Band Wagon

THE GREAT AMERICAN BAND WAGON --Charles Merz -- John Day ($3). Everybody come quick, jump aboard, see a lotta things you never saw before, forget you're a shoe clerk, play cowboy an' injun, make yourself a hero, have secret power --everybody's doing it, follow the crowd, you can't go wrong.

Thus, the spirit of contemporary U. S., according to Author Merz. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, the changing frontier provided a healthy outlet for this up-and-going urge. But today the frontier has disappeared, the Indians are in sideshows or oil fields, the cowboys are in dude ranches or vaudeville. What does Mr. Average Citizen do to relieve his tension? He goes exploring in his automobile, knowing perfectly well that he will see familiar filling stations, hot dogs, kewpie dolls, cigaret signboards, and a thousand explor ers who will say with him: "Well, the traffic sure is heavy" Perhaps he stalks into a drugstore bar on the way home, puts his foot on the rail, demands a double-chocolate-marshmallow-pecan sundae and a chicken-liver sandwich. Before supper he reads the fortnightly crime ofthe "crime of the century" in his favorite newspaper.* That the night, dressed in heroic robes, he enters the oaken door of a temple and becomes Sir Knight Errant of the Mystic Order of Granada. Sunday, on the golf links, he tells his companions: "I got a birdie here last week," instead of the oldtime "I shot a buffalo here." After his labors, he dreams over an advertisement: "To live at American Venice is to quaff the very Wine of Life. ... A turquoise lagoon under an aquamarine sky ! Lazy gondolas ! Beautiful Italian gardens! . . . And, ever present, the waters of the Great South Bay lapping lazily all the day upon a beach as white and fine as the soul of a little child "Thus, the log cabin of the modern pioneer.

True enough, most of this has been noted before. But Author Merz's book is the final all-inclusive footnote on Babbittry, written with a reporter's peculiar genius for marshalling an army of items into significant categories. It must be remembered, however, that a newer school of thought has evidence that Mr. Bab bitt laughs as heartily at his own humbug-Aeries and homilies as does the sophisticate.

Author Merz, 34, Yale graduate, editorial writer for the New York World, contributor to magazines, has a little black mustache, a serious look. His book is the choice of the Literary Guild for February.

* The infallible sign of a really great murder is the appearance of the Western Union Co.'s giant portable electric switchboard, capable of despatching 20,000 words an hour over 180 wires. This behemoth is also used for such spectacles as Dempsey-Tunney fights, otherwise it sulks in storage.