The Season's Leviathan-- A Study of the Passion for Things Present and Things to Come

The Season's Leviathan*

A Study of the Passion for Things Present and Things to Come

The Story. Still waters run deep --a quiet pool contains, unseen by the casual observer, a whole society of strange and opposite creatures, thrown together by chance or nature, fiercely loving and hating. So Eamor, an English country house, where life in general seemed to move as calmly and placidly as a still day in August, proved the focus and battleground for a certain group of di- verse, opposed personalities, related by accidental ties of blood or fate. The secret, incessant clash of these personalities, now and then flaring out into active conflict as abrupt as the glitter of lightning, serves as the theme of this lengthy and intricate first novel.

An air like the sultry air before a thunderstorm broods over the book-- an air of suppressed, excruciated passion. Not passion in the Titivating Stories sense, there is the passion of the human mind for perfection as well--passion for material things. wealth, a house, even Egyptology-- and incessantly the passion of human revolt against the material bonds that hold humanity to the clay. The ending is inconclusive, as in most such struggles--the material characters get their material desires--the less commonplace agonists are liberated after a fashion, in odd ways that do not seem to bring them much of what we commonly call happiness.

The main narrative threads are these:

Sir Charles Orisser married three times, begetting (by the first marriage) Cosmo, a creature continually at war with the world; by the second marriage Nicholas, a pleasant but somewhat inhibited, overcivilized, over-self-conscious being. When he died he left his affairs in complete confusion, and his ancestral country house, Eamor, at the mercy of John Mayne, a self-made millionaire. His third wife, Lillian, married John Mayne to save Eamor for herself and Nicholas. Mayne and Lillian, never in much accord, soon separated, the latter remaining at Eamor with Nicholas. The situation was complicated by the sudden reappearance of Cosmo, the advent at Eamor of Madeline, Mayne's ward, and the interference of other conflicting characters.

To detail the ensuing plot with accuracy would take diagrams, a genealogical chart and reams of paper. But here the plot is not exactly of primary importance -- the characters overwhelm it with their energy, their eccentricity and, at times, their excessvie gift for lengthy self-analysis. They are the book.

Peculiarly written, in a style somewhat reminiscent at moments of the late eighteenth century and at its occasional worst absurdly recollective of the incomparable Daisy Ashford, The Orissers, for all its minor faults, fairly vibrates throughout with cumbrous but genuine power.

The Significance. The Orissers deals with the duality of man's nature --with the subsconscious conflict, continually active, between what people imagine themselves to be and what they really are. The author is a psychologist and attempts throughout to display the genuine impulses and personalities of his characters with as little rancor or partiality as possible.

The Critics. The Spectator: " The book is greatly conceived and does not fall short in execution. It is romantic, it creates an atmosphere, it almost creates a world."

The Manchester Guardian: " The Orissers is a strange and fascinating book; it opens up an extraordinary number of channels for speculation."

The New York Times: "A massive conception; it is the Leviathan of the season's fiction."

The Author. L. H. Myers is an Englishman, the son of the late Frederic Myers, who was president of the Psychical Society--a biographer, essayist and mystic. The Orissers is Mr. Myers' first novel--a novel that, it is said, he took ten years to write.

Nothing New for Boys

Publishers Seek Genius to Exploit Juvenile Field

Poets, from Villon on, have queried the whereabouts of various things at one time or another, but what any number of publishers would like to know at this very moment, is: " Where are the Hentys and Algers, the Oliver Optics and Burt L. Standish's of tomorrow ? "

Not that the vogue of any of the above-named gentry has entirely gone by. Tattered Tom, the bootblack, is still able to thrill adolescent readers as he helps the white-haired old gentleman across the street to receive in recompense a bright silver dollar and a great deal of moral advice. The athletic English striplings of Henty's confection continue to slay their thousands in every known historical period. But the last few years have only brought forth one writer with a true genius for the " children's story," Hugh Lofting, and he belongs rather with Lewis Carroll than with Henty.

The Rover Boys and the Motor Boys have been a trifle outmooded by the Aeroplane Boys and they in turn by the Radio Boys. Time passes, and doubtless we soon shall see a series on The Boys from Mars. Boys of various descriptions have already passed through nearly every prominent American college, real or fictitious, in any number of volumes.

And yet, according to publishers, there is both a crying need for and a wide opportunity open to a writer for boys who possesses a little more than the usual bag of tricks. The audience is immense and vastly eager--it does not require the skill of a Conrad to move its members. Only deliberate affectation or tediousness they will not tolerate--and in those respects they are extremely hard to fool.

Perhaps it requires a special talent to write successfully for boys. If so, here's broadcasting the fact that such a talent is badly needed right now. It may be that some at present mute and inglorious Oliver Optic will heed. But one warning is necessary. The author, whoever he be, should try his product on the dog, on a perfectly ordinary boy to whom Shakespeare is merely required reading and Ivanhoe gets off to a dull start, before he sends it to a publisher.

Personally, if there were only somebody writing for boys just now who could excavate something as thrilling as Kirk Munroe's Bick Dale or The Fur Seal's Tooth we wouldn't care whether a good deal of the modern literary school kept or not. S. V. B.

Anna Katherine Green

She Enjoys Writing; Conrad Does Not

Forty-five years ago Anna Katherine Green published The Leavenworth Case. That mystery story still sells. In 1923 she publishes The Step on the Stair in which love and romance vie for place with crime and mystery. Critics have said that this novel, written when she has passed her seventy-fifth birthday is one of her best, that it returns to the manner and method of The Leavenworth Case, was better than The Filigree Ball or The House of the Whispering Pines. At any rate, soon after publication, it was found on the best-seller lists.

The other morning I found Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) of Buffalo, at the sedate Murray Hill Hotel. An active, agile little woman, she is, who says that she presumes that The Step on the. Stair is her last book; but almost winks when she says it. She is a born storyteller. True, one does not find much of what is ordinarily known as fine writing in her books; but, neither does one find arid stretches. They are yarns built with a genius for amazing effects and drawing out suspense.

She says that the reason she began writing her novels of detection and of mystery was not because her father was a lawyer, nor because she heard stories of trials and pleadings in the courts; but because she wanted to write stories.

" Sometimes I don't write a word for five years," she told me. " Then I have an idea which must be developed. I feel like writing."

This last fact seems to be true of the yarn-spinner. The writer who takes his trade seriously as art with a capital " A " finds the process of creating a masterpiece onerous. Take Joseph Conrad, for example, who made a statement on his arrival here, or was so quoted, that he had never learned to enjoy writing. But the raconteur, whose one guide is a brilliant imagination who lets his only guide be the swift telling of a tale of life, love, mystery and the complications along the side lines. That must be real joy.

Of course I started to tell Mrs. Rohlfs of nights spent breathlessly in finishing one of her novels. She smiled, graciously.

" That," she said, " One hears often; but, honestly now, don't you think taking more time to a book is more of a compliment. When I like a book very much I grudge each page that I turn over."

Well--how many times have you gone over your shelves on a rainy night, when you were tired and depressed, looking vainly for another story that would pick you out of the mire as quickly as a Conan Doyle, or a Mary Roberts Rinehart or an Anna Katherine Green? What better compliment is there, Mrs. Rohlfs, than that? J. F.

Good Books

The following estimates of books most in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion.

THE VEGETABLE--F. Scott Fitzgerald--Scribner ($1.75). An Alger theme Fitzgeralded through three acts of a mildly amusing play. Jerry Frost was one of the 9,999 who, according to insurance statistics, would fail to be self-supporting at the age of 70. A meek and henpecked failure, he cherished two secret ambitions 1) to be President of These States or, failing that, 2) to be the very best postman in the world. Synthetic gin enabled him to gratify both desires, the first in what psychoanalysts call " the dream-life," the second in reality. In the act, where Frost thinks he is President, the dream-mechanism of The Poor Little Rich Girl and A Kiss for Cinderella is employed to satirize government by Babbittry.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED--Elmer Davis--McBride ($2.00). The dubious phrases " a splendid book for a train " and " would make a wonderful movie" recur to the mind in dealing with Times Have Changed. But the book deserves somewhat better than that. Mr. Davis tells his rapid, adventurous yarn in a pleasant and amusing way. If you ever feel that, even though you may have married the most wonderful girl in the world, the good old days before that event occurred had a certain flavor--if you care for stolen jewels --if, in fact, you would rather be entertained than " searched" or " gripped " or " harrowed "--the adventures of Mark O'Rell on his first night out since the organ played Here Comes the Bride will be sure to interest you.

PONJOLA--Cynthia Stockley--Putnam ($2.00). Lady Flavia Desmond was Tired of It All. She was just about to make a hole in the Seine when she ran into Lundi Druro, a tall, bronzed personage, back from Africa on leave, whose tales of the native flora and fauna and remarks on What a Wonderful Thing True Love Was (he was then engaged to somebody else who ditched him later) made Flavia decide to dress up in masculine tweeds and take a look at this Earthly Paradise he talked about. She found the scenery marvelous, but everybody drank Scotch before breakfast--and Druro, who failed to recognize her in her knickerbockers, was on the way to seeing purple elephants. So she rescued him, after many struggles and an incidental murder--her sex was finally discovered and the mystery of her past cleared up satisfactorily --and she and Druro, presumably, settled happily down to life on the veldt together. A frankly melodramatic story, cleanly and competently written, with none of the laborious " ashes of passion " touch one has met in some novels dealing with the same locale.

*THE ORISSERS-- L. H. Myers -- Scribner ($2.00).