Moronese

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDS - Anita Loos, Boni, Liveright ($1.75). These confidences should be read in connection with that diverting hoax, The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in the Year 1764-65, by "Cleone Knox" (TIME, Feb. 15). They are those of an unamed young lady who was acquitted of murder by a weeping judge and jury in Arkansas, went into cinema, and has since been pursuing her education in Manhattan under the care and guidance of a gentleman named Gus Eisman. The latter is in the button profession in Chicago, and she calls him "Daddy" only when a place does not seem too public. He is against her going into cinema because his mother was "authrodox." At home and abroad she conducts herself with innocent circumspection, going from Ritz to Ritz with her colored Lulu, picking up baubles here and there from gentlemen friends in a very nice way, eventually marrying a Philadelphia fortune. She covers much the same ground as "Cleone" did, and affords an entertaining comparison of the two ages of gallantry. The literature of illiteracy is enriched, the risibles of city-dwellers tickled by 217 pages of ingenious moronese like this account of her visit to "Dr. Froyd" in Vienna:

"So Dr. Froyd and I had quite a long talk in the English landguage. So it seems that everybody seems to have a thing called inhibitions, which is when you want to do a thing and you do not do it. So then you dream about it instead. So Dr. Froyd asked me what I seemed to dream about. So I told him that I never really dream about anything. I mean I use my brains so much in the day time that at night they do not seem to do anything else but rest. So Dr. Froyd was very very surprised at a girl who did not dream about anything. So then he asked me all about my life. I mean he was very very sympathetic and he seems to know how to draw a girl out quite a lot. I mean I told him things that I really would not even put in my diary. So then he seemed very, very intreeged at a girl who always seemed to do everything she wanted to. ... So then Dr. Froyd said that all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep."