Big Bad City

DIVERSEY--MacKinlay Kantor--Coward-McCann ($2.00).

The Story. Small town Marry Javlyn arrived at a Chicago rooming house off Diversey Street. He was absorbed immediately into the ways of the big city; tossed carelessly on the bathroom shelf was a wallet stuffed with bigger bills than he had ever seen, and the only identification was Cook County's check for $84.62. The owner, identified by the paunchy landlord, was Abe Wise. This Jew locked his bedroom door, touched his "gat" fondly, but offered Marry the hospitality of excellent bootleg, and introduced Josephine Ruska of the husky voice and dark caressing eyes. Marry fell promptly in love, and as promptly forgot the mysterious Jew. Long evenings he spent in the park loving Josephine's cooing chatter and warm caresses. Long days he tramped the streets bearing his optimistic letter of recommendation from the small town paper. Big town papers, unimpressed, turned him down.

But the jovial column conductor who had once printed some of Marry's verse, swept him into a strange circle of struggling young writers, successful newspaper patterers, sophisticated critics. One of these, an ash-blonde beauty, lured Marry to her studio, and quickly taught him that his slangy little slum girl was wanting in veneer. But his slangy little Josephine bought herself books on rhetoric and elocution, and disappeared temporarily from Marry's scheme of things.

Up against it, Marry accepted from the friendly Jew a dull clerical job at the County building. What with one thing and another, he figured that Abe Wise was sobriquet for Gun-Man Steve Gold--Steve Gold of newspaper extras, Steve Gold, spectacular murderer, hounded by rival bootleg gangs. But just as he, Marry, a small town dreamer and poet, was about to be of considerable service to this curious fascinating character, Steve Gold was shot down from a passing sedan. Simultaneously Marry lost his County Cook job.

The Significance. Chicago's bootleg feuds, machine gun riots, gang run politics, are matter of course; but the inside story is still matter of conjecture. Author Kantor provides likely data for the conjecture, but his inside story is of an innocent accomplice who obeys with a thrill, and wonders what it is all about.

The Author. MacKinlay Kantor, Iowa born and bred, contributed much padding and less literature to his mother's local magazine, got considerable publicity from his ballad on Floyd Collins in the Chicago Tribune column, and worked, like the hero of his first novel, for County Cook. He wrote Diversey in three months, and until the royalties come in, he is supporting his wife and child on detective stories.

The Publishers. Publishing is now the smart profession for college youths who fancy neither the drabness of bonds nor the toil of butter-and-eggs. But some of them find a good deal of both in the smart profession, and become good publishers. Two men who have survived enough of the toil to start their own concern (with the publication of Diversey), are Thomas Coward and James McCann. The former, nine years out of Yale College, has worked with The Yale University Press and Bobbs-Merrill Co., was National Squash champion in 1922. The latter, up-from-office-boy at Doubleday Page and Co., was head of Hearst's International Library at the age of 27. Their publishing program includes a juvenile department headed by the daughter of picturesque Dr. Mabel Ulrich, Minnesota physician, college lecturer on sex, and successful bookshop proprietor. The young publishers' big catch is a volume of Thornton Wilder's drama collected over a period of twelve years. The final sheets were sent piecemeal, handwritten on yellow foolscap, from Gene Tunney's training camp.