Floyd Dell

By J. F.

He Can Discuss the Abstract

Without Introducing the Personal

Floyd Dell, whose Moon-Calf and The Briary Bush were ranked high by many critics among contemporary realistic novels, has finished a new story. It will be called Janet March and will be published in the autumn. Meanwhile, at Croton-on-Hudson he is attempting to play tennis and to educate his young son Anthony Dell, who, if he has not already commenced to talk, will do so very soon.

Floyd Dell is a slight, shy, sensitive man, essentially poet in temperament, but turned irrevocably novelist. He is a conservative by nature, I believe, but intellectually a radical, his life has been led among radicals. " Politics," he will tell you now, "have nothing whatever to do with letters." For that reason, he has turned his political ideas into critical channels and his ability to analyze our current literary product is appreciable. During many days and nights spent in his home, I have heard only one political discussion, and that one, to my untutored brain at least, as harmless as a revival meeting. There, however, one does hear good conversation. It is one of the few places I know where it is possible to discuss abstract ideas over a long period of time without the introduction of personalities. Dell is keen, fearless and just.

He was born in Barry, Illinois; but literary Chicago claims him as her own. His education, which was never formal after early high school days, is broad, and in some respects, deep. A voracious reader, he has taught himself what most academicians do not know how to teach--the ability to think constructively. His training as a writer began with reporting days in Davenport, Iowa. Later, in Chicago, he became associate, then editor of the Literary Page of the Evening Post, a position now ably filled by the wise (as well as clever) Llewellyn Jones, Since then he has been converted in one way or another with The Masses and The Liberator, but he likes to feel that his active editorial days are past. He has also written essays, poetry, plays, criticism. Two general books, one of them the excellent Were Ton, Ever a Child? were published before his first novel. Dell is a conscientious workman and a profound student of psychology. He has taught himself to write well and he is forever striving to learn more. I have always felt that he will one day rank as a major American novelist.