Anthony Dare*

Amid Swirls, Mr. Marshall Flows Placidly

The Story. We first meet youthful Tony walking up a street "well-dressed, in the habit of the time, his silk hat shining, his collar of a somewhat exaggerated height, his cutaway coat tightly buttoned, his trousers fitting close to the leg. He carries his gloves and a neatly furled umbrella." He is the British replica of Tarkington's Seventeen: fatuously earnest, readily friendly, but suspicious, on occasion, with that fierce suspiciousness of youth questioning the wisdom or motives of the world of adults.

To begin with, he is in the office of his older brother Henry, when he would rather be at Oxford or Cambridge. It had seemed rather a lark, two years ago, to exchange the dubious inferiority of a schoolboy's estate for the undoubted social elevation of a man of the world, a worker in the City. But time has dimmed the glories of his position, and with heels on the rungs of his office chair, his head is in the clouds. He pictures himself in the classic halls of learning, and the more he pictures, the less work he accomplishes until at length Henry decides to transport him bodily to that locale where he seems already to abide in spirit.

Up goes the delighted Tony to Cambridge, where he gets rather a lot out of university life--practically everything, one gathers, except an education. He manages to read as little Law as is consistent with his remaining there at all, but he "goes out for" rowing, a bit of hockey, and all the social amenities. He becomes a member of several clubs, and part-editor of a collegiate journal.

By the end of his second year, his chief asset is the reputation of being a "good fellow"; his chief liability a collection of debts, appalling when regarded en masse.

Before he can decide whether to confess the debts or try to make some money by getting frantically to work upon his intended "great British novel," Henry becomes ill, grows touchingly dependent upon Tony and affectionate with him. Tony finds himself confessing, and at Henry's offer to settle the debts grows so genuinely remorseful that he determines to go back to Cambridge in the proper spirit and get all there is to be had from his last years there. But Henry grows rapidly worse, and at length when he dies, Tony has acquired some characteristics of permanent value--chief of which is the capacity for thinking wholeheartedly about someone besides himself.

The Significance. This is obviously not a plot-novel, but an exposition of character. Mr. Marshall is the apotheosis of unmitigated realism. There is no glamour, no ecstasy, no high-wrought moment in his tranquil pages. Amid the swirling eddies of pathological novels, sex-exploitation and the so-called literature of unrest, his stories flow placidly on like the streams of his own cheerful countryside. But his disarming simplicity is the vehicle of profound observation. His is the genius that can bring characters to life and make them three-dimensional, with their little prides and prejudices, their faults and virtues, their heads like solid English oak and their hearts of gold.

The Author. Archibald Marshall, son (since 1866) of a London business man, was first destined for his father's office--from which it appears that The Education of Anthony Dare may be remotely autobiographical. He broke away, launched into his present career, has written extraordinarily bad things as well as extraordinarily good. The predominance of the latter has won him his own assured niche in contemporary letters. Among his books: Exton Manor, The Squire's Daughter, The Honour of the Clintons, The Greatest of These, Anthony Dare (to which | The Education is a sequel).

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

THE SEVEN LIVELY ARTS--Gilbert Seldes--Harper ($4.00). This annoying but pertinent book would persuade one that slapstick comedy, jazz music, comic strips and Ring Lardner are the most worth-while contemporary revelations of the soul of America, and that the Krazy Kat cartoons are "the most satisfactory work of art produced in America today." Mr. Seldes, whose present occupation is the more unexpected in that he is known as a critic of the major arts, here takes up the cudgels in behalf of the so-called "lowbrow" products.

A PEDLAR'S PACK--Rowland Kenney --Seltzer ($2.00). Despite its troubadour-like title, this is no pretty-gypsy tale of wanderings amid the birds and flowers--never think it. It moves with elaborate unconcern through the adventures of British navyies, dockyard workers, murderers, bums, nippers and bad beer. It is a forthright specimen of sturdy naturalism--if by that is meant that when differences arise with one's fellows the obvious thing to do is to tap the offender over the head with an iron stave instead of becoming involved in pages of metaphysical argument. There is such a breezy directness about these murderers, such an innocuous naivete about their mental processes, that much may be forgiven them. Stories, graphic, succinct, powerful, well-told--quite without sentimentality, sweetness or light.

CONFUSION--James Gould Cozzens-- Brimmer ($2.00). Into the story of Cerise d'Atree, this young author (a Harvard sophomore) has packed much earnest sincerity, a good plot, no small measure of literary charm and a deal of honest thought leading to painful conclusions. Despite some immaturities of style, it is an interesting commentary on the value of varying kinds of education.

SUNRISE TRUMPETS--Joseph Auslander--Harper ($2.00). Lyric poems, intense, fragmentary, abruptly lovely; their chiseled imagery entirely unhackneyed and often breathtakingly beautiful. One hears the "bronze murmur of bees," feels a ship at night "lifted to the level of the rime-stung stars," knows the "shattered silver" and "crushed gray light" of rain, and the devastating beauty of women long dead--Yseult, Marie Antoinette, Guinevere.

Percy Marks

He Has Discovered Something

At the Brown Club, on his way to Lafayette College to lecture, Professor Percy Marks granted an interview, talked freely about letters he has received from the readers of The Plastic Age* "I have discovered something," said he. He has discovered, much to his disillusionment, that people are determined to scent the putrid in literature and never to search for the good. This is especially true of the elders of the generation he has written about, he believes.

Mr. Marks, born in California (probably about 1890), took graduate work at Harvard, taught in various colleges, is now Professor of English at Brown. Slender, dark, young, he is the least academic pedagogue I have encountered in some time. He has a broad viewpoint, a sympathy for the undergraduate that is indeed sincere. He believes that this new generation is an honest one and that its two concerns are Sex and Religion, that it is trying to find the solution to these two problems. He admires and respects the boys with whom he works far more than their fathers and he has told their fathers so in after-dinner speeches.

When at Harvard he conceived the idea that neither the boy going to college, nor the man out of college ten years, could write the book of college life. Accordingly as soon as he believed he had a perspective and yet was immersed in college atmosphere, he wrote The Plastic Age. He had a problem: "I wanted to interpret college life, so I couldn't have a plot, and I wanted to keep my hero in his place, so I couldn't really have a hero. Most of the critics appreciated what I had set out to do and they have all been exceedingly magnanimous, but this critic and editor who accuses me in his magazine/- of 'muckraking' has roused my ire!"

The correspondence from undergraduates has pleased him most. The boys say: "I myself am Hugh Carver. I have had those experiences and been through all that!" That, after all, is the final test, I suppose. In any case, Professor Marks has written a best seller.

P.R.

*THE EDUCATION OF ANTHONY DAM-- Archibald Marshall--Dodd, Mtad ($2.00).

*THE PLASTIC AGE--Button ($2.00).

/-The Bookman for May, page 337,