Rare Ben

Rare Ben

O RARE BEN JONSON--Byron Steel--Knopf ($3). ". . . Ben tries in vain to spear an eel with the newly-invented fork, and in exasperation flings the fork across the room. With his large hand he dips up an eel from its greasy dish and conveys it drippingly to his mouth. He smacks his lips loudly, and washes the eel down with a deep tankard of Canary. . . . "Ben sleeps heavily, and awakes the next morning in a dripping sweat, but with brave notions. . . . He always writes under these conditions. His drunken, salty sweat seems to bring him inspiration." Thus Author Steele in what he calls a "poetically [in the Aristotelian sense] true conception" of Ben Jonson. There is no necessity to justify, as he attempts, fictionized biography; the public has accepted it as its best communication with the past. The Ben Jonson we have here is a lovable, disgusting, Falstaffian figure who drinks, slops, fights, sweats, writes lovely lyrics. One hundred and fifty-eight well-printed pages suffice to give his life in its entirety. If the style is not so robust as Jonson, the conception is brutal enough. Jonson is rare, rare as a century plant; rare also as a beefsteak. Author Steele, aged 20, lately studied under Professor John Erskine,* of Columbia University. Lectures by Professor Erskine inspired the writing of the Jonson book, the author says.

Story of a Philosopher

The Book./- As a small boy, Author Durant lived with his parents and his many brothers in factory towns of Massachusetts & New Jersey. His career as schoolboy differed little from that of any other intelligent schoolboy except that at an early age Author Durant received an invitation from a Roman Catholic Priest: "You must study more, and pray more, and always bear in mind that the church has chosen you to be one of our servants. . . ." For some years Jack (as Author Durant has chosen to call himself in these pages) accepts the invitation to be a priest if he does not always follow the advice which accompanied it. Then after being a reporter, a teacher, a factory worker, he leaves his seminary to become an anarchist.

As an anarchist, a distaste for violence prevented him from achieving important success. Desire for culture made him tour Europe and a thirst for more education made him come back and study post-graduate philosophy at Columbia University. Then he finds Ariel, a Jewish girl of 15, with whom he falls in love. They marry and find happiness in the pursuit of wisdom and the possession of love. A closing chapter, called "I Become A Daddy" announces, with infinite detail, the birth of a daughter to Mr. & Mrs. Durant.

The Significance. It is unfortunate that so evidently sincere a book as this successor to The Story of Philosophy should be given an appearance of artificiality by mannerisms and pretensions which are part of the personality of the author and hence actually evidences of his sincerity. There is, in the first place, no good reason for calling the book (as Mr. Durant does) a "mental autobiography"; its subject is usually something very distinct from Author Durant's intellectual development and its method is far from analytical.

But if the book does not live up to its high-toned title, it stands without wobbling as an account of a merry and successful rendezvous with life. The mental reactions of the author interest the reader, less than the things he does. It is far more engaging and exciting to read Author Durant's account of early and trivial love affairs, his experiences as a reporter, his encounters with many people all of whom are described with humanity and warmth, than to read the story of how he came to think that there was no God, or what he felt about Marxian Socialism. Yet, if it is the intention of any biography to present the doings of its subject so that his character may be at least partially under stood, Author Durant has achieved his intention. One's liking or de testation for a man is caused not by reading what he thought of religion but by reading what he said to his mother-in-law. Thus the autobiography of Will Durant presents the story of an energetic, unhumorous, intelligent, conceited young philosopher, whose disguised pomposity is outweighed by a healthy and unphilosophical liking for a pretty girl, or a good book or a vulgar story. The Author. Will Durant's life, his opinions, his eccentricities are thoroughly covered in this book. It does not, however, include the period in which his name ceased to be that of an obscure philosophy teacher and became instead that of author of a best seller, an author whose fame and reputation were so great that he was employed to report the Gray-Snyder murder trial for the New York Telegram. Of The Story of Philosophy, his popular magnum opus, the author remarked that the thing he liked best about the book was the title, the thing he liked least was the fact that it was finished. Small, spry, 42, Author Durant (who would look like a brownie but for his goatee) likes to be busy. Now in Sea Cliff, L. I., where he lives, he is busy writing a four-volume history of the 19th Century, of which the first volume will be published in two or more years.

Treatise

THE HUMAN BODY--Logan Clendening, M. D.--Knopf ($6). No merryandrew, no practical joker is quite so detestable as the physician who attempts a dreary levity at the bedside of a bored and uncomfortable patient. Dr. Clendening's wit is not of this variety; it is a tonic, like codliver oil, that enables lay readers to digest properly his capable and exhaustive description of the human body and its grotesque functions. Valuable, clear, factual writing about what causes constipation, hay fever, baldness, consumption, obesity, what people ought to eat, what they ought to marry and why they die, is admirably entangled with such impertinences as "The French and other savage tribes," or When to the age of forty they come, Men run to belly and women to bum.

*Democracy and Ideals. The Literary Discipline. The Private Life of Helen of Troy, Galahad.

/-TRANSITION--Will Durant--Simon & Schuster ($3).