PAO ' TW9LV'! THE MTCHIGAN DAILY .............. SUNDAY, MAY 10, 1925 www B|ooks.and_______s www Add College WILD ASSES, by James G. Dunton. Small Maynard. $2.00. On the jacket, the publishers "con- fidently predict that 'Wild Asses' will be one if the most discussed first- novels of the year." Be that as it may,this reviewer hereby gives no- tice that he will not be drawn into any discussion whatsoever of the book. Anyone who for a moment could con- sider the book worth discussing must be either a Harvard graduate or a publisher's henchman, or both. just one little insignificant speck in a I big University-play the gaie as they want to play it-you can't fail to make good, and you'll be a damned good FirstCigarette iman!" And Mr. Dunton adds, "Four years it required for Riley to come to '--------- - that precise conclusion. . . " SPRING FLIGHT. By Lee J. Smik. * * * 1925.. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. 1 "Wild Asses" is very much like The quarter century now ending "The Plastic Age", although it is a leaves a vast fund of source material much more enlightened book than the for the literary historian, the aspir- latter. It resembles "The Plastic ant to thesdoctor's degree. One can ' Age" in its photographic method and vision theses on the "Small Town in' A nits taleable esap t i a i m.eTh e r the Middle W est, 1900-1925" or "The in its saleable sensationalism. There Middle Class American Literature." i a lot of drinking, necking, gambling, Arching down from the king-pin of all night cramming-and the omni- Sinclair Lewis are all varieties and present "bull-session", as M'Ar. Marks conditibns of the autobiographic novel called it. Riley is always spouting springing from the Middle West's call radical platitudes about Life and to letters. Mr. Smits in the present ' Necking and Drinking and Educa- exhibit presents such a novel some- tion-platitudes which should not im- what more removed from its original press anyone except Riley's room- experience than is the custom of so mates, but which Mr. Dunton naively ! many autobiographers. expects will get the country by the The publisher's blurb furnishes the ears. In this silly assumption he is word "picaresque" which perhaps most supported by his publishers. clearly estaishes the manner of the to drag him back to fiancee, the livery daughter, to the only the fold, man's relative to his plump adven- ' i f . i 7" : 1 _ l ;i t e i d :1 t Kenneth Farr is a neat picture of his and That the man far enough ot of custom's beaten path to be awar (J its sha ms; but not willing enough to lose its -- benefits to (iiVOre limslI frOmi it Ut- Professor Frederic L. Paxson'sj terly. A man less trammeled by his "History of the American FrontierE upbringing would perhaps have taken 1723-1893" has just been awarded the Farr's numerous amourous adven- Pulitzer Prize of $2,000 for the best tures less conscio>usly. With lFar r American historical study published they are always sinful, in 1924. This book, published last It is to Mr. Sma it's advantage that fall, has received much favorable he is not too serionus in the iresenta- connment from historians and laymen tion of his s tory. The irony of the alike, and has already become one of beginning and the conclusion where the standard text-books in its field. the reader may scent yet another af- The Pulitzer Prize gives public con- fair despite the hero's happily mar- firmation to the high excellence 01 ried repose is a saving grace of no Professor Paxson's book. * * * rTi I n'ti also from miscellaneous writings such ture 'home environment' group, Thus as "A Motley" and "The Inn of Tran- giving authors their, proper place in quillity." Several of the stories in- the motion picture world along with cluded have appeared heretofore only those other celebrities who have been in the limited Manaton Edition. i 'home environnented' -the codfish, * * * the typhoid germ, the prune and the "John Keats" by Amy Lowell which canned tomato." has been so enthusiastically received * * * in England and America has gone in- "'t'he Genius of Isreal", Carleton to its fifth large impression. Already Noyes' illuminating analysis of the an- the first edition is selling at a pre- cient Jewish civilization is being mium. This is convincing testimony translated into Italian by Professor to the excellence of what many re- Ernesto Buonainto of the Royal Uni- viewers are hailing as one of the great versity of Rome, and will be published I American biographies. in Rome in the fall. f* The escape of the author-a stal- One of the awards of the A. C.:Ben- wart young Englishman--from Bol- son medal conferred by the Royal So- f shevik Russia in the guise of an in- ciety of Literature goes this year to valided female suffering from "mental tihe philosopher and poet, George debility and underfeeding" is one of Santayana. The author of "The Life f the experiences recounted in "The of Reason" receives the award not in I "The Speckled Domes," by Gerard respect of any particular book, bptt as Shelley, just published by Charles a recognition of his eminent services - Scribner's Sons. During the decade to literature. , before that escape, the strange beliefs The last previous award of the med- ssand doings of the unfortunate Tsarina, al was made to Lytton Strachey in s the sinister figure ef Rasnutin, the 1923 for his book "Queen Vict9ria." amazing life of world-famous figures Gordon Bottomley, author of "Poems t of the Russian aristocracy, figured of Thirty Years," "King Lear's Wife," young Englishman-"livn in te mmorble dveturs o thi et., as>een granted the other award S ~ 11&* ., LII. I". J aR It is a Harvard college novel, this time, with a lot of juvenile philosophy, delivered in the form of interchapters. The book deals with the Harvard of the first post-war year-a Harvard full of men whose tuition had been paid by the government. In the words of the philosopher hero: "Uncle Sam is the best damned uncle a man could have!" Several of the characters have 'game legs', and there is much talk of shell-shock and "I'm not a hero at all." The book carefully takes five men through college to graduation, then marries off a couple of them. At the end of the book the philosopher Riley gives this advice to a boy about to go to Harvard: "Get the right idea, Bobby-don't start in thinking that the system is all wrong! It isn't at all; it's a tough system, but the man who can play it and win out with something to the good at graduation is a damned good man! Just use your head, play the game, forget your pride now and then, and realize that you're t mean mern. : Mr. Angell Again Reports (Continued from Page Eleven) le found also that 51.2 percent of t the students live in Michigan, 24 per- e cent live in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin while 14.8 percent live in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jer- "Caravan," a collection of all o John Galsworthy's short stories with an introduction by the author, uniform in price and form at with the one-vol- ume edition of "The Forsythe Saga,' will be published next fall by Charles Scribner's Sons. These shorter tales are collected not only from Mr. Gals- worthy's volumes of short stories, but i ii i i 1 r t t l t , A law should be passed prohibiting the publication of any more serious works of art by young fellows like Mr. Dunton, who have been in the war, and have graduated from college, and have sold brushes for a while, and if the author ever does develop, he will only have to buy up all the extant copies of his early mistake and burn them. Mr. Dunton, I am quite sure, will never have to go out and buy up copies of "Wild Asses" to save his great name from slandor. The pres- ent work is executed with efficiency, but yith a lack of imagination andj feeling for beauty that is-rare, even in' college novels. -J. C. narrative. The immoral but mild peregrinations of Kenneth Farr from yuuur, rusiiuurrr. 1,12"j ya r his first cigarette to his second daugh- sey. With regard to the comparative est students choose to enter a profes- ** x**k ter is the subject of the story. cultural background of the state and sion. They are sent out of the state Ellis Parker Butler whse latest A fourth member o the Gibbs f Lewis has exploited the metaphoric out of state students, Doctor Angell to school in order that they may re- book, "Many Happy Returns of the ilY; Anthony Gibbs, son of Sir Philip Babbitt, that genuine and uncon-t found that on the whole tie cut os ceive their general education in the Day", was brought out recently by Gibbs, and nephew of Cosmo I amil- scious one hundred percenter; Mr I state students were better prepared same institution that they shall re- Houghton Mifflin Company, on being ton and :Hamilton Gibbs, is to be re- Smits cuts a shade finer and produces in the way of culture than the state dive their professional education, requested to pose for a series of mo- presented in the fiction of the year a figure a little off the thoroughgoing students. Doctor Angll explained While of the Michigan students, both tion pictures of "famous authors in by his first novel "Little Peter covetina tc.Farr isnstuck this by attributing to their cases an the keenest and the less bright came their own homes" writes, "I am de- Vacuum", to be issued shortly b Lin- a Puritanical background with just ee ntoslcn Only the bright- to the university for their education. lighted to be added to the motion pic- con MacVeagh-The Dial Press, sufficient flaw in his character as a Babbitt to send him barnstorming with a pack of thespians; with enough alien spirit of adventure to carry him to a logging camp. But there is, by the token of his upbring- ing, enough of the Puritan in his soul-.- - -- wa'".fJ' °."/Y 1/:"//1 S1'S v ..+ drW* e .. r f ~~ 0.1 QUALI TY /.i/~a%;riferr~a/Jd /.%,/+.!./A '. . 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