Pre-War

TWILIGHT OF A WORLD--Franz Werfel --Viking ($3).

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (TIME, Dec. 3, 1934) was one of the best-sellers of 1935, but Franz Werfel had written good books before that. Two of them (Class Reunion, The Man Who Conquered Death) reappeared last week in a collection of eight short novels and long stories ay Author Werfel. The world whose twilight is pictured here is the old, pre-War Austria; the crazy-quilt empire of 13 peoples, 24 countries whose imperial idea was embodied in one aloof, white-whiskered old man. Emperor Franz Joseph, says Werfel, was one of the few who understood the Idea, one of the few who foresaw its inevitable end. Werfel compares this Austrian idea (a "slowly absorbing and digesting soil . . . organic") favorably with the American ("the seething smelting oven . . . mechanical"), admits he was slow to recognize it; now that it is gone, thinks it had its points.

Readers who fear political parables need not take fright; the stories in Twilight of a World are not messengers of any super-human faith. Not simply nostalgic ex-Austrians but men of good will in any land will understand and welcome them at sight. Some of them:

P:A poor little rich boy, in love with his governess, tries to help untangle her unhappy affairs, only succeeds in getting her fired.

P:A shabby failure, accused of murder, is brought before an examining magistrate. The magistrate thinks he recognizes in the prisoner the brilliant classmate whose life he consciously wrecked when they were both schoolboys.

P:News of the Archduke's assassination at Serajevo and the even more upsetting death of the proprietor break up a normally jolly evening in a Viennese brothel.

Best story in the book, and one which many a reader will recognize as a masterpiece, is the reprinted The Man Who Conquered Death. Herr Fiala, an ex-doorman at a government office, had been retired for old age, spent all his savings on a life-insurance policy. All he understood about the policy was that he had to live past his 65th birthday; otherwise his wife would get nothing. But weeks before the date he had to go to the hospital; he was dying. Though the doctors all said he had no business to be still alive, old Fiala hung on, by main strength and will power managed to last several days beyond his release date.

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