Super-Man*

Super--Man*

The World Turned Upside Down for Your Entertainment

The Story. A mighty man, this Richard Hogarth, farmer, with brown skin, round brow, moles on his cheek, lips "negroid in their thick pout," eyes brown, bloodshot, "imperially large."

The Jews, driven from Europe, had taken England for their own. Baruch Frankl, "Jew of Jews," ordered his tenants to wear a fez with a tassel as Livery of the Manor. But Hogarth refused, and Hogarth's sister rejected Frankl's amorous advances. Things took place--Hogarth flogged Frankl; Hogarth was convicted, falsely, of murder; Hogarth was sent to Colmoor prison. Rebekah Frankl, beautiful, barbaric, with earrings as big as hoops, flung a red flower with a black heart of passion to Hogarth on his conviction.

Hogarth, having solved the problem of the world's misery, decided that he was justified in leaving prison to set things right. Blasting the great bell of Colmoor with lightning from heaven, he escaped astride of its clapper when it was sent for repairs. The ship bearing the bell and Hogarth was wrecked, and he was cast up on the Cornish coast.

Inconspicuously disguised in the robes of a Bedouin, he dug out of a meteorite enough diamonds to buy the earth, got in touch with Rebekah, circumvented temporarily his enemies, indicted a note to the great powers taking possession of the oceans of the world.

Having spent three years juggling with the world's finances, training armies, building colossal floating fortresses of impregnable steel, Hogarth blew up a few liners, destroyed the British fleet, established a toll (sea rent) on all passing vessels, finally took over England in the capacity of regent, in order to put into operation his panacea for the ills of the world--a system of land tenure by the nation, not by the individual. The Jews he commanded to return to Palestine.

Unfortunately, Hogarth still had his enemies. Two in particular--an ex-priest and a cockney murderer--had peculiar talents for turning up at the wrong time in the wrong places. At the height of his triumph, the murderer stabbed him and the ex-priest contrived to sink most of his floating forts. Hogarth fled for his life, his power tumbling in ruins about his head.

Happily, he was a resourceful superman. Having failed as Lord of the Sea, he went to the Holy Land just in time to be acclaimed as the Messiah of the Second Coming. He marI ried Rebekah and for 60 years ruled

over Israel, documents found in a

| hair trunk having proved him to be a Jew. Under his rule. Israel became the centre and heart of the world.

The Significance. Shiel is a mad, dazzling fellow, "wildly well writing and riding this English language." He is more romantic than Romance, juggling nations, kings, comets, peasants in soaring obedience to unreined fancy. His characters talk as no man talked, act as no man acted, exist in a blazing phantasmal world where almost anything is almost sure to happen. Lacking a word, he coins one; where History or Science runs counter to his conception, he remakes History and Science. He is sheer imaginative flame run wild like a cosmic prairie fire. You can laugh at him--you cannot deny his vitality.

The Author. Matthew Phipps Shiel was born of Irish parents in the West Indies in 1865. He studied medicine and mathematics; chemical experiments and mathematics are still his chief amusements. He appears to know a little about almost everything. His first venture as an author was the publication of a paper, written out by hand, at the age of 13. His particular pride is his body. He boasts that he, "over 40 years old, can run nine miles with sprightliness." He sees a fundamental identity between genius and physical health. Among his novels--some 20 in number--are Prince Zaleski, Shapes in the Fire, The Purple Cloud, The Pale Ape, Children of the Wind. The Lord of the Sea was first published in 1901.

New Books

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

Heavy Huxley

YOUNG ARCHIMEDES--Aldous Huxley --Doran ($2.00). The skilled dispenser of cleverness to the sophisticates becomes excessively painstaking and elaborately voluble in a set of six not particularly short short stories. They are exhaustive studies in human nature. Uncle Spencer enlarges upon the love of an elderly Englishman for a cockney male impersonator in a German internment prison. Little Mexican tells about a romantic Italian Count and the thwarted life of his son. Hubert and Minnie relates the abortive misconduct of an unwilling young man and a willing young woman. Fard, short and not without poignancy, is no more than a snapshot of an overworked chambermaid and her temperamental mistress. The Portrait describes the selling of a fake Old Master. Young Archimedes discovers an infant mathematical prodigy, recounts his frustration and early suicide. All the stories are careful, ambitious work. All are dull.

Huck Finn Redivivus

GOIN' ON FOURTEEN--Irvin S. Cobb-- Doran ($2.50). John C. Calhoun Custer had his 13th birthday the day before the first page of this book. He is spiritual brother to "Penrod," to "Huck Finn," to "Tom Bailey," to all the other naughty urchins whose pranks bring reminiscent lumps to shriveled throats. The story--or series of stories--is true to form. There are adventures with dogs and cats, a treasure-hunting expedition, the inevitable circus, a running away from home. There is tragedy when the village bad boy dies to rescue a contemporary from drowning. The book is like a score of others, but Mr. Cobb's insight into the preadolescent intelligence or his recollection of the days immediately before the first hair curved proudly on the youthful chest is shrewder than most.

*LORD OF THE SEA--M. P. Shiel--Knopf ($2.50).