A Fig for Cinderella

A HORSE IN ARIZONA--Louis Paul --Doubleday, Doran ($2). Even a President of the U. S. has to go fishing once in a while; even a 17-year locust has to come up for air some time. On this all-work-and-no-play-makes-Jack-a-dull-boy principle. Author Louis Paul last week burst from his cell with a yell like a Siberian monk's. A Horse in Arizona was well calculated to startle Author Paul's readers, who had gathered from his first book (The Pumpkin Coach--TIME, April 8, 1935) that Author Paul had almost as much gusto as Phil Stong but almost as much sweetness & light as Lloyd Douglas (Green Light)--that he promised, in short, to be another J. B. Priestley. In A Horse in Arizona the gusto was still there but the sweetness & light were noticeably lacking. Author Paul had taken a vacation from his Priestleyan task and had written a rollicking, rough-&-tumble satire.

Resin Scaeterbun, an intelligent and educated U. S. citizen in spite of his name, is first shown enjoying life in the A. E. F. Home again, his first act is to seduce his buddy's sister. Without waiting for consequences, he makes tracks for his native town, where he is soon in trouble with the police for editing a smut magazine. Further adventures include bumming, bootlegging, another enlistment in the Army, a book of poems which lands him a job in Hollywood, ups & downs in Wall Street, many an amorous passage by the way. Eventually he settles down to run a bookshop, like his Dad, and marries the patient girl who has been waiting for him. Author Paul makes boisterous fun of every U. S. institution and human type his hero encounters, and occasionally his slapstick is effective. On the whole, however, though readers could not have asked for a louder burlesque, they could have wished for a funnier one.

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