Old Country

THE NATIVE'S RETURN--Louis Adamic --Harper ($2.75).

Not because he disliked the U. S. or was disillusioned about U. S. civilization, but because he wanted to see what the old country looked like after 19 years, Louis Adamic went back to Jugoslavia in 1932. The Guggenheim Foundation paid his way as a U. S. author for a year's "creative writing." Adamic had not intended to spend much time in his native country, much less write a book about it, but he ended by doing both. The Native's Return, something between a travel diary and a guide book, is better than most such journalistic accounts. Though his book may well make its author persona non grata with the Jugoslavian Government, it should certainly boom the Dalmatian tourist trade.

Louis Adamic's was an exciting homecoming. He had not seen his parents, his nine brothers and sisters for 19 years. Aside from occasional letters to his family, he had long lost all touch with his native Slovene tongue. He was bringing his U. S. wife to see the old folks. He thought of himself as completely "Americanized." But almost at the first sight of the Dalmatian coast his forgotten language came back with a rush. In Trieste a Slovene official bade him a ceremonious welcome home, showed him newspapers bursting with his praises. In Jugoslavia, especially in his little native province of Carniola, Adamic was almost a national hero. Puzzled at first, he sensibly decided the fuss-&-feathers was due partly to Slovene patriotism, partly to the fact that he was a writer.

When he had faced the hearty but undemonstrative welcome of his family, peasants in the village of Blato who actually killed their fatted calf for him, Adamic changed his mind about making only a short visit. Louis Adamic became again Loyze Adamich. His Uncle Mikha gave him a dressing-down for not writing oftener to his mother. Uncle Yanez put off dying until he had seen his traveled nephew. Cousin Tone asked him to be groomsman at his wedding. Before Adamic had left Jugoslavia it was nearly time for him to be godfather to Tone's firstborn.

After several weeks at home, Adamic and his wife set off to see the country, went the whole circuit. Everywhere Adamic found himself a famed figure, soon was hearing legends about himself and "Mr. Gugnhaim," an immensely rich U. S. tycoon who had chosen Adamic to make an exhaustive report on the true state of affairs in Jugoslavia, would then set all things right. Adamic, discovering plenty of things that needed setting to rights, says flatly that King Alexander's Government is a grinding dictatorship, that Jugoslavian jails hold thousands of political prisoners, that if he had not been exceedingly circumspect he would have had no chance of getting the notes for his book across the border.

The Adamics visited Galichnik, a little mountain "village of grass widows," whose men, famed stonecutters and masons, go out to work all over the world, come home for a month in the summer, if they are not too far away. In Montenegro Adamic heard a story which he says illustrates the Montenegrin's two great virtues: A man about to be shot was asked if he had ever been in a worse fix. Yes, he answered, once--"when a man came to see me from afar and I was so poor that I had nothing in the house to offer him." Adamic was offered and refused the Jugoslavian Order of the White Eagle, afterward had a mutually cold interview with King Alexander, whom he considers of a piece with "the rest of the tyrants and dictators."

So nervous did Adamic finally become about Jugoslavian censorship that he decided to leave the country unexpectedly. Safely across the border with the notes for his book, he breathed more easily. Though he was glad to have seen the old country again, he was yet gladder that he did not have to live there. He feels sorry for Jugoslavians, thinks they are condemned to be cannon fodder at no distant date.

The Author, eldest surviving son of his parents, was slated for some learned post in his native land, but hated school, failed his examinations. When his outraged parents put him in a stricter religious school he ran away. A book called Do Not Go to America decided him to emigrate to the U. S. Landed there at 14 without knowing a word of English, he went to the hardest school of all: dug ditches, loaded freight, welded metals, wove textiles, swept floors, waited on tables. He learned to read English, to write. Editor Henry Louis Mencken encouraged him. Adamic wrote a history of U. S. labor troubles (Dynamite), a book about his U. S. experiences (Laughing in the Jungle). Now 34, with his last book chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club, Louis Adamic is established as a U. S. writer.

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