. They have never connected her with Mirthful Haven, as she is known "outside" by her mother's name. One of the boys, Gordon Corning, is in love with her. He meets her one day on a lonely part of the beach. Knowing her danger, she tries never to see him again. But she is very different now from the scornful little female Ishmael she has been. The temptation to be with boys and girls of her own age is too much for her; she meets Gordon sometimes, goes to an occasional party. But the denouement is not far off. Pelter's enemy Corning discovers Pelter's secret, that all Mirthful Haven but no summer visitor knows. He tips off the revenue cutter. That night Pelter is led into a trap, tries to escape, is shot. Then everything comes out. Mrs. Corning rescues her son in the nick of time from his fishing-village demimondaine; he allows himself to be rescued, leaves without even saying goodbye. Instead, he sends his brother to make family apologies for her father's death. Later in the year, when the same brother comes to Mirthful Haven on business, he finds the whole village at a wedding. Eighty-year-old Captain Embury is marrying ig-year-old Edna Pelter.

Here and there flashes of the old Tarkington humor light up the story. Long Harry Pelter, having salvaged a dog-eared copy of Punch from some summer cottage, was wont to while away many a winter evening puzzling over its contents. Said he: "Seems like some time, if a man studied enough, he ought to be able to make head or tail o' this little magazine." But the story as a whole is far from funny. The one character in the book which he has drawn with real bitterness is Mrs. Corning, perfect type of blind and worldly mother, made hateful by Tarkington's skillful scorn. Says one of his "summer people," reporting discovery of the strange pride of the natives, their stranger contempt for their rich visitors: "It seemed to me there was something in that point of view."

Few among this summer colony have escaped their author's brushing satire; few among the natives have gone without his accolade of final approval. Others of his books have had endings only dubiously happy; this is the only tragedy he has written.

The Author. Newton Booth Tarkington, 61, most famed present-day Hoosier author, lives in Indianapolis in the winter; in the summer at Seawood, his Kennebunkport house, which he calls "the House that Penrod Built."* As an undergraduate at Princeton he founded the Triangle Club (dramatic society) and was popular, but failed to graduate. He has had numerous honorary degrees to make up for it. Tall, thin and dark, he sits and walks with a stoop, smokes uncounted cigarets. He is quiet, reserved, has many friends, many devotees. During the last ten years his eyes have troubled him. Last month he went to Johns Hopkins, where he has already undergone two operations, for observation and treatment.

Other books: Gentleman from Indiana, Monsieur Beaucaire, The Two Vanrevels, Cherry, Conquest of Canaan, The Beautiful Lady, His Own People, Guest of Quesnay, The Flirt, Penrod, The Turmoil, Seventeen, The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, Gentle Julia, The Midlander.

Three Lovely Girls

LOVE'S NOT ENOUGH--Simonne Ratel-- Farrar & Rinehart ($2).

Frenchmen's reports of love are not often poignant, but such of their countrywomen as Colette (TIME, July 7) and Simonne Ratel help to balance the account. Authoress Ratel's novel, which won the Prix Minerva (1930), is not only clever but heartrending.

Three young Parisiennes, Antoinette, Annonciade, Suzon, go for a summer vacation to Antoinette's old family house in the country. They will be alone, far from men's distractions, have a fine time. All of them are pretty. Antoinette, the leader, is too intelligent for her own happiness. Annonciade, essence of nonintellectual femininity, adores her. Suzon, Annonciade's younger sister, is a jealous little flapper with her eyes wide open. Alas for peace, three young men live near by. Two of them, Andre and Bertrand, are brothers, childhood friends of Antoinette's. But their guest Robert, bronzed, much-traveled civil engineer, is the rock on which feminine friendship is shattered. Realist Suzon, seeing she has no chance with Robert, contents herself with tantalizingly dangerous escapades with Bertrand, light of heart and tongue. Andre is hopelessly in love with Antoinette, makes love to Annonciade in order to score over her idol. Before he knows it they are engaged. When they all return to Paris together at the end of the summer Antoinette says she will follow them in a few days, stays behind by herself to try to pick up the pieces.

Simonne Ratel, journalist and scholar, has taken her M. A. in Greek and Latin at the Sorbonne. Onetime member of the editorial staff of France-Islam, of La Renaissance du Lime, of Comoedia, she has also published a book of essays, Cocktail. The adaptation of Love's Not Enough is by Joseph Collins, famed litterateur-physician.

Yiddish Dostoyevsky

THE MOTHER--Sholom Asch--Live- right ($2.50).

The Zlotnik family, Polish Jews, were not well off in their native country. Father Anshel was good at cantillating the Book of Esther but hopeless at making money.

If it had not been for Mother Sure and her genius for taking infinite pains to make ends meet somehow, their poverty would have been more unbearable than it was. When the eldest son saved his pennies and emigrated to the U. S., the Zlotniks regarded him as an emissary sent to spy out the land, waited proudly for his summons to follow him. The summons came when he had been in Manhattan long enough to earn an instalment on their steamship tickets.

The U. S. was a great shock to the Zlotniks, the filthy cellar "apartment" under the "L" a worse shock still. Mother Sure wore herself out as usual trying to make and keep a decent home. Before she died of cancer she saw many a sad change come over her beloved family: her eldest son married to a wife whose family looked down on the Zlotniks, Anshel no longer cantillating the Book of Esther, but slaving in a shirt factory, her daughter Dvoyrele living in sin with an impoverished sculptor. But Death saved her from seeing the culmination of her daughter's tragedy.

Sholom Asch, No. 1 Yiddish novelist, was born (1880) in Kutno, near Poland's Warsaw. In 1910 he came to the U. S., lived for five years on Manhattan's Staten Island. Few of his novels (Uncle Moses, Kiddush Ha-Shem) have been translated; one of his plays (God of Vengeance), though several have been produced by the Yiddish Art Theatre, Manhattan. In 1919 Sholom Asch returned to Europe, lives in Paris. Son Nathan (The Office, Love in Chartres), now in Paris, lives in Manhattan, writes in English.

Browning Without the Bounce

THE GLORY or THE NIGHTINGALES-- Edwin Arlington Robinson--Macmillan

($2).

Like the late great Poet Robert Browning, Edwin Arlington Robinson writes poetry dramatically. In the work of both poets, however, psychological action, messengered emotion take precedence over narrative. But Browning had an elan that New Englander Robinson has not. A subtler poet if not a subtler psychologist, Edwin Arlington Robinson is a Browning without the bounce.

Even the title of Robinson's latest poem has a tragic irony. Nightingale is the name of the piece's villain; the glory of the Nightingales comes to a sad end. As the poem opens, middleaged, destitute, half-starved Malory, onetime bacteriologist, now a tramp, is walking country roads towards the town of Sharon, on his way to an act he thinks Fate requires of him. In his pocket is the infinite wealth of a revolver. He is going to kill Nightingale, once his best friend, his onetime rival in love, his onetime benefactor, then his ruin and (he thinks) cause of his wife's death. In the village cemetery Malory stops by his wife's grave, then goes on to Nightingale's lonely mansion by the sea. But he finds his enemy too late: Nightingale is a cripple, cramped in a wheelchair, dying fast of arthritis and locomotor ataxia. Instead of killing Nightingale Malory sits and talks to him, listens to him talk. The sick man makes an apologia, but no apology, for his life.

After two days of this strange companionship Nightingale calls in a lawyer, makes a will in which he leaves Malory money to set up a laboratory once more. Then he asks Malory and the lawyer to leave him for an hour. When Malory returns, Nightingale has shot himself.

The Glory of the Nightingales is written in a quiet blank verse. As befits the reminiscent, sometimes conversational manner, the language is keyed low, but it has a subtle tension which gradually accumulates its tragic effect. There are few memorable, marmoreal phrases, none that would sound out of place in a sober and serious colloquy. Occasionally this quiet phrasing has a bite in it which louder words somehow lack. Nightingale is telling Malory how he ruined him by not giving him warning to sell stock he knew was going to crash:

"... I was warned,

Early, of what was coming. I sold all mine For someone else to lose, which is

finance. . . ."

Poet Robinson is sometimes accused of being morbidly interested in tragic subjects, but his defenders reply that his subjects are typical of universal themes. He puts his own defense into the mouth of Nightingale (and this is as near as Nightingale ever comes to an apology): ". . . I doubt if any of this Is new, for I dare say it has all happened In Samarcand or Celebes before us."

The Author. Edwin Arlington Robinson, 60, has three times (1921, 1924, 1927) been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, in 1929 was given the gold medal of the American Institute of Arts & Letters. Born in Maine, he lives in Manhattan in the winter, spends summers at artistic MacDowell Colony (Petersboro, N. H.) where he writes most of his poetry. Shy, scholarly, academic, he is a 32nd degree bachelor, is famed as most reticent, most elusive, least known U. S. man of letters. Other books: Captain Craig, The Alan Against the Sky, Merlin, Lancelot, Roman Bartholow, The Man Who Died Twice, Tristram, Calender's House, Dionysus in Doubt.

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

*The "Penrod" books, according to Publishers Doubleday, Doran, have sold more than a million copies.

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