On Green Paper

MOLINOFF--OR THE COUNT IN THE KITCHEN--Maurice Bedel--Viking ($2.50).

In the U. S. the Pulitzer prize meant $1,000 to Julia Peterkin, the Liberty prize 50 times as much to Fannie Hurst. In Europe, when savants awarded the great Goncourt prize to Author Bedel for this book he received a measure of immortality and 5,000 francs ($200).

Author Bedel has a droll vivacity all his own. When his Bolivian Planter Cortes, newly rich, buys up the old estate of Fontecreuse in Touraine (southern France --the Contes Drolatiques country), he installs an elevator, removes a Gobelin tapestry which interferes with the acoustics of his Negro saxophonist, and engages a Russian Count to preside over his kitchen. The Count is Molinoff, a person of glamor. Molinoff forgets he is cook, remembers only he is count. He spends a few stolen hours every day with Anne and Franc,oise, young daughters of a neighboring poor-but-proud royalist family. Franc,oise, unlike Anne, has no bent for politics. Her energy is of the 1929 vintage. "In her arms and legs, movement lay coiled, as in the springs of a watch." When Molinoff smokes his fragrant cigarets, drinks his whiskey & soda, she does the same. When he plays Negro jazz records on a phonograph, she sways all over. She looks at Molinoff "with the eyes of a little girl that wants to be played with." But Molinoff, woman's man that he is, will not play with a virgin. He is a Don Juan with a Russian soul. He has a Conscience that must burble out in a confession of his imposture to the first passing peasant. After a glorious triumph on the head of that imposture (presentation to the "future" Queen of France of Leon Daudet's royalists); after a royal hunt in which he stabs the stag and thrills all the ladies, Molinoff is discovered in his cook capacity by Franc,oise's family. A fatalist giving a dark, hollow laugh at his fate, Molinoff trundles off down the road, his back dwindling in the dust. null who sets off in hot pursuit on her bicycle, is downed by the wind, scrapes her pretty nose.

Example of Author Bedel's style (description of a fat lady in distress): "The gelatine of her neck quivered, and her hand, describing a vast detour, arrived at her throat."

The book is printed on green paper.