Good Books

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

MIRAGE--Edgar Lee Masters--Boni & Liveright ($2.50). The story of a man who has a "genius for self-laceration." He has loved a woman who is unworthy of him; and though he realizes the utter "waste of the ointment," he still is carried on--the helpless victim of a mirage--by fleeting glimpses of the woman that she might be. The book is profoundly analytical, studied with something of the grim irony that pervades the Spoon River Anthology. Its philosophy shifts at times from an almost Rabelaisian turn to Oriental mysticism, and back again.

THE REAL SARAH BERNHARDT WHOM HER AUDIENCES NEVER KNEW--Mme. Pierre Berton--Boni & Liveright ($3.50). This absorbing biography of an absorbing personality contains much dramatic material which Sarah purposely omitted from her memoirs. It is a frank and intimate picture of a woman of undoubted genius. And while its author is obviously an ardent admirer, she was also too close a friend not to recognize the many weaknesses, eccentricities and faults that go hand in hand with genius; these she has faithfully recounted. The London Times ranks this biography as "fit to stand, if not beside at least in the shadow of Boswell's immortal portrait of Samuel Johnson."

MANY MINDS--Carl Van Doren--Knopf ($2.50). In this new volume of critical essays, Mr. Van Doren again applies a skilful scalpel to his literary contemporaries. The very titles of the chapters are a triumph: Smartness and Light, for H. L. Mencken; Youth and Wings, for Edna St. Vincent Millay; Flame and Slag, for Carl Sandburg; Beyond Grammar, for Ring Lardner. He covers the field of philosophers, poets, wits, essayists. His estimates are tempered with sympathy, humor, real understanding. He praises and blames ; weighs faults against virtues. One reads on absorbedly for some time before one becomes subtly conscious that no final criticism has been made, no judgment pronounced. In the last chapter one discovers Mr. Van Doren's friendly confession: "He still insists that his usefulness, if he has any, must be based upon the opportunity which he affords for unprofessional readers, with his professional help, to make up their own minds about the authors whom he interprets."