Mystic Joy

THE WITHERED ROOT--Rhys Davies--Holt ($2.50). "You Welsh! A race of mystical poets who have gone awry in some way." But this judgment by a cynical agnostic had no dampening effect on Reuben's religious fervor. Born of a stoic collier and a bibacious mother who starved the boy for affection, he was a child of curious, conflicting emotion. Gleefully he chopped up frogs and roasted mice alive; demurely he followed his father to church, and gradually religion won out--he was hypnotized, obsessed. Evenings, he pored over the Bible, sweated to convert his friend the agnostic. And evenings, there was Eirwen, sensuous, beautiful, alluring. Reuben's quick passions were aroused and tormented, but another self damned them as unholy. Meanwhile his gift of oratory won him the leadership of a sect of fanatics who confessed, screamed, rolled in mystic joy. In a country-wide revival his converts rivalled Elmer Gantry's in emotional displays, but his own motive and reaction, unlike Elmer Gantry's, are recorded in art and not in bitter propaganda. Author Davies has crudities,of technique, but not of sympathy. A difficult undertaking, this analysis of the tortures of a sensitive man, harassed by women, consumed by religious mania, ends wretchedly when Reuben finds both lacking.