Ma~f~1tC M An ** +i I& r v d-N ** Ir -4-4 -,A -&,-r -9-IL , * A -W P11I ICHIGAIN DAIL~Y IN THE WOjRLD OF BOOKS SUNDAYMAY 20, 1940 Foetry uroup Given Prize In Competition Brinnin Also Honored By College Poetry Society Of America The University Chapter of the Col- lege Poetry Society of America has been awarded one of the Society's Louise Laidlaw Chapter money awards as one of the two chapters "whose' members have evidenced most prom- ise and growth during the year." John M. Brinnin, '41, president of the local chapter, was also given the $25 first prize Emily Dickinson Award for the two best lyrics in Vol- ume Nine of the Society's monthly publication, "College Verse." This is the first year that the Uni- versity chapter has been functioning as a formal organization. At the present time there are 11 members: Charles Miller, '41, James Green, '40, Edwin Burrows, Grad., Chad Walsh, Grad, June Harris, '40, Nancy Mikel- son, Frank Conway, '40E, Dorothy Farnan, '41, Anna La Rue, '42, How- ard Moss, '43, and Brinnin. Dr. John Arthos of the English dcpartment is the faculty adviser. Every poet is invited to join the chap- ter, the only criterion being the quality of his verse. Two of the group had poems pub- lished in the April issue of "College Verse." Selections from Miller's "Ex- ecutors of Earth," part of the vol- ume that was awarded a-minor Hop- wood prize last spring, and six lyrics by Walsh were printed. The College Poetry Society num- bers more than 100 college and uni- versity chapters. It is sponsored by Conrad Aiken, William Rose Benet, Witter Bynner, Arthur Davison Ficke, Robert Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Arch- ibald MacLeish, Margery Mansfield, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John G. Neihardt, Jesse B. Rittenhouse, Carl Sandburg, Lew Sarett, and Lenora Speyer. English Author Tells Frank Love Story In Lucid Terms Deadline Set I For President's' Books Voting Mr. Arliss Writes Anecdotal Account Of Hollywood Life I THE BLAZE OF NOON, by Rayner Heppenstall, New York and Toron- to, Alliance Book Corporation, 1940.1 across to the reader of this review. If I'm not, about all I can say is, not in the commercial plug sense at all, ao and yet the book. A's nll t~here By JAY McCORMICK ; to be seen and enjoyed. Louis Duncan, narrator of this The dominating sense employed in story, is a blind man. The story is lieu of sight in the book is that of not of a blind man, it is a simple, touch. Duncan is a masseur. Dun- a fine and frank love story done as a can needs more women than he love story should be done, without would if his sight were normal. Dun- hokum or mush, yet with tenderness. can must grope his way, not awk- The pattern of the story does not wardly, but he must touch to see. It matter; it is not a new one, yet it is startling to read along in the book cannot, because of the treatment Hep- and never realize until something penstall gives it, be trite. brings it strikingly into prominence There are three things that make that one of the senses is not employed the book eminently worth reading. at all in the rich, full sensual ex- One is the author's style. Another perience described. There's a lot of is the splendid sensory experience woman chasing, or woman reminis- arising for the reader out of the high- cing done in the 300-odd pages, but ly developed four senses of Duncan. I didn't come away with any of the The third, and perhaps the best as- self-conscious itching of pornography, pect of the book is that it takes wo- the instinctive sense of guilt raised men apart, makes them what they in a middle class mind by the nasty are, yet does not cheapen them, or things of life. It's a sensual experi- destroy them. ence, the whole novel, but in no The style is almost classic. It is sense of the expression could it be exact, grammatical, sometimes too called a dirty book. The philosophy lucid. The language is never ornate, of the narrator holds the whole thing there are none of those amateurish very much in check, and allows depth ventures into the realms of pure without lowness. There's nothing poesy which so often appear in a work cheap, nothing insincere in the play of high sensory content, yet there are of Duncan's four senses, and the re- no passages inarticulate with the lease in that play due to his blind- forcefully limited vocabulary of cer- ness. tain moderns who have abandoned I say Heppenstall takes women accuracy as something too fancy for apart, makes them what they are. I the real stuff of life. I say too lucid don't mean that he says anything at times, because even in the han(i; especially new about them; he doesn't, of Heppenstall some subtleties which but he does, through the experience must always be more in the mind of and thought of Duncan, reveal four, the individual author than in the kinds of very true women as just mass mind of the readers, are left par- what they are. He draws each of tially stated, and the clarity of a prose these women as a character, not as style can only arouse at such a point a type, yet when he has got through the unconscious antagonism of half- there is an impression that each was satisfaction, the feeling that here is the root type, that in each was to something beautifully, but not com- be found something deeper than pletely said. character, or oddness. i F . ., . J f MY TEN YEARS IN THE STUDIOS. There are only six days more in by George Arliss, Little, Brown and which to vote for books that every Company. Boston. $3.50. presidential candidate should read before entering the White House, Col- By CHARLES A. LEAVAY uinbia University Press warned yes- The 10 years Mr. Arliss refers to in terday in its weekly release. the title of his new volume of auto- The release stated that the most biographical notes are those which striking feature of the balloting thus far for a curriculum of a "School for followed immediately upon the years Presidents" has been the variety of he spent coming up from Bloomsbury. titles, running from "The Grapes of They cover the decade from the sign- Wrath" to "Alice In Wonderland." ing of his contract with Warner Bro- In first place with no appreciable! thers in 1928 to the early months of majority is the Steinbeck novel. Tied 1939 And for for second are: The Bible, Lewis Car- purposes of accuracy moll's fantasy, Machiavelli's The a better title would have been My Prince and Karl Marx's Capital. Ten Years in and Out of the Studios. Resting in a third-place tie are: While Mr. Arliss does complain that Thurman Arnold's Folklore of Capi- his life has been one lacking in ex- talism, Beard's Rise of American Civ- citement and adventure-due un- ilization and America in Midpassage; doubtedly to a personal distaste for Bemis' Diplomatic History of the the violence and lack of 'dignity such United States, Drucker's End of Eco- a life calls for and a firm confidence nomic Man, Hitler's Mein Kampf, that his one hundred and forty pounds Plato's Republic, Spengler's Decline makes discretion the better part-he of the West, and Voltaire's Candide. really means something else. For the The release also wagged a grave tenor of his writing, which is from head at the fact that most voters ig- the same bolt as his first autobio- nored the tradition that all Ameri- graphical stint, Up the Years From can presidents seek denizens of the Bloomsbury, and which measures deep in their spare time. some 20 pages longer, is guided by his Hills Of Kentucky Concern Jesse Stuart In First Novel belief that 'what an audience likes 1is domestic details.' The routine of things! And that is Mr. Arliss' policy. It amounts to a declaration of his attitude toward the writing of biog- raphy. If you like things in the chatty vein,' if you enjoy listening to a cultivated modulation that charms with sim-; plicity, urbanity, and which moves so softly in and out of a succession, of days, gathering new crystallineI particles on the crust and glittering with amusing anecdotes and experi- ence, then you'll like this book. I did. It is pleasant, gracious, harm- less, warming, and mellow as an old and others followed through the years. And about his work in Holly- wood and Teddington and Islington, Mr. Arliss has a good bit to say. Still it is the routine events that he is most interested in. And cer- tainly in a man's autobiography that is essentially the man. His routine life! How much truer is it, then, in the life of a leading man, the star! You never fail to understand that Mr. Arliss is his own literary leading man. He plays down to a minimum everything that might throw the work out of balance. His casting of James Cagney for a minor part, of Bette Davis when she was quite insignifi- cant in the industry, of Joseph Schenck, Darryl Zanuck, Sam Gold- wyn---all these are mentioned in pass- ing, mentioned swiftly and noiseless- i r 1 f e } grad. One could say without much risk that Mr. Arliss managed this re- cent literary effort between sips of+ the inevitable British brew. The author seems to feel that his; life as a motion picture actor be- gan in 1928 when he permitted War- ner Brothers to tie him to a contract calling for three pictures. He admits quietly that the Brothers signed him; with the full expectation of taking a loss on his work. The point wasI simply that they were interested in creating prestige for the films. As Mr. Jesse Lasky had done years be- fore for the silent pictures with his Famous Players-Lasky corporation, the Warner Brothers now wanted a famous stage player to lend his per- sonal influence to the medium at that time called the movie-tones. And so began a long series of films and+ Atlantic crossings. "Disraeli", "The Green Goddess", "Alexander Hamil- ton", "The House of Rothschild",+ "Richelieu," "The Man Who Playedj God", "The Millionaire", "Voltaire",r It is in his blend of humor, a quiet, unruffled, mellow sort of humor, that his particular charm holds. It is a humor at once polite, pointed, placid, and so civilized, the sort that harmonizes intimately with your Galsworthian clubman. And how British Mr. Arliss is! Who but an Englishman would become indignant for a page and a half as he does about the stupidity of international restrictions against tourist canines? and against voyaging parrots that are family treasures? 'Why shouldn't my dog have a passport?' So asks Mr. Arliss. And, when you think about it, why shoudn't his dog have a passport-and a photo? He is, speaking seriously, very correct about the point-very correct in a serious Victorian way. This is not a work that must be read from cover to cover, starting from the beginning. Open it and where you first find print, there you can begin safely. It doesn't matter. Mr. Arliss won't be annoyed. He un- derstands. There is continuity, of course, but that is only due to the accident that one year follows an- other. /j o, sl 11 \A\ \ :% THE LATEST VERSION OF THE POMPADOUR 7 '7; ,/. '; It is a thing far more common among English writers than in this country, this knowledge of the well written sentence, this unconscious zbscrption, never amounting to imi- tation, of the great writings of the past, but often it is accompanied by a lassitude in thought, a satisfaction that whatever has been said has been said well, and a let-it-go-at-that spirit. Not the case with Heppen- stall. He is good, and not by na- tional comparisons. As always, when dealing with a thing as elusive as style, I find myself wondering wheth- er I'm actually getting anything Caps, Gowns & Hoods For FACULTY and GRADUATES Complete Rental and Sales Service Call and inspect the nation- ally advertised line of The ' C. E. Ward Company, New London, Ohio., All rental items thoroughly sterilized before each time used, complete satisfaction guaranteed. Get our Rental. Rates and Selling Prices. - VAN BOVEN, Inc. Phone 8911 Nickels Arcade For me, the girl Sophie Madron, and the older woman, Mrs. Nance, take a greater share of the writing honors, but despite the attention I gave them, I know that Betty des Voeux and Amity Nance are equally sound and well drawn. There is little partiality shown in treatment of these women, but from the whole novel there does emerge, and not only be- cause of the ending, a sense that the two who are most basically women are the best, the finest people. Not a will-of the-wisp book, it has no place in time, it has gone on for long, and though written in 1940, will be read in other years, and has been felt before. It is in no sense of the word a freak book. You will not read it without feeling that you have had an important experience, an addition to your thought, and probably to your life. RADIO ad MICHIGAN ICbs d1 )ver TAE 33 E by i mattia beauty the Parrot - 338 S. State EBLER BEAUTY SHOPS EHuron, near Mosher-Jordan I; Phones 3030 or 7000 14. 4< TREES OF HEAVEN, by Jesse Stu- art, E. P. Dutton, New York City, $2.50. By HERVIE HAUFLER Perhaps no one can write about the Kentucky hills without being quaint about it. The idea of a land and a people locked up with the past apparently cannot be discussed without allowing something of the Li'l Abner stamp to leave its im- print. In this, his first novel, Jesse Stuart comes a lot closer to seeing the prob- lem of the hills .than he has ever done before. His stories in Esquire and other magazines have relied al- most entirely on the quaintness and woodsiness of their subject-matter to bear them through. "Beyond the Dark Hills," his unusual autobiogra- phy, expressed an almost rhapsodic veneration for every phase of the hills, without once qestioning whether there were flaws in the hill's way of life. Jesse still loves the hills. He wants so ardently to tell you about them in his novel that his characters very often speak to you instead of each other. His eagerness to interpret the hills gets in the way of his plot, his action, his characterization. "Trees of Heaven", however, is something new for Jesse. He preach- es the beauties of Kentucky mountain life, but he also sees something of the other side. He sees the filth and squalor of the squatters. In these lines he expresses his view on Ken- tucky justice: "Behind the judge are the pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lin- coln, Theodore Roosevelt and Wood- row Wilson. If these venerable men could only arise from their graves and attend this court! If they could only see hill justice in the land they helped to shape, make breathe as a nation-the most powerful nation un- der the sun-if they could only sit among their people as bystanders- if they could only listen! Better they cannot!" These are his first steps in social criticism. They seem to me to add a welcome note of maturity to his writing. However much, though, his more mature viewpoint has added to his work, Jesse's best selling-point is still his mountain blood. Half the time 5 DAY UNDERARM PADS st0P PERSPoo CPUnderasDR 550 Whisk one of these lotionized pads over your underarms, and perspiration as well H as odor appear to vanish for one.. two three.. four.. five days, depending upon how "perspire-y" you naturally are! Wonderfully convenient! rV Sunday Di inner VGUE G Uk E ROOM ER/A you are marveling at the exactness of his observations-how earth looks when it is turned up by a plow, how a bird builds a nest, how squaredanc- ers look when the fiddle plays its hottest. He knows every formula and process of hill-life from the proper manner to clean a gun to the best way of making sorghum molasses. There's a big chunk of Kentucky caught in this book. Stylistically Jesse is the same as ever-short, jerky sentences that can- not be read aloud except in a mono- tone. All the people talk alike, and the narrative is in the same vein. Jesse is in love with adjectives; he loads his paragraphs with them- "He looks down at her loose-flung uncortrolled shock of golden wheat- straw-colored hair." He has a child- ish fascination for poetic devices- "deep, dark, desolate hollow." As long as he keeps within the hills his figures of speech are acute and ef- fective, but when he tries anything else the result is strained-"The Au- gust sun plays like an agate marble in an arch of void." MA RY CECIL SHARP AinznounCes the Opening of The Corner House RestaurantNE SUNDAY DINNER frou 12 NOON to 7 P.M. MONDAY IS OUR HOLIDAY U.'I ii III at the LEA MAIN DINING 12:30-3:00 in the CAFETI 12:00-2:00 I I IC I F