King Christina

CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN--Margaret Goldsmith--Doubleday, Derail ($2.50). When Greta Garbo's latest picture was released this week, cinemaddicts learned an historical fact: there was once a ruler of Sweden named Christina. But Authoress Goldsmith's biography gives a clearer picture of what manner of woman she was than Hollywood would ever dare. Not a first-rate book, Christina of Sweden at least gives U. S. readers a glimpse of one of the lesser-known figures of history. Only child of the great Gustavus Adolphus, Christina (1626-89) should have been a man, for she always acted like one. Short, ugly and unfeminine, she was a bright student and a hard worker. She liked men's company, the more Rabelaisian the better, but the idea of marriage horrified her. When she came to the throne after her father's death, she let it be clearly understood that there never would be a prince consort. Her bedfellow was a lady-in-waiting. Personally popular with her subjects, she soon got into hot water because she imported foreign intellectuals (notably Descartes) to liven up the heavy Scandinavian atmosphere. When she decided that she had had enough of being ruler, she amazed Europe by abdicating, going to Rome to live. There, although she had turned Roman Catholic she was a constant source of embarrassment to the authorities by her loud, eccentric and unladylike behavior. On a visit to the King of France and in the presence of the entire court "she often rested her feet on a chair as high as the one on which she was sitting." laughed at jokes in the theatre which should have made her blush, swore freely whenever she felt like it. When she finally died in Rome she ordered that her epitaph should read simply: "Christina lived for 63 years." Idaho Dreiser

PASSIONS SPIN THE PLOT -- Vardis Fisher--Caxton & Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). If the last two volumes of his tetralogy are on a par with the first two (In Tragic Life--TIME, July 3; Passions Spin the Plot}. U. S. critics will be speaking of Idaho's Author Vardis Fisher in the same breath with Indiana's Theodore Dreiser. No less doggedly candid than Dreiser but a more artful writer, Author Fisher intends his four-decker novel to be an honest book. Because he has had a hard, unhappy life and because he writes only of what he knows, Vardis Fisher's books are not cheerful reading, have been called brutal, ruthless. Strong stomachs will find them tough meat but untainted. In Tragic Life brought Vridar Hunter through his unhappy childhood and terrified adolescence in the Idaho hills. Passions Spin the Plot finds him. a gangling youth of 19, on his way to Wasatch College in Salt Lake City. Though college has always been his dream of escape from the poverty-ridden nightmare of farm life. Vridar is very homesick. At first college seems wonderful, in spite of the grimy furnace room he inhabits, the scarecrow clothes he has to wear, the scanty food and few friends. Gradually his high idealism is undermined and he begins to see college as a picture of an unjust and meaningless world outside. "Forenoon" McClintock, a rapscallion fellow-roomer in Vridar's boarding house, helps to complete his disillusioning education. "Forenoon," a devil with the women, is always after Vridar to join him in his forays. But Vridar considers himself engaged to easy-going Neloa Doole at home. Besides, when he gets near a girl he begins to shake. When he hears that Neloa has been going around with other men. however, he does his best to emulate "Forenoon," but has no luck. Home for the summer, he finds that Neloa still loves him, according to her lights, but has indeed bestowed her favors on several casual callers. Vridar nearly goes crazy, tries to break with her but can not. Back at college as a vengeful enemy of society, he gets drunk, steals groceries, cheats landladies, goes to dance halls with his pal "Forenoon." Though he does his earnest best as a seducer, something al ways pulls him up short. Suddenly he drops college, goes home to Neloa and after an agonizing struggle marries her in the full knowledge that he is a fool and the future is hopeless. The Author, like his hero, is the son of Idaho pioneer farmers and went to college in Salt Lake City (University of Utah), later taking his Ph. D. at the University of Chicago. During his first year in high school Fisher wrote a novel, had sense enough to burn it. At Chicago one of his instructors, Professor-Novelist Robert Herrick, advised him to eschew literary ambitions, told him he would never "write a novel worth opening." Fisher made better sense when, after boiling the pot by teaching English for several years at Utah and New York Universities, he went back to Idaho to write. His first novel, Totters of the Hills, got a good press, few sales. When his tetralogy began to appear no Eastern publisher would touch it. Idaho's Caxton Printers, Ltd. brought it out, critics sat up & took notice, and Doubleday, Doran then came in as co-sponsors of it. At 38, a widower with two sons, grimly earnest Vardis Fisher is again teaching English (at University of Montana). His summers he spends at his father's ranch at Ririe, Idaho.

Skin Game TATTOO--Albert Parry--Simon & Schuster ($3). Author Parry's racy study of tattooing is by no means first in the field for at the back of his book appears a 13-page bibliography including works in seven languages. It is, nevertheless, the first popular and authoritative work of its kind. Its chief fault, for which the author is not to blame, is that it neither illustrates nor specifically describes many an unpicturable, unprintable tattooing phenomenon. (Nearest approach: photograph of the top half of one Constantine. Albanian Greek, exhibited by P. T. Barnum in the 'jo's; his body was completely tattooed, with not a quarter-inch anywhere between designs.) In spite of censorship, however, Author Parry still manages to include some eye- taking pictures, much ear-filling information. The fad of tattooing was imported by seamen from the South Sea Islands to Europe and the U. S. in the early ig.th Century, says Parry. Wasting no breath over the psychological causes of its popularity. Author Parry calls it a form of sexual exhibitionism. With the invention of the electric tattoo needle, by the late 'go's the art was revolutionized, had a burst of renewed popularity. The electric needles "seldom draw blood, puncturing the skin no deeper than one thirty-second of an inch, or even one sixty-fourth. The sensation of the pricking is that of a slight burn or at most a mosquito bite." At present, Parry estimates, there are about 300 completely tattooed men & women in the U. S. trying to make a living by exhibiting themselves. In the 'So's and 'go's Manhattan society, copying European socialites, went through a tattooing fad. Parry lists among the eminent tattooed: the late Edward VII. George V, the late Duke of Clarence, the late Tsar Nicholas II, the late Queen Olga of Greece. One Manhattan collector still has a virtual monopoly of tattooed human skin; when he sees a first-rate piece of work he approaches the owner, signs an agreement for delivery after death. Finest tattooing, says Parry, is done by Japanese. Tattooing, if not too comprehensive, can be removed by chemicals or surgery, but not nearly so easily or safely, says Author Parry, as its practitioners pretend. Most exemplars stick to conventional designs and sentiments--mermaids, pierced hearts, naked dancers, skulls, snakes, etc.. etc. But one French criminal had tattooed on his neck: "Executioner, when cutting, follow the dotted line." Strangest exhibit: one Jack Redcloud having a picture of Christ with crown of thorns tattooed on his shaven pate.

Black Beauty ROLL, JORDAN, ROLL--Julia Peterkin & Doris Ulmann--Ballon ($3.50). One of the very few Southern gentlefolk writing today, Julia Peterkin has a proprietary interest in the Negro, who in her books behaves according to Hoyle (Southern style). Neither lynchings nor Harlem hotspots darken her clear pages. A Martian visitor reading Authoress Peterkin would hardly guess that there was such a thing as a "Negro problem." For her and her readers the Negro is the Southern plantation darky, whom Southerners always represent as being a lovable, child-like creature, living as a happy dependent on a sympathetic white master. Race-conscious Negroes and Northern negrophiles consider Authoress Peterkin's gently glowing picture partial, incomplete, but readers in general fall under the charm of her affectionate sympathy. Photographer Doris Ulmann's share in Roll, Jordan, Roll is 70 masterly photo graphs of Negro types, scenes. With these pictures as text, Authoress Peterkin has written a rambling series of delightful sketches. Some of them: Jinny, who took a carving knife to her man when he done her wrong, took him back when he refused to testify against her in court and the judge gave her a suspended sentence ; Uncle, oldest plantation inhabitant, who believed he had a right to three men's ra tions because he had lived as long and worked as hard as any three men; the deaf woman who killed her baby because her man would not acknowledge her. Expert reporter of Negro dialect, Au thoress Peterkin can get the authentic ef fect even in an indirect transcription : "After his lawfully lady left him, he looked so down in the heart, she offered to do his washing and cooking. ... He stayed out late mighty nigh every night and came in looking all whipped down. . . . When she asked him where he went he made power ful good excuses, for he had a mighty glib tongue. He swore to God the first night that the holy spirit had fallen on him so heavy during the sermon he had to leave the church and go off in the woods to pray. ... He talked mighty sweet about how he hated to leave her home by herself and all like that, but his tongue fumbled so it could not talk sweet enough to fool her. She had a good notion about where he spent every God's night he was gone."

The Author, Julia Mood Peterkin is the daughter of a South Carolina doctor. After leaving Spartanburg's Converse College, against her family's wishes she got a job as country school-teacher at Fort Motte, S. C. Two years later she married William George Peterkin, cotton planter, and became mistress of Lang Syne Plantation, about ten miles from Fort Motte. That was 30 years ago. She had a busy life keeping house, entertaining, riding, hunting, fishing, acting as "judge, jury, doctor and family adviser" to the hundreds of Negroes on the place. Not until she was over 40 did she begin to write seriously; her first collection of sketches, Green Thursday, was done unbeknownst to her husband or son. Scarlet Sister Mary won her the Pulitzer Prize (1928), was afterwards dramatized for Ethel Barrymore.

Still a housekeeper, wife and mother in spite of authorship, Julia Peterkin has little truck with literary haunts. Poet Carl Sandburg once paid her his supreme compliment when he called her the only writer he knew who was not a literary person. Tall and straight, redhaired, with a calm expression, a poised and kindly manner, Authoress Peterkin writes more now than she did but lives as much as ever on her South Carolina plantation. Other books: Black April, Bright Skin. Rascoe Preferred

PROMETHEANS--Burton Rascoe--Putnam ($2.75). Burton Rascoe is a journalist in search of literature. An epitome of restless 20th Century curiosity and enthusiasm, he has been a familiar U. S. literary figure for over ten years, has written masses of literary chatter but only three books. Prometheans is his fourth. Ever since he left Chicago (in 1920) he has been tinkering away at a novel which Author Branch Cabell calls "the most famous American novel never yet published." But Rascoe has been too busy nosing around among other people's works to finish his own. Prometheans, like his Titans of Literature published last year, is an enthusiastic notebook proclaiming the virtues of some of his favorites. St. Mark serves gusty Author Rascoe as a peg on which to hang his theory, already secondhand, that the real Jesus was a political zealot named Simon Bar Gi'ora, that the four Gospels were really an allegory of an unsuccessful Jewish revolt against Rome. Not Petronius Arbiter but his more rapscallion son, thinks Author Rascoe, was the author of the famed Satyricon, earliest picaresque novel. The neglected Lucian, great debunker of his day (2nd Century), he calls "the most modern of all writers of antiquity," compares him favorably with Anatole France, Bernard Shaw, H. L. Mencken. Though D. H. Lawrence "gives him the pip" in practical matters, on the whole he approves of him, allows him to stand with such fire-bringers as Aretino, Apideius, Theodore Dreiser, James Branch Cabell.

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