I1 0 SUNDAY, JAN. 31, 1937 THRM-ICRIGAN. DAILY PAGE NF THE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE NINE Straw In The Wind,' Third Hopwood Novel, Is Reviewed n w AmiSh Sect Is Dobson' s Background Good Local Color Lends Authority To Story Of Indiana FamilyI STRAW IN THE WIND, a new Hop- wood prize novel, by Ruth Lininger Dobson. Dodd, Mead and Co., 1937. $2.00. By PROF. KARL LITZENBERG (Of the English Department) Bound in nauseous green which be- lies its sombre contents, and accom- panied by a publisher's blurb, which, with calculated subtlety, tells us how we are to interpret the major chart acter, Ruth Lininger Dobson's Straw ha the Wind appears this week as the latest addition to the ever-growing collection of published Hopwood mAnuscripts. It is gratifying to know that the story renders the cover meaningless; and that Moses Bon- trager (the major character) sur- vives the blurb. Mrs. Dobson's novel deals with a particular family (the Bontrager) who belong to a particular sect (the Amish) which flourishes in a par- ticular locality (northern Indiana.) The author pretends to do little more than tell a colloquial story. But she tells this story with power and in- terest - and what is more to the point in local-color fiction, she tells it with authority. If her history of the Bontrager family is not con- structed from the truth of life, she has completely taken in this reviewer. The Amish-Bontragers, under the effective whip of old 1Mfoses, and in accordance with the strict views of their sect, live an old-world, horse- and-buggy life in the gasoline age of the new world. Their clothes are made by their own women; their hats are flat and broad-brimmed;. their farm tools are primitive; schism rears up in the sect when onet group wishes to use trucks and tractors for hauling water to aj drought-devastated farm. The Am- ishes spend thefr dreary days in work, in prayer, and in eating: and father Bontragercan work as unremittingly as he can pray; can eat as energeti- cally as he car work. It is around hirm, his strength, his prayers, and his appetite, that Mrs. Dobson builds her story. Old Moses is a zealous Puritan; a strong, hard-bitten, dom- ineering, avaricious parent and patri- arch who fears only his God. The conflict in the story results from the individual and collective attempts of his brood to escape the awful juris- diction of his sanctified tyranny. His daughter Polly is driven out of his house into sinful happiness by Moses himself; his favorite son Neri steals the old man's life's savings and runs away to avoid being a "dutchie;" his wife Sarah escapes mercifully into the fields beyond. But the other Bontragers are not so fortunate: and it is only after Moses dies -of apoplexy brought on by anger and work - that Rebecca can marry the1 non - Amish Eli Hostettler; that Christian can take up his painting; that Jacob can read his long hidden' Forthcoming Books SCOTTISH POETRY, edited by M. M. Gray. $2.00. DEBUSSY, by Edward Lockspeiser edited by Eric Blom. $2.00. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. by Sir Charles Oman. $3.00. STORM IN A TEACUP, by G. March-Phillips. $2.00. THE STORY OF THE BIBLE, by Sir Frederick Kenyon. $1.50. A WOMAN SURGEON, by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton. $3.00. HER NAME WAS WALLIS WAR- FIELD, by Edwina H. Wilson. $1.50. ROMANTIC ADVENTURE, auto- biography of Elinor Glyn. $3.50. SHOWMAN, autobiography of William A. Brady. $3.00. AARON BURR, by Nathan Scha- chner. $3.50. FORTY CENTURIES LOOK DOWN, by F. Britten Austin. $2.50. MASKS, by Queen Marie of Rou- mania. $2.50. A WOMAN OF WASHINGTON, by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. confess). This reviewer submits that there is nothing either irrestistible or compelling about Moses Bontrager: he is a fiend from start to finish; and the smouldering ugliness of his character is shownin everydeed that Mrs. Dobson makes him do, in every word she makes him utter. This re- viewer submits further that Mrs. Dobson knew what she was doing when she conceived in her mind his- abusivehand pitiable nature. Moses Bontrager is a villain upon compul- sion; his environment, his heritage, histraining, and especially his Amish sectarianism, have piled upon him a mass of inhibitions for which he can only compensate with violence. This violence, to be sure, takes a physical form only once - and that "once" causes Moses' death. But his moral, mental, and spiritual violence consti- tutes the fabric of the story. John Kieran 's History Records Perversion" Of Olympic Ideal THE STORY OF THE OLYMPIC places each in the 1920 Games and GAMES, 776 B.C. to 1930 A.D., by in another of those countries tying John Kieran. Frederick A. Stokes with nine firsts, it is indicative not Co., New York. 310 Pages. only of haphazard proof reading but also of careless composition. By WILLIAM R. REED And this same hasty composition In that field of journalism which must have resulted in Mr. Kieran's Stanley Walker has so uncharitably failure to attain the same casual style called "Valhalla's Bullpen," few men which makes his daily column the have stood out with the distinction most readable in America. and dignity possessed by John Kier- But those shortcomings are far an. His v'ersatility has not been con- from destroying the real value of the fined to the droll reporting in his book which is the first attempt to "Sports of the (New York) Times" chronicle the story of the games, either for he is an able commentator the peryersion of whose ideal of in- on political and social trends of the ternational brotherhood is well shown day as well. by Mr. Kieran. With full appreciation of Mr. Kier- From 776 B. C. to 1936 A.D. Mr. an's many abilities and distinctions, Kieran gives an account of each of it is well to consider first the short- the spectacles, revived in their mod- comings of his most recently pubs ern quadrennial form at Athens in lished work in the field of sports, 1896. The story of the early games The Story of the Olympic Games. is necessarily sketchy, but none the These shortcomings are contained less interesting. The story of the in the recognition that the book's modern games is for the most part principal design is to capitalize on the a factual recording in approved jour- popularity of its subject in this post- nalistic fashion, with brief exceptions Olympic year. As such it is hastily when the author resorts to his indi- done, and it must be said, scarcely vidual style in relating an anecdote worthy of this writer, such as the story of Lieutenant That is demonstrated in the no- Wyndham Halswelle winning the 400 ticeable inaccuracies which result. meter run in the 1908 games, run- When, for instance, Mr. Kieran ning by himself in a "walkover" after speaks in one place of the United the three American finalists had States and Finland taking eight first withdrawn after having been accused of fouling in the scheduled finals. Valuable, although hardly essen- tial, to one who follows the records closely, is the complete list of Olym- pic champions with their records which is included. To the reader who will select this book less ,for its value as a source of records and material than as a re- cording of the major spectacle in sport, most valuable will be Mr. Kier- an's reporting of the controversies which have marred Baron Pierre de Courbetin's ideal, from the difficulty over the Sunday opening for the 1900 Games at Paris to the stormy 1936 Games, whose numerous "incidents" included the failure of the American team officials to run Michigan's Sam Stoller and which set a precedent for the use of the Games as nationalistic propaganda which may eventually lead to their dissolution. The book is of real value, as a source of reference, as an objective view of this quadrennial effort to establish the brotherhood of man through competition in athletics, and it is only slightly lessened in value by a too apparent attempt to cap- italize on its timeliness. Bonaparte In Egypt On February 18 will appear F. Brit- ten Austin's second dramatic novel of Napoleon, Forty Centuries Look Down, the story of the campaign of 1798-99 in Egypt. Austin is a military authority as well as a novelist, and his book deals with both the historical and the pri- vate sides of Napoleon's life in Egypt. books; that Ezra can be in name what he has always been in fact: the Bon- trager paterfamilias. There are some splendidly drawn characters in the book: Rebecca, the submissive daughter; Ezra, the sen- timental brother of Moses; and Sar- ah, the long-suffering wife. But the real art of Mrs. Dobson's character- portrayal lies in the surpassingly ugly soul of Moses himself. "There is something irresistible and compel- ling" about him, the publishers tell us (and "something cruel" also, they To say that he is a psychopathic case would serve no critical purpose; to say that he is a man obsessed with straitness would not completely describe the workings of his mind. He is, at his worst, a sadist. His feelings and behavior, however, vary with the relative power of given cir- cumstances to force him into such violent opinion and action as will compensate for the more normal expression of the self which the Am- ish morality proscribes. It is the life of Moses Bontrager which makes the story of Straw in the Wind; it is his death which provides the moral. It is with him that the story begins and ends; and it is in him that Mrs. Dobson demonstrates her skill as a psychological novelist. 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