Near-Masterpiece--

Near-Masterpiece*

SUCCESS--Lion Feuchtwanger--Viking ($3).

A nameless Frenchman made a six-word epigram,/- Lion Feuchtwanger has made a 780-page book; neither has exhausted their common subject. Of the two, Feuchtwanger's version deserves the wider circulation, for he has written a near-masterpiece.

Success combines the best features of a newspaper, an historical novel, a cinema, a course of lectures. Its scene is Munich and Bavaria, 1921-23. Central theme is the trial and imprisonment of one Martin Kruger, director of Munich's National Galleries. Krueger is persona non grata with the Bavarian government; on a trumped-up charge of perjury he is arrested and convicted. As his friends work for his release he becomes for them the symbol of justice; to the government his unjust imprisonment is an instance of good administration. But for each side Krueger is only a pawn in a very big game.

Many are the figures with a hand in Krueger's fate: blunt Autocrat Otto Klenk ("Klenk is Klenk and signs himself Klenk"): Jewish Lawyer Geyer, with a frail body and a passion for logic and justice; Hessreiter, rich man by grace of a business of which he is ashamed; Dr. Bichler, blind, surly old peasant, who rules Bavaria from behind the scenes; Communist Kaspar Proeckl, bitter and untidy engineer who serves Reindl and cannot hate him successfully; Johanna Krain, friend of Krueger, who champions him, marries him in prison out of pity; Jacques Tueverlin, artist-spectator of the tragicomedy; Landholzer. madman or genius, who has escaped from the world into an asylum. So carefully, logically, adroitly has Feuchtwanger marshaled the army of his characters that their individual stories move together like an orderly procession; you seem to see the movement of a whole people. Author Feuchtwanger is as fond of Munich, of Bavarian kindliness, humor, beauty as he is bitter towards Bavarian stupidity, cruelty, grossness, injustice. If his individual portraits had been as sharply drawn, as compelling as the giant canvas as a whole. Success would have been a masterpiece indeed.

The Author. Lion Feuchtwanger, 46, a Jew, was born in Munich, lives in Berlin, made his reputation by a book about Bavaria's olden times (Power). Though he has never been in the U. S. he has written some satirical verse about it (Pep). He worked three years on Success, was glad to hear it had been chosen by the Literary Guild for November, helped his wife into his U. S. motor, set out for a tour of warmer countries, will not be back for more than a year. Other books: The Ugly Duchess, Two Anglo-Saxon Plays.

War & Yoga

THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER-- F. Yeats-Brown--Viking ($2.75).

The idea is that this Bengal lancer has already had, if not nine lives like a cat, at any rate more than one. But Onetime Lancer Yeats-Brown would probably admit he was unusual. Not every fresh-cheeked British boy from Sandhurst turns into a No. 1 poloist and pig-sticker, nor discovers a thirst for the mysteries of Hindu Yoga.

Francis Yeats-Brown liked Indians, so he was not unhappy to be sent to an Indian regiment (17th Cavalry, Indian Army). But his acquaintance with Indians and Indian culture educated him out of humor with Western civilization. "Very humbly and hopefully'' he went to Benares, holy city of the Hindus, there to sit at the feet of Theosophist Annie Besant, to see her youthful embryo-Messiah Krishnamurti. In between expeditions to Nautch girls and in search of a guru (teacher) he played polo, stuck "pigs" (wild boars). He gives a vivid description of a polo match, a no less vivid account of what it feels like to chase a boar, try to pin it with a lance-thrust. Says he: "In the open, the odds are against the boar, but in blind cover [where the hunters follow on foot, armed only with a lance] he has more than an equal chance against a man. That is one of the purifying risks of pig sticking."

When the War came Yeats-Brown was on leave at home. He was unable to rejoin his regiment but served six months with the cavalry on the Western Front before he was transferred as an observer to the Mesopotamian Flight of the Royal Flying Corps. Once his pilot had to make a forced landing; he was captured by Arabs, turned over to the Turks, who held him prisoner two years. He escaped, lived in Constantinople a while disguised as a German governess, as a German mechanic, was recaptured, escaped again only a fortnight before the Armistice. After the War he went back to India, is now a major. He was still good at polo and played on the team which won the 1922 Inter-regimental and Cavalry tournaments. In 1924 he retired on pension, became polo correspondent for the London Times, assistant editor of the London Spectator.

How far Yeats-Brown has progressed in the practice of Yoga is not clear. But he tried the primary breathing exercises, says he attained moments of impersonality. "Poised and relaxed and completely in my body (not out of it, as the mystologues would have it) I saw myself at times impersonally. The future lay at my feet. I surveyed it as an interested traveler."

The Lives of A Bengal Lancer is the November choice of the Book-of-the- Month Club.

1906-1909

OUR TIMES : PRE-WAR AMERICA -- Mark Sullivan -- Scribners ($5).*

Events are born as journalism, die as history. Journalist Mark Sullivan's Our Times is an attempt to delay the process, or at least to arrange the corpse's limbs decently before rigor mortis sets in. Journalist Sullivan knew the dear departed well, arranges the lights and shadows with a friendly and discriminating hand. This third volume of his big work (there will be two more) covers the years 1906 to 1909 in the U. S.

Pre-War America makes encyclopedic but entertaining reading. Like an encyclopedia or a deep-dish pie it may be dipped into for juicy bits or devoured from start to finish. Some of the juicy bits:

How Roosevelt smote the "nature fakers" and how one of them smote him back.

How "Mr. Dooley" commented on Booker T. Washington's dining at the White House: "I don't mind sayin' that I'd rather ate with a coon thin have wan wait on me. I'd sooner he'd handle his own food thin mine. F'r me, if anny thumb must be in th' gravy, lave it be white if ye please."

How Tin-Pan Alley wrote a song about the Harry K. Thaw case: "Just because he's a millionaire, everybody's willing to treat him unfair."

How The Rosary, song of sentiment, sold 2,670,750 copies.

How Fred Merkle failed to touch second base.

Pre-War America is a scrapbook, eclectic but inclusive and not haphazard. Its 200 photographs, drawings, cartoons, handbills, programs, advertisements go swimmingly with the text, help to make the book a continuous, carefully edited newsreel of a day just gone.

The Author. Mark Sullivan, 56, Harvardman, onetime lawyer, onetime editor of Collier's Weekly, is a conservative Republican dean among Washington special correspondents (his paper: New York Herald Tribune). Other books: The Great Adventure at Washington, The Turn of the Century, America Finding Herself.

Simple Stuff

BRIDAL POND -- Zona Gale -- Knopf ($2.50).

It takes something to write about simple people, countrymen, immigrants, without being photographic, drab. What it takes Zona Gale has got. Out of the ruck of close-to-the-soil Midwestern authors she emerged with her first book. Her stories are as realistic as bread but they have a homemade flavor, not to be had without a personal recipe. She handles a grim subject with skilfully gentle, feminine hands.

Bridal Pond is a collection of her recent short stories. Some of them: A farmer accuses himself of the murder of his wife, but he imagined it all. A hired man falls in love with the lady he works for, but doesn't interrupt her wedding after all. A bitter woman sacrifices her secret formula for the best bread ever baked. A burglar willy-nilly witnesses a death scene, is converted by it, comes forward to explain, is arrested. An old man knows he is a burden, takes care that his suicide shall give as little trouble as possible. Zona Gale has seen through the salability of plot to the necessity of a story. Her prosy people are simplified into poetics.

Author. Author Zona Gale (people joked when she married William Llywelyn Breese) was born in Portage, Wis., 56 years ago, still lives there. Once an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, she has served on the Board of Regents. Once a newshawk (for Milwaukee papers and New York World) she is now newsworthy. In 1911 she won first prize in a short-story contest in which there were 15,000 entries. In 1921 her play Miss Lulu Belt won the Pulitzer Prize. Last month she publicly forgave a plagiarist (TIME. Sept. 15). Other books: Preface to a Life, Faint Perfume, Birth, Friendship Village.

Handling People

STRATEGY IN HANDLING PEOPLE--Ewing T. Webb & John J. B. Morgan--Boulton, Pierce ($3).*

Andrew Carnegie named one of his steel plants after Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, in order to increase his chances of getting Pennsy business. In England, Cyrus McCormick exhibited a rusty shipwrecked harvester in competition with spick-&-span machines, won the contest, increased his sales. Frank Munsey never once during 25 years forgot that a certain associate was deaf in his right ear. Dwight Morrow surprised Calles by being human. A University President got a second million out of a philanthropist by making sure that the first million was thoroughly publicized. Famed Realtor Joseph P. Day sold an old-fashioned office building to Steel's late great Judge Gary by a neat appeal to sentiment. . . .

Strategy in Handling People is a how-to-succeed book, using a novel technique. It relates a series of anecdotes and then moralizes in italics. Typical moral: "People are all different and must be treated differently." The worst that can be said about the book is that it draws heavily on the life of Benjamin Franklin. But its merit is that the anecdotes pertain to some 300 other people from Louisa M. Alcott to Adolph Zukor.

Cookery

THE GUN CLUB COOK BOOK--Charles Browne--Scribners ($3).

The little university town of Princeton. N. J. bids fair to become notorious. Last fortnight Charles Augustus Lindbergh settled close by there. Last week Princeton's most popular citizen and onetime mayor, Dr. Charles Browne, published part of his wisdom in the form of a cook book.

The Gun Club Cook Book scorns frippery and froufrou, sets forth many a plain but seasonable and spicy appetizer, many a hearty piece de resistance. Like its author's conversation these recipes are blunt but pointed, dipped in the salty wit of good sense. Unusual among politicians. Dr. Browne says what he thinks; unique among cookbook authors, he gives many a flat decision on moot questions of food & drink. "Beaten biscuits are biscuits horribly beaten before they are cooked and may be used as golf-balls afterward.'' Of a Clover Club cocktail he says, "It's an awful mixture"; but tells how to make it and adds: "This will make three cocktails if there can be found three people who want them."

An epicure but no fussbudget. Dr. Browne likes to entertain, likes his guests to enjoy themselves. But people who eat and drink too much or who cannot distinguish good food from fodder annoy him. He has threatened to give two of his friends a dinner consisting entirely of hot dogs, thinks they will notice nothing out of the way.

The Author. Dr. Browne, a Democrat, describes himself on the title-page as "sometime Mayor of Princeton; onetime Member of Congress; A. M., M. D., and some other things, but primarily interested in cookery." Retired to private life by a Republican landslide, he cultivates Lucullus's garden.

/-Rien ne reussit comme le succes-- "Nothing succeeds like success."

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME. 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

*Published Oct. 20.

*Published Oct. 10.

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