Money & Other Troubles

MONEY and other stories--Karel Capek --Brentano ($2.50).

The fact that human beings are fundamentally alike the world over needs constant reminders. The purely relative word "foreigner" ceases to have a definite meaning when we read the Russian stories of Chekhov, the English stories of Katherine Mansfield, the Czech stories of Karel Capek.

A middle-aged bachelor, petulant and self-centered, is transformed by the appeal of his erring married sister into a chivalrous protector. But other interested parties inform him that he is being fleeced. Immediately all his charitable feelings turn to hate.

Helena, a gawky and sensitive young girl, with a good education but no charm, falls in love with an older man whom she meets at a summer resort. He tries to believe their relation is platonic, but when, overborne with passion, she comes to give herself to him, he is disgusted and dismayed, shows her as gently as possible her mistake. "In after years ... he learnt that she spoke of him with evident animosity as of one who had done her a grievous wrong."

An old man knows his wife has a lover, and she knows he knows who it is, but the old husband is a poor man in every way. Finally he persuades his wife in a roundabout manner to get money from her lover; she gives it to her penniless husband, and he goes off to the cafe to drink with his cronies.

A government official has made a stupid mistake and is publicly denounced as a blockhead by his chief. In an agony of humiliation, he resigns his position, is ashamed to go home, gets very drunk and sleeps with a prostitute. His easy-going brother patches things up again.

A serious-minded young governess has a good but disagreeable job with a horribly inconsiderate rich family, who treat her like a servant, search her room when anything: is missing. The English tutor never speaks to her in the daytime, but tries to get into her room every night. When everything has gone hopelessly wrong, one night she leaves the door ajar.

The Author. Karel Capek, 40, dark, slender, wiry, hesitating in manner but incisive of speech, is chiefly known in the U. S. as a playwright (The World We Live In written in collaboration with his brother Josef). He has written other plays (R. U. R., The Robber, The Makropoulos Affair), novels (Krakatit, The Absolute at Large). In Prague, his home town, he is known as a student of philosophy, principally American (William James, John Dewey), play manager and producer. Onetime Art Director of the National Art Theatre of Prague, he is now manager of the Vinohradsky Art Theatre, where he produces Shakespeare, Byron, Moliere, Ibsen, Strindberg, Goethe, Hauptmann, and contemporary Czech plays. As a short-story writer, like Katherine Mansfield, like Anton Chekhov, Author Capek is fascinated by the drama of people's internal workings, but knows better than to try to explain them, leaves a large and readable

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