TH.E MICHIGAN DAILY suNAY, OCT.17 IIN THE WORLD OF BOO-KS a BEMELMiqNSFound Yankee Miltarism Difficult.To Fathom ... American Artist Describes Effect ! ,T OM YC !f1n AS ih r Y T !At! MY WAR WITH THE UNITED .sylums are in danger of going in- STATES, by Ludwig Bemelmans. sane themselves, and after a few Viking Press, New York. $2.50. weeks of service Bemelmans finds By IRVING M. COPILOWISH In December, 1914, at the age of 16,I Ludwig Bemelmans left his home in Tyrol to come to America. Having spent his youth in the small lake villages of Upper Austria, he was in- spired by his readings in Karl May and Fenimore Cooper to buy two pis- tols with which to fight the Indians. This and similar illusions of his at that time are recounted in the fore- ward to My War With the United States. The chapters of the book are translations from the pages of the German diary kept by Bemelmans during his service in the United States army. The extracts begin while he is lo- cated at Fort Ontario, where he is in a Field Hospital unit. Bemelmans is dismayed at the laxity of the Ameri- can military, as he compares it with the German. The first of his ad- ventures centers about this differ- ence. Put in charge as wardmaster at the hospital, he is first amazed and then incensed at the patients' disregard for the rules, especially for the one dealing with 'Lights Out." When Wardmaster Benfelmans puts out the light and leaves the ward, the men turn them on again and read, play cards and talk. Determined to do his bit for the -cause of discipline, one night Bemel- mans puts out the light and remains in the room. The men object, and when he refuses to put the light on again for them, they shower him with whatever appears handy, which in- cludes two "glass ducks" (bed-pans).1 After a brief retreat, during which he arms himself, Bemelmans reap-+ pears on the scene with his Colt 45 strapped to his side. Upon finding himself again a target for the pa- tients, he shoots twice over their heads. This turns the trick, the men are quiet, but Bemelmans finds him- self under arrest. Appearing before the colonel, "a very little man who al- ways made speeches about an irriga- tion project in some country with ma- laria which he was responsible for,"' Bemelmans is dismissed with the in- formation that "the basic function' of a hospital . .. is to cure men, not to shoot them."1 After a few more similar incidents, the author volunteers as an attendant at a newly organized Hospital for the insane at Fort Porter, near Buffalo.l It is a fact that attendants in such+ FOR WELL-GROOMED HANDS, HAVE A REVELON MANICURE fI By Our Expert Manicurist SHAMPOO and WAVE 1 Monday, Wednesday, Friday U 50c' RAGGEDY ANN BEAUTY SHOP 1114 South Universityc Phone 7561 himself veering in that direction. AR rmed, he gives himself the pro- tracted hot baths he is used to giving the patients, and casts about for o her ways to save himself. He finds an effective method. When the strangeness starts to come on, he re- calls scenes from his boyhood in Tyrol. He has several favorite recol- lections, and his descriptions of these form the most charming parts of the book. They are detailed and vivid, and in them the author reaches heights of lyric beauty. He finds that drawing pictures of these scenes helps him to recall the all-important details, and this explains in part the riotous illustrations. The book is filled with these drawings of the au- thor's, not all of the Tyrol, and they add a great deal to its charm. As we travel with Bemelmans about the country on his various excursions to -- of i n avL as Uon J I A 3j/ aL1 (wn Scranton and to Mississippi and New York, we see new things in these old ----___--- places. All his experiences are re- THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A timentality, is told with a restraint counted in a naive and penetrating SPANISH TOWN, by Elliott Paul. J that must have been doubly difficult manner. Bemelmans' style possesses Random House, New York. $2.50. to achieve for a man writing of the an undeniable charm, part of which destruction of his town and his may be analyzed, and part of which By Mary Evalyn Owen friends. Nor is it told in an ob- is definitively his own, and may not Even if Elliott Paul's account of trusively tragic vein. Elliott Paul be put in more specific terms. As an The Life And Death Of A Spanish can sometimes smile at the people he example of this, we may take a sen- .loves and pities, and what is more tence from his description of the Town were written in jerky prose important, make the reader smile too. army nurses. "The one at the head overflowing with grammatical errors, Of Don Ignacio Riqueo, one of the of them is a crude person with a re- it would be a book worthy of respect .sl n Ig nowner, ane ot volting fat body and the face of a because of the deep knowledge and island's largest landowners and most Street car conductor; she also has a sincerity with which it is written. generous men, ha his "Lets stupid walk and a common voice." The author, an American artist, lived written of him that his dependents The casual length of this sentence is for five years in the small island town were his friends as well, that he really delightful, but it is explainable as a of Santa Eulalia, knew its people and d his an never neglece carry-over from the German, in which took part in its activities. He saw, his wunioiea tenty yr carr-ove saw' hi junor, was not restless or bored." tongue such length and piling up of the leisurely but not lazy mode of liv Don Ignacio, totally unawarepofafso- phrases is customary. But the apt- ing which he so admired destroyed cial Igschm, nevrtaliingwhe sg- ness of the simile is something of his, by the war. He saw the buildings ncan ceme ofesocialin theoren sigl own; he shares it only with the few'which he loves to describe, and the of social theories and social other writers who are similarly gifted- trees and flds. destroyec s, sl wt h o , r i s (Continued from Page 4) have a radio in your car, so that you could get snatches of the Eroica in between dances or roadhouses-but have you a radio in your bathtub? (4). The weekend, of all times, is al- ready full to running over with good music. Sunday has positively a sur- eit, and on Saturday there are the Boston and Chicago series of sym- phony concerts, not to mention the ne great operatic broadcast of the week, from the Met. Why not pick a time during the dull period from Monday to Thursday, which is prac- tically symphonyless? (5). Since a Toscanini concert would be the big event, no matter what evening it were placed on, it would of course be possible for New York to ignore the rest of the coun- try's objections and still achieve suc- cess with the program. But since the avowed aim of the undertaking is to further the cause of symphonic music throughout America, to raise the level of interest and knowledge in East Lansing as well as New York, why jeopardize the very goal of the proj- ect itself? There you have the principle ques- 'ions raised. Altogether, they seem conclusive. That to find an hour and a half in the midst of complicat- ed, long-standing and unbreak- able schedules which would please everyone is extremely difficult, goes without saying. But for such an otherwise well-planned, widely adver- tised program, upon the success of which so much depends, it would seem that NBC could do better by its eager and grateful public than it has. POPE APPOINTS BISHOP WASHINGTON, Oct. 15.-OP)-Ap- pointment" by Pope Pius of the Right Reverend Monsignor Eugene J. Mc- Guinness as bishop of the diocese of Raleigh, N.C., was received in 'a mes- sage here tonight from Vatican City. Low Price Paper Cover Editions, European Style, Introduced Here By STAN SWINTON Paper-bound reprint editions of standard or recently popular titles have long been an important part of The European book market, yet at- tempts to introduce low priced edi- tions of a similiar sort in the United! States have consistently failed. It is important news that finally a newly formed organization has been able to print 50,000 to 100,000 copies of both new and reprint titles, put them on sale at 25 and 35 cents and have the entire edition sell out. Featuring such important works as Saroyan's "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," Morley Cal- laghan's "They Shall Inherit the Earth" in reprints and new books of the temper of Walter Duranty's "Babes Without Tales," Marcel Acier's collection of letters "From Spanish Trenches," Leo Huberman's topical "The Labor Spy Racket" and Bruce Minton and John, Stuart's "Men Who Lead Labor," the series had an im- mediate and enormous sale-some titles were gone in four days. Perhaps this of all years was the perfect one for the introduction of the series. Before the depression re- prints and cheap editions were tried often and failed just as as often. In 1929 total book sales in the United States reached a high of 235,360,002. Over 7,000 new titles were issued and because of the abundance of money were selling. Then came the depres- sion. Publishers averaged 8,000 new books a year between 1930 and 1935 but their gross sales were down $35,- 000,000. Some solution had to be found. Instead of individual readers providing the great solid mass of sales, lending libraries and rentallibraries were becoming supremely important. A publisher decided to issue one dollar editions of standard authors and it agreed with the purse of Mr. American. Immediately remains of unsaleable bound books, publishers overstocks, were put on sale along with odd-priced reprints and they too sold. However book-stores were handling all of these volumes - and the book-store buying public is a grade above the drug-store public. The great masses were still to be reached. Two young men interested in pub- lishing obtained backing fbr, a new firm, called "Modern Age Books," which would publish huge editions and distribute them through news- tands and drug-stores, books which had great popular appeal. The two, Richard Storrs Childs, once editor of the Yale Lit and Harkness Hoot and a well known magazine writer, and Samuel W. Craig, founder and first president of the Literary Guild of America and Book League of America, obtained the services of a publishing veteran, Louis P. Birk. A college man who later worked at mining, in the wheatfields, sold cars and finally be- came a text-book salesman, Birk was; made editor. Three types of publications were decided upon. First there were the Blue Seal Books, original volumes published in paper bound edition for, 25 cents or with cloth binding at 85, cents. Red Seal Books, reprints of, best sellers judged worthy, came in aj single paper bound quarter edition. Gold Seal Books sell for 35 cents in paper, 85 cents in cloth. The editions sold out immediately. National liberal publications such as tcu , u lv u " L. He saw his friends and their children hurled from an easy security into tense insecurity. Yet this material, which lends itself . with dangerous ease to over-dramatization and sen- The New Republic gave the venture a great deal of space and commented that at last the cheap book for the average American was available - also they criticized some of Louis Birk's choices, doubting whether some of the books would sell suf- ficiently well. At the present time these arguments seem to have secured little proof from sales figures although their basic soundness seems logical when one hears "Red Feather," a fairy tale, and several of the detective novels Were chosen. priticism so far has been enthus- iastic on the whole, however. Upton Sinclair said, "If this plan for pub- lishing had been started 36 years ago, they would have been the publisher of all of my 58 books." Approval also came from Governor Frank Murphy Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford, Stephen Leacock and others. Future publications will include Jay Franklin's much awaited autobiog- raphy of Fiorello-LaGuardia and, more important still, "You Have Seen, Their Faces," by Erskine Caldwall and Margaret Bourke-White (she is a Michigan graduate) which will come out later in a five dollar Viking press edition. If present indications are interpret- ed aright the cheap book is here to stay. Publishers can once again see sales rocket over the 200,000,000 mark and an eager public will be able to af- ford a library. It is not too much to say that a new era in publishing is invading America. will." It would have been very easy for such a man as the author to have been contemptuous of one so ignorant. The fact that he is not reveals as clearly as can anything short of the book itself, the spirit in which it is Iwritten. It would be both tiresome and futile to attempt here to tell anything of i Santa Eulalia's people. The fact that they are people prevents the giving of a "brief description" of any of them. It woud be just as tiresome and futile to attempt here to give any adequate idea of Santa Eulalia. The people and the town are inseparable and permit no summarization. Personal and real as the history is when viewed only as a story of a town and its people, it is more than this. As is always true, the .specific account of the- effect of the war on a comparatively small number of fa- miliar people, is more meaningful and shocking than any statistics on the thousands killed can be. Yet these instances enable us to graspI the significance of the larger figures; we suddenly know that all those thou- sands are individual persons., Just as the story might have been overwrought, so might it have leaned backward to the opposite extreme, made timid by the censoring fear of sentimentalism, and fallen fiat, a dull list of facts. The skill with which both of these faults are avoided is as effective as it is natural. ANNNOUNCE PLEDGING Alpha Chi Omega announces the pledging of Mary Lou Mills, '41, Ann Arbor; Jane Wilson, '41, Scarsdale, N. Y.; and Lonna Parker, '41, Mil- waukee, Wis. A correction has been announced) to the effect that Annabel Van Winkle, '41, Howell, pledged Pi Beta Phi sorority, not Alpha Phi as was stated in yesterday's paper. o. fTr Even slim young figures need a foundation. For them we suggest Nero Sensations with their gently controlling influence on young curves. They're worn right next to the skin and washed as often as you like. 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