Smoldering Youth

Smouldering Youth

BYSTANDER--Maxim Gorki--Cape & Smith ($3).

Author Maxim Gorki is famed in Europe: in the last three years 2,000,000 copies of his books have been sold in Russia alone. He is little known in the U. S. Says he: Bystander is his magnum opus.

Sympathetic with the revolutionists but not an active revolutionist himself, Author Gorki has written not propaganda but a chronicle of the Russian intellectuals. The scene is laid in Russia of some 30 years back; the story ends at the time of the late Tsar's coronation. Hero Clim Samghin is a pale, near-sighted youth, long on brains, short on emotions, whose inamorata says to him: "You're slippery. . . . And you have no words which are dear to you." Clim is a precocious but unattractive child, becomes a clever but unattractive young man. He goes to the university at St. Petersburg, transfers to the university at Moscow, joins the kaleidoscopic crowd of young intellectuals, who drink, smoke, make love, talk, talk, talk. A sensualist, without strong affections, Clim tries to imagine himself in love with Lidia; he becomes her lover, is relieved not to have the affair end in marriage. There is no upshot to the story; with a description of the Exposition at Nizhni-Novgorod it comes to an abrupt end.

The Author. Maxim Gorki (real name: Alexey Maximovitch Pyeshkoff) is 62, gaunt, wrinkled, hollow-eyed, with drooping moustaches. He wears: baggy trousers, blue workman's shirt, a blue sweater. A poor boy, he had to earn his own living when he was nine; he has been worker in a bootshop, apprentice to a mechanical draughtsman, cook's assistant, lawyer's clerk, tramp, laborer, baker. Once he tried to commit suicide; the bullet is still in his body. Though he took no part in the Revolution, for he believed the masses were not ready for it, he is in good standing with the Soviet Government and last summer was made member of the Central Executive Committee. He is one of the most popular figures in Russia, though he spends most of his time (nine months a year) in Italy, in a villa at Capo di Sorrento rented from an Italian duke. Consumptive most of his life, like many consumptives he has great energy, works from six a. m. till one; in the evening till late at night. The Literary Guild, which has chosen Bystander as its April selection, has invited Author Gorki to come to the U. S. to lecture. (He has been here once before, in 1906; his reception was not favorable, because he was traveling with his mistress.) Lecturer Gorki speaks no English.

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