Big Book

ANTHONY ADVERSE -- Hervey Allen -- Farrar & Rinehart ($3).

Shouldering its way through the froth of summer fiction comes this leviathan of U. S. novels. Pre-eminent in size (1,224 pp.; 2 3/4 Ib.) but not in size alone, this big-boned romance may well strike terror into readers effetely accustomed to smaller, more playable fish, or to the monotonous diversity of a blank waste of waters. But those readers who allow themselves to be swallowed whole will emerge, some time later, grateful for the experience.

Anthony Adverse is a three-decker, picaresque-historical novel, crammed with enough people, action, scenery, philosophy, comedy, bloodshed, love and death to furnish a dozen books. Built to an old-fashioned design but modern specifications, it starts off like a Waverley Novel, soon gets beyond the purport of its traditional beginning. Like Tristram Shandy's, its hero makes a belated appearance, but when he does his fortunes hold the unwieldy tale together. In following him, however, the story loses track of some promising minor characters whose disappearance is disappointing, whose reappearance is sometimes anticlimactic. From France to Italy to Cuba to Africa to Europe again the story goes, then heads west to Louisiana and loses itself among the deserts and mountains of Mexico. Spanning the Napoleonic period, it introduces many a historical personage in human guise: Napoleon himself, Talleyrand, Slaver Mongo Tom, the Rothschilds (ne Meyer). Though this lavish scene forms only the background for the hero, he is the least "real" (i. e., objectified) person in the book. A picaresque Everyman, he wanders the world searching for his soul, finally finds it; but most readers will be less interested in his quest than in his adventures by the way. Not a great book, except in size, Anthony Adverse is a solid, worthy addition to U. S. Letters. Postponed from month to month, it finally appears as July choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Anthony's mother was the wife of Machiavellian Don Luis da Vincitata, but Don Luis was not his father. His mother died in the wintry Alpine inn where she bore him; his reckless young father saw the point of Don Luis' swordsmanship too late. The nameless orphan was deposited anonymously by Don Luis at a Livorno convent. After a peaceful childhood there he was adopted by old John Bonnyfeather. Scottish merchant in Livorno and actually his grandfather. Both suspected their relationship but neither, out of respect for his mother's memory, ever openly acknowledged it. Anthony was given a solid education and brought up as a gentleman-heir in his grandfather's establishment. Arrived at years of discretion and having survived his first passionate love-affair. Anthony went to Cuba to collect a long-standing debt to the firm. Havana suited him. and he fell in love again, but business once more tore him away, this time to Africa, where he spent long years as master of the slave-trading station of Gallegos. When he had amassed a tidy sum he sold out, went back to Europe to enjoy his wealth.

In Paris he met his first love again, but now she was a famous actress and Bonaparte's mistress-of-the-moment. Soon disappointed in Europe. Anthony willingly engaged himself in an international financial scheme which took him to England, Spain, then permanently to New Orleans. There at last he married and settled down on his own plantation. But a disastrous fire killed his wife and child. Anthony left civilization and took to the wilderness. Captured first by Indians, then by Spaniards who were rounding up interlopers on Mexican soil, he survived the long trek to Mexico City only to be condemned to a lazar-house. Here one of his early loves, Dolores, found him, married him; together they spent peaceful years in a remote mountain village. Before he died he had at last come home.

No mere adventure story by a long shot, Anthony Adverse is packed full of shrewd comment, tart gossip, homely saws. Thus Carlo Cibo, Havana epicurean, on young man's estate: "My God! . . . did you ever think what a terrible mess a young man really is? I mean a youth. That is -- a kind of portable apparatus or attachment to three troublesome globes, one who has just stopped being a mad boy and has not yet been scared into being a decent man. One feels profoundly sorry for him. The only peace he can get is for a few hours after a girl has nearly killed him. The rest of the time he goes drifting about making a lot of noise like a ship upon which a perpetual mutiny is going on. He is always steered in the direction which his bowsprit indicates." Napoleon telling Anthony why he does not like bankers: "And in another hundred years if I do not stop them they will own Europe -- the world. Financiers cannot act. They never do anything. They are passive, they spin webs and every wind, blow peace blow war. brings them flies. They are not the fit repositories for power."

Sometimes the masculine author of this masculine book speaks in propria persona: "Historically the increasing dominance of woman is marked by emotionalism and revolution, romanticism, feminism triumphant, hysteria. The end is either a return to the balance, a reaction where the man reasserts his authority in the family, or anarchy. The paternal state, which tries to be Our-father-which-art-on-earth, is always accompanied by the loss of the subtle qualities of fatherhood in individual men. When patriotism becomes matriotism, nature and force reassert themselves in human affairs. Sympathy has been mistaken for the truth.''

The Author, like his book, is big but active, ponderous but keen. His flat, unhurried Pittsburgh voice might surprise those who think of him as a poet of South Carolina, one of the leaders in the recent revival of Southern letters. But in his 43 years he has come a long way from home. As a plebe at the U. S. Naval Academy he overstrained himself in athletics, was granted an honorable discharge; later (1915) he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with honors as a Bachelor of Science in economics. After a job with the Bell Telephone Co. he enlisted in the National Guard, saw active service along the Mexican border and went to France as first lieutenant of infantry with the A. E. F. Badly wounded and invalided home, Allen settled after the War in Charleston, S. C., where he collaborated with DuBose Hey ward on a book of poems (Carolina Chansons) and in founding the Poetry Society of South Carolina. After a job at Columbia University he lectured for two years at Vassar. One of his undergraduate listeners was Ann Hyde Andrews, whom he afterwards married. They went to Bermuda, spent five years there writing and farming. In an old house in Somerset Parish which Allen thinks was built by a retired pirate (its original name was "Felicity Haul"), he saw few tourists, lived cheaply, wrote most of Anthony Adverse's 500,000 words. Now back in the U. S., he is temporarily resting from his labors, looking for a place to live.

Other books: Israfel: The Life & Times of Edgar Allan Poe, Wampum & Old Gold, Toward the Flame, New Legends, The Blindman.

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