Frenchmen (Cont'd}

PASSION'S PROGRESS: Volume Two, MEN OF GOOD WILL--Jules Remains--Knopf ($2.50).

Ambitious Jules Remains is working on a scheme as big as Honore de Balzac's. His slowly growing super-novel, Men of Good Will, is being built to specifications to contain a whole city -- 20th Century Paris. Goggling onlookers, seeing the size of the completed foundations, may now have some idea of the extent of the building, but Architect Romains, though he admits his construction will cover a lot of ground, still refuses to post his blueprints or release a front elevation. Before putting down tools for this section he thanks spectators for their patient interest, promises that from now on the stories will go faster.

Readers of the first volume (TIME, June 5) will have only a slight advantage over newcomers. The 65 characters have grown to more than 100 but their relationships remain comparatively simple. In many cases they are still unaware that they inhabit the same city-book. Some of them: Jerphanion, the ambitious young student at the Normal College, whose friendship with the brilliant Jallez grows more intimate, is beginning to get used to Paris. Murderer Quinette, falling more & more under the fascination of crime, tenders his services to the police as informer, worms his way into the secret councils of a radical society. Politician Gurau allows himself to be persuaded by Oilman Sammecaud that being given control of a newspaper is not bribery. His mistress, Germaine, gets further entangled in the market. Realtor Haverkamp begins to get his finger in some real pies. The liberals at Sampeyre's salon talk gloomily of impending war.

Men of Good Will might have stirred up more excitement among critics if Authors James Joyce, John Dos Passos et al. had not already shown the way. Though Author Romains claims to be the originator of this style of modern novel-architecture, others were certainly first in the field. But if not best or first of its kind, Men of Good Will may yet be biggest.

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