Done to a Turn*

A JEW in LOVE--Ben Hecht--Covici, Friede ($2.50). In this book Ben Hecht has created a character who may well cause many a reader to fling the book from him in too precipitate disgust. Coming to know people is not always a pleasant experience and Author Hecht's creature seems at first a repulsive caricature. But the caricature grows into a portrait, the creature into a personality who is as interesting as he is unpleasant. Many an author would give his eyeteeth to be able to approximate the Hechticvitality. Jo Boshere (real name: Abe Nussbaum) made a fortune on the stock exchange, then turned his attention to publishing. But his real hobby was women. He was married to a woman "whom he kept concealed on ocean liners," with whom he enjoyed sporadic interludes but to whom he was in no sense devoted. She was a cipher who only occasionally complicated his amorous arithmetic. Jo's steady mistress was Alice, who used to write poetry before he made her happy, and still did when he treated her, as he was fond of doing, like dirt. Jo was an introspective egoist and not much fun for those around him. When he discovered Tillie, a retired dancer still aching from her last affair, he welcomed her as a wanted complication. Then, against his will (he had no judgment) he found himself taking her seriously. Incapable of fidelity at his best, he went through all the contortions of betrayal, attempting even the wife of a best friend. A simplicist would say that Jo was his-own-worst enemy. His sadistic self-torturings finally landed him in a pretty mess: still completely married, practically sure he was in love with Tillie, he made dishonorable proposals of marriage to two other women. As luck and the author would have it, Tillie's old lover turned up at this point, and just as the humiliation of being actually in love was threatening to bring Jo to a normal level, he overheard a conversation which even a cleverer man would have understood. When his consequent breakdown, complicated with influenza, failed to bring him Death, he married faithful Alice--leaving the story a sadder, much less interesting man.

The Author. Ben Hecht writes with violence but without bad temper. Consequently his forceful delineations of character carry weight even when they are brutally offensive. Jo Boshere will leave few readers without some fellow-feeling. Hecht's dialog is nearer real life than most authors dare go. Ben Hecht was a small, dark, demoniac member of the Chicago literary circle that gave the U. S. such figures as Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg. Big-eyed, thick-lipped, baldish, he looks Mediterranean rather than Jewish. With Charles MacArthur (husband of Actress Helen Hayes) he wrote the Broadway smash-hit The Front Page; with the same collaborator has written a new play that will be produced this year. Other books: Gargoyles, Erik Darn, 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, The Florentine Dagger, Humpty Dumpty, Broken Necks, Fantazius Mallare (limited and suppressed).

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

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