New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion: SALLIE'S NEWSPAPER--Edwin Herbert Lewis--Hyman McGee ($2.00)-- "I'd love to see everybody's name in the paper every day. . . . Suppose the telephone directory had a real news item after each name? Wouldn't that make a pretty good newspaper?" So Sallie, heiress, of a town near Chicago, directed a young, sensitive man to build the ideal newspaper. Love and Melodrama interferred. Eventually the young man went to the hospital and Sallie to Europe, but only after they had performed some experiments in journalistic honesty which deserve to become classic.

MRS. PARAMOR -- Louis Joseph Vance-- Dutton ($2.00). Turning his back on desert islands and the criminal underworld, Mr. Vance ventures into the more polite, if less exciting, realm of Society. The new atmosphere makes Mr. Vance a bit giddy. He teeters on his mental tiptoes, nervously juggling bright phrases, while he tells the simple tale of Nelly Wayne and her rather stupid husband, Pendleton. Nelly is a member of the "irritable race" --a writer. When Jill Wetherell, aging nymph, snares Pendleton in one of his "misunderstood" moments, Nelly vengefully becomes Mrs. Paramor. Ultimately, both Nelly and Pendleton revert to type and the story closes with a coo. It is all very country-clubby and insipid, but the bookmanship is flawless--a Jack for every Jill. And occupants of porch chairs who read Mrs. Paramor will surely spend many a more boring Summer afternoon.

TALK -- Emanie N. Sachs -- Harper ($2.00). A lazily-written history of a Kentucky anachronism. Delia Morehouse was "different" from her generation (circa 1890) to the extent that she ran a bookstore--for financial reasons--when it was thought advanced of women to keep their own checkbooks. Falling in love with Page Reeves made it necessary for her to give up being herself and learn to cook. As a meticulous housekeeper, if not as a wife, Delia was a success, but the effort cost her great growing pains. Accordingly Page's cup of political and social success had a sediment of gall and not one, but two, generations misunderstood Delia. The writing is faintly ungrammatical and occasionally droning, but not unperceptive or unsympathetic. Mrs. Sachs is a neo-Tarkingtonian.