Illiterature

LAUGHTER IN HELL--Jim Tully--A. & C. Boni ($2.50).

Though frontier days have gone forever, the U. S. is still friendly, in some ways, to backwoods pioneers. In no other country could such writers as Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson and Jim Tully hope for a hearing, let alone a respectful, respectable audience. In spite of their blunderhead awkwardness, Authors Dreiser and Anderson have won life memberships in the U. S. literary Senate. Jim Tully's persistent clamor in the lobby has not yet gained him admission. Crudely violent writer of crudely violent melodramatics. Author Tully has done better books than Laughter in Hell, but none more typical.

Barney Slaney, six-foot-five and solid as stone, was a brave engineer but his wife was a bad w-m-n. When Barney discovered the facts he killed her and her lover, was sentenced to a convict camp for life. But he did not stay long. Told off to help bury yellow-fever victims in a nearby town, Barney made a graveyard break and got away. In his flight he met up with a lovely virgin, conveniently orphaned by the epidemic. Naturally they fell in love. In a Western mining town they married, soon became most popular members of the community. Barney was happy but he smelt rats. Just as they were planning to move on to Canada the detectives found him.

Nobody expects humor in Author Tully's conscientiously grim works, but sometimes it is there. "She was beautiful. Her waist, open at the throat, showed the outline of her bosom, flushed pink and white."

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