Heretic

THE WAY OF A TRANSGRESSOR--Negley Farson-- Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Vincent Sheean did not start it, but his Personal History set the year's pace for a whole series of newshawk reminiscences. Readers accustomed to bending a reverential eye on the studied memoirs of superannuated statesmen welcomed the more realistic disclosures of men who had watched the scene-shifters of history at work. Walter Duranty, dean of U. S. correspondents in Russia, soon joined Sheean in the best-seller lists. John Gunther, who has the perfect newshawk's point of view, seeing historical events in terms of palpitating personalities, wrote an even more readable guide to foreign men of affairs (Inside Europe--Harper; $3.50), which last week was selling like hot cakes. Latest newshawk to add his reminiscential bit to the pile was Negley Farson. Unaware of the historical implications that plagued Vincent Sheean, indifferent to the great names that set John Gunther graphically gabbling, Negley Farson had a ruggedly individual, not to say picaresque tale to tell.

Up to a certain point. Negley Parson's career might have been called a success story, with variations. Then it appeared that he was a U. S. heretic. His story, franker than most reminiscences of such men-about-the-world, is lengthy (602 pp.) but easy reading. It is a plotless narrative of devil-take-the-hindmost adventure; the world it shows is peopled by fools and knaves, with a few good men leavening the lump. Autobiographer Farson has nothing to sell, draws no conclusions, points with little pride and views with no alarm. He confesses that his sophistication has brought him "merely increasing humility; experience, only a growing uncertainty." The Way of a Transgressor, with its tone of amiable rowdyism, will remind readers of Bruce Lockhart's British Agent.

Negley Farson started off in orthodox fashion as a robust New Jersey boy, went to Andover. At the University of Pennsylvania, he specialized in athletics, took engineering on the side. When he got the chance to go to England he jumped at it. After two years with a conservative Manchester firm he saw he was getting nowhere, so shortly after the outbreak of the War he climbed aboard a rickety bandwagon, went to Russia to sell the Tsarist Government U. S. machines and munitions. In that incredible maze of intrigue, corruption and betrayal Farson found he was no worse than the next man, learned that Petrograd night life was a highly enjoyable way of killing time while waiting to do business. "Petrograd during the first years of the War provided the perfect life of dissipation. I'm not so sure it did not provide the perfect life all around."

Farson's patience and energetic bonhomie were rewarded; he did well enough to set up his own selling company. Then came the Russian Revolution, in which, in spite of his good friend John Reed's hot tips, he had taken no stock. When his business and night life both ended, he went to England, got a commission in the Royal Flying Corps, and was sent to Egypt. A bad crash left him with a troublesome leg, which has cost him a total of three years in hospital. With no job, money or prospects he married an English girl (niece of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula), brought her to the U. S. After eight unsuccessful months trying to sell Mack trucks, Farson and his bride went off to live in a shack on Vancouver Island, stayed there two years. Then he went back to Mack Truck Co., did so well he was made Chicago sales manager. No sooner had he made a resounding success than he chucked the job, went to Victor Lawson, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, told him his idea. The idea: to sail across Europe from the North to the Black Sea.

Lawson bit, sent him. In a 26-ft. sailboat the Farsons chugged, sailed or were towed from Rotterdam to the Danube delta. Husband Farson's news-dispatches paid for the trip. Thereafter for eleven years Farson covered the Eastern Hemisphere, from Gandhi to Stalin to Ramsay MacDonald, for the Daily News. Finally he was given the coveted London post, held it for four years, resigned because the News considered his viewpoint had become too Anglicized. Back again in the U. S., with a 21-year career behind him, and no longer quite so "naive and fresh and full of rage and energy" as he was, Negley Farson still looked forward with a keenly optimistic, amiable, but less rowdy eye.

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