Clarification

CLAIRE AMBLER--Booth Tarkington-- Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

The Story. It is an illogical but not totally unfortunate circumstance that, with the aid of beauty, the most stupid woman may successfully pretend to possess a civilized intelligence. Claire Ambler, though beautiful, was not entirely stupid; the ego-centripetal activity of her mind was doubly painful because of the artificiality it first produced and then criticized. But the men who buzzed around her, like bees around a blossom, did not understand this unhappy virtue; they were content to adore Claire Ambler, forgetting in their own egotism, to value hers.

The history of her growth and change is divided into three episodes, each with a new background, a new partner. The first episode has for its background a smart summer town in Maine and for Claire's partner a youth whose adolescent romanticism is as vapid as a cloud. When, to impress his faithless inamorata, Nelson Smock paddled his canoe into the surf beyond the inshore calm, she, riding by in a motorboat with a different gallant, remained gay and callous. " 'Nelson,' Claire called, 'you have'nt any idea how funny you look!":

The success of his gesture was greater than Nelson knew. Not because, after his canoe had tipped over and he had been lugged ashore, Claire had the momentary pang of remorse it had been his intention to inspire. But because, on their subsequent encounter, he employed a term of callow reproach of which the effect upon Claire was wonderful and strange. "Out of her rage and pain and the hot pressure of old, old instincts and urges, intelligence was being born. For the first time in her life she had just had a thought."

The next episode is something very different. In Raona, "that ancient Mediterranean town on a cliff ledge half way to the sky," Claire Ambler met an invalid whose gallantries on a battlefield more severe than that of love permitted him to anticipate only one bravery more. Charles Orbison, waiting, in the warm sun, for death to reward him for the wounds he had suffered in the War, saw Claire Ambler and heard her sing once, beautifully and out of a rare simplicity. Claire, not very inexplicably, fell in love with this quiet sardonic man who gently criticized the coquetries she was distributing between a young Fascist and a pair of shady young Neapolitan noblemen. Suddenly understanding that death would be more terrible for Charles Orbison had he her love as well as life to lose, Claire accomplished the brave as well as the theatrically perfect conclusion. Exaggerating her accustomed appearance of chattering artificiality, she blew him a kiss and left Raona.

Afterward, in New York, Claire Ambler ended an attenuated affair and faced the hideous realization that she had lived for 25 years without getting married. Not daring to endure alone the depressing silence that followed this thunderclap of thought, Claire telephoned the swain to whom she had last addressed farewells. When, with him, she was suffering the ceremony of marriage, a churchful of people at her back, Claire achieved at last an emotion which was untheatrical as well as genuine. "She was uplifted with the happiness of a great reassurance; once more she knew that she had forgotten herself and remembered him."

The Significance. No one knows the name of the greatest U. S. writer. The name of the most versatile, the most dependably competent, the most clear, cogent, and coherent is Booth Tarkington. He has written elaborate and frivolous romance (Monsieur Beaucaire), painfully precise and human satire (Alice Adams), peculiarly adroit farce (Penrod, Seventeen), smooth-grained level realism (The Gentleman from Indiana, The Midlander). The last is his most effective manner, although the others become him very nicely too. Claire Ambler is a mixed drink. The episode of Nelson Smock is in the exact manner of Willie Baxter's amorous agonies in Seventeen. The episode in Raona has a bristle of satire, an edge of local color to enhance its romanticism. Claire's final step toward maturity has a less sarcastic, a more human and delicate understanding than usually appears in the writings of Author Tarkington. A novel in which glib artifice is reduced to a minimum and warm, sincere clarification, condoning knowledge, is raised to its maximum. Claire Ambler is his most inclusive, perhaps his most powerful book.

The Author. In 1869, in Indianapolis, the face of Booth Tarkington, not then displaying its present sly geniality, made its first appearance. As he grew up in the city of his birth, he was frequently to be seen in the company of now famed Author Meredith Nicholson or in the company of then famed Poet James Whitcomb Riley. Author Tarkington went East for schooling at Exeter, came home to enter Purdue University, and then went East again to finish at Princeton. Here he gave splendid promise of future mediocrity by becoming a tremendous social success; he sang, wrote, drew pictures, acted. Withal, he produced an impression of great shyness, especially when called upon to sing a song. This trait in his character inspired an anonymous author to produce a peculiarly poor poem which begins in this fashion : The same old Tark-- just watch him shy Like hunted thing, and hide, if let, Away behind his cigaiette. . . After Princeton, Author Tarkington re turned to Indianapolis. He was once elected to the state legislature on a Republican ticket, and he wrote a story called Monsieur Beaucaire which was published by McClure's Magazine. This story disgusted Poet Riley to such a degree that, when the two engaged in conversation, the topic of Author Tarkington's literary effusions was tactfully avoided. But it satisfied a great many people and was probably responsible for the later publication of that excellent novel, The Gentleman from Indiana. Since then, Author Tarkington has led the arduous but not unpleasant existence of a popular man of letters. In the sum mer he lives in a large house at Kennebunkport, Me., wearing a bathrobe most of the time, writing on a drawing board, making frequent excursions in a small motorboat which he owns. In the winter he lives in Indianapolis because he likes it. He is fond of watching football but plays neither this nor any other game with marked enthusiasm. Reports, last summer, that he was losing his eyesight, were exaggerated. Author Tarkington takes writing seriously; he regards himself, however, with a becoming levity.