The Centaur*

Here is a First Novel From a Generation Not Fitzgerald's

The Story. A centaur is beast and god -- and both without fear or shame. Jeffrey Dwyer was a centaur, in his youth.

When Joan Converse, child of a rich, unpleasant mother who went through life simmering in a tepid steam of easy admiration, and an ineffective father whom Mrs. Converse had discarded from her egocentric cosmos like a rejected peachpit, first met Jeffrey, she fell in love with him --instanter and unwaveringly--in spite of the facts that he was a crazy undergraduate poet with a wild reputation and that his devotion to spoiled, lovely Inez Martin was well known. In fact, for a long, long time Joan didn't seem to have even half a chance.

Inez and Jeffrey quarreled; Jeffrey went into the Tank Corps, though not to France, and collected material for a bitter novel, Squads Right About. Then Inez, after making up with him again, eliminated him conclusively in favor of a pimply young man named Todd--and Jeffrey went to the modern devil of our age, who is not a merry companion, for a while. But he mended himself with courage and the memories of an old and youthful content--snow-water and the unguent of irony--a gorgeous fistfight released him from certain delusions--Joan's path crossed his again, as it always seemed to do when he was most hopeless. She had always been in love with him--and now he fell in love with her. They were married, and for a month, at least, knew enchantment. Then--Squads Right About had been a success--Jeffrey settled down with Joan in a colonial house in the Connecticut hills, apparently happily-spoused and ready to simply tear the epidermis off literature.

He was well started on his new novel when Inez Martin reappeared, as beautiful as ever but much more unhappy, for the bepimpled Todd had been removed, of necessity, to a nearby private sanatorium--and Inez would not desert him, having taken him for better or worse. The old magic closed around Jeffrey like a net of silk. He was fond of Joan-- but Inez was, and had been, every- thing he cried for. Yet he could not bear to hurt Joan--and it was only after weeks of unhappiness that he mastered himself at last. Then, at the moment of crisis, he realized that Inez had only been an impulse for splendor in his life--an impulse fulfillment could only spoil it. Her power faded from him--after all, he was made for work (he thought), not for happiness. So he stayed with Joan whole-heartedly--and was happy as well. True, the centaur was tamed at last--broken to the plow. But Jeffrey wrote better poetry.

The Significance. A vivid, swift-footed description of youth's perennial first assault upon life--written with beauty, humor and fire. A younger generation that is not Fitzgerald's treated from a new angle and without professional flapperisms. Faults of course--occasional over-writing--occasional lapses into adolescent unreality--but on the whole a first novel that does not need the usual "displays great promise" critical lifeline--a first novel that should interest a wide and diverse public.

The Author. Cyril Hume was born in New Rochelle, N. Y., March 16, 1900, in the middle of one of the severest ice-storms known to New York State. He has lived most of his life in New England and for four years (1919-22) attended Yale College. Reddish haired, he is the antithesis of the frail litterateur. He is credited with prodigious feats of strength in dislodging, barehanded, slabs of paving stone from the treasured Harkness quadrangle in a nocturnal rampage during his college course. After college, he was connected with The New York World and with TIME, the weekly newsmagazine. His book is not autobiographical.

The Inarticulates

Where Are Their Stories?

The life of the professional baseball player is sketched, at least, in Heywood Broun's The Sun Field; the professional pugilist appears in Jim Tully's Emmett Lawlor; steel and iron workers, both masters and men, pass through the pages of Caret Garrett's The Cinder Buggy. But in spite of these and the vast number of semi-humorous or mechanically conventional "sport stories" or "labor stories" in our popular magazines--a good deal of modern American fiction seems to deal with a class of characters who form a very small minority of the population.

The muckraking novel--written rather to expose an abuse than to describe actual men and women in fiction--we have always with us. The Jungle (Upton Sinclair) is a good sample of its kind--and good of its kind. But the kind is not lasting. And, in general, our accredited novelists seem to prefer to deal, if not with brokers, artists and young collegians, at least with the Babbitts and sub-Babbitts of the middle class.

A riveter, a sandhog, a bush league pitcher, Regular Army Sergeant, a worker in the steel mills, a miner, a railroad engineer, a hoofer in the three-a-day--where are their stories? Where are the stories of the people without inherited incomes who have neither time, money nor opportunity for the elegant complications of country club life? They themselves are inarticulate? But is anyone more inarticulate artistically than the average bond salesman?

Jack London knew odd corners of America--but the America he knew has already altered. And the others who have tried of recent years have used the slick technique of the magazines or dropped into easy burlesque. The epic remains to be written--and it will not be an epic of easy circumstances. Too many of our moderns of promise are already cursed with ease--seeming tied to the same narrow slice of life where every one is more or less of a gentleman. True, the soil is coming into its own somewhat--and the men of the soil--but not the machine and the men of the machine-- nor the vast class who make amusement in one way or another for the multitude, excepting for authors, painters, sculptors and musicians (who have even broken into the movies). The others remain outside, a monstrous and interesting regiment.

It may seem ungracious to clamor like this, in a publishing season that has already produced so many worthy novels. But--we wonder just what would happen if one of the younger or youngest generation worked in a steel mill for a couple of years before he wrote his next novel. It might be the Great American Novel after all. S. V. B.

Christopher Morley

Has He a Harold Bell Wright Vein?

Christopher Morley has as good a time living his life as any man I've ever met. He seems always to be happy, always in the mood for the quiet enjoyment of food, a pipe, conversation. His zest for life is amazing. Some years back it caused him to produce book after book, although they were varyingly successful and, to the discriminating, often only mildly amusing. He was the most prolific of essayists, but his stories smelt strongly of the study and of a too intimate acquaintance with the classics. However, Christopher Morley, both in his poetry and his prose, seems to have emerged from this period of almost adolescent fertility. He writes with a beauty that is equaled by few Americans, and, occasionally, as in Where the Blue Begins, with rare fancy and high vision. This fact is pleasing to his friends, and his friends are legion. He is one of the most friendly of human beings.

Latterly, Mr. Morley has worked with a publishing house, with a magazine and on various newspapers. At present he conducts a colum called The Bowling Green for the New York Evening Post. He lives on Long Island, is married, has three children. Determinedly domestic, he is seldom to be seen in town of an evening, although he spends, as a rule, several months of the year in a New York City apartment.

His passion for the sea is well known. He might almost be called a non-sea-going captain, so frequent are his contacts with things of the sea (notably, perhaps, William McFee), and so genuinely impressed is he by anything or anybody that seems salty.

Of himself he once wrote:

"My dearest dream is to own a boat big enough to sleep and fry bacon in; to write three good novels and about 30 good plays, each of which would run a year on Broadway. A publisher once came to me and said that I had a Harold Bell Wright vein which I was neglecting to cultivate, and that there was no reason why I shouldn't make $30,000 a year if I would write that kind of book and let him publish it. He is buried in the suburbs of Philadelphia." J.F.

Good Books

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

THE CINDER BUGGY--Garet Garrett--Dutton ($2.00). Wrought iron made New Damascus great, in its moment--wrought iron and two men, Aaron Breakspeare and Enoch Gib. Aaron, the popular, engaging, lovable idealist; Enoch the dour and practical, well-hated, well-feared. The men clashed over two things-- a woman and steel. Popular Aaron won the woman but his dream of a steel age failed--it was still too early. Enoch clung to iron--and when Aaron's son, John Breakspeare, brought his father back to New Damascus, dead, the clash between practical Enoch and young Breakspeare, between iron and steel, was renewed. The time was ripe for the monstrous birth of the steel age-- Enoch, singlehanded, fought vainly against it -- he broke himself and New Damascus, retarding for a few years the inevitable event. And when Agnes married John, after many vicissitudes, Enoch and Breakspeare were reconciled at last. This unique novel by a famed writer on business and finance is an extraordinarily interesting achievement.

MY GARDEN OF MEMORY--the late Kate Douglas Wiggin--Houghton Mifflin ($5.00). The autobiography of the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The story of an energetic and joyous life--childhood in a small New England hamlet--a meeting with Charles Dickens--girlhood in California--the difficult, unsparing task of establishing the first free kindergartens on the Pacific Coast-- literary celebrity--travel--adventures of mind and body. One wonders, timidly, while reading, how Mrs. Riggs ever found time, in a life much interrupted by illness, to do and see so much, and to tell of it with such charm. She had the happy faculty of making friends as easily with Ellen Terry and Rudyard Kipling as with the neighborhood grocer. Her immense audience will treasure this frank account of as vivid and diverse a career as any of her time.

OLIVER OCTOBER--George Barr McCutcheon--Dodd Mead ($2.00). Oliver October Baxter had his fortune told by a gipsy the day he was born. She promised him all the court-cards in old Miss Lachesis' desk--but said he would be hung before he was 30. The prophecy was fulfilled, and the ingenious manner of its working out forms the theme of a typical McCutcheon thriller.

* WIFE OF THE CENTAUR--Cyril Hume-- Doran