FICTION

Show Boat

The Story.* Up and down the Mississippi and its populous tributaries plies Capt. Andy Hawks' "Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre," in the 1870's. When she ties up at a levee, her spry little commander scuttles through the village distributing playbills; scurries back to manage the advance ticket sale, 25-c- a head. The Cotton Blossom's theatre-saloon, where the troupe rehearses deshabillee of a morning, will seat 600 river-folk, farmers, backwoodsmen. Dusk falls over murmurous Missouri or Louisiana. Oil-flares illuminate the Cotton Blossom, shining yellow on dark-skinned loungers, deepening the shadows out over a swirling, treacherous, mud-laden river-current. In their best bustles and jeans the rustics flock aboard. The curtain rises on The Planter's Daughter, East Lynne, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Women sob; men swallow hard. A backwoodsman draws his pistol to shoot the villain. . . . After a three-night "stand," the Cotton Blossom is warped into the sullen current again, bells clanging, Captain Andy swearing and prancing with his excitable French blood. Parthenia Ann Hawks, his tall, hard wife, compresses her New England lips and has the decks scrubbed. On down to Vicksburg, or up to Cairo, Paducah, New Madrid, Bath on the Pamlico, Queenstown on the Sassafras. . . . Magnolia Hawks grows up on the Cotton Blossom, child of Captain Andy, the stage and the River. She is playing ingenue roles, despite her dour mother's opposition, when the "juvenile lead" is called away at New Orleans. The vacancy is filled by a frayed but elegant young river-gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, and never had a show boat such lovemakers as he and slender night-haired Magnolia. Parthenia's shrewishness only hastens their marriage, in a sleepy village church. Their daughter is born near the junction of Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri and hence named Kim. When Kim is four, the Cotton Blossom strikes a snag and the River takes Captain Andy, leaving resolute Parthenia in command. Showboating has her, too, by now; she cannot leave it. The Cotton Blossom is repaired; the troupe disciplined. Gaylord Ravenal and Magnolia have their last quarrel with Parthenia and depart, leaving her indomitable in her widow's black on the bridge of the Cotton Blossom. "She's like the River," thinks Magnolia. And now Chicago--town of "Bath House" John Coughlin and open sewers; of jovial Mayor Harrison and the Clark Street gambling parlors; of canvas-backs and champagne; of policemen with mustaches; of pawnshops and Hetty Chilson, distinguished Housekeeper. Gaylord Ravenal follows his gentlemanly profession there: faro. One month Magnolia has a lakeside suite at the Sherman House; another month she cooks coffee on the gas-jet in Ontario Street lodgings. It is that way for years, with Gaylord Ravenal ever fastidious and futile and Kim growing up headstrong, resolute, like Parthenia, as turbulent Chicago is like the River. Kim is put in a convent, where Magnolia keeps her-- after an ebb in Gaylord's fortunes that carries him away forever--by singing Negro spirituals in vaudeville. . . . More years, and Magnolia, "Nola" now, is a retired U. S. Duse or Meller. Kim is an efficiently schooled and married Manhattan "star." Parthenia dies at 80 on the Cotton Blossom. Nola goes to settle the estate, now worth half a million. Kim and her Park Avenue husband follow, to find Nola brooding on the River in Tennessee, reclaimed by showboating, done with Manhattan's fussy little critics and glib nighthawks. She gives Kim the half-million and Kim anticipates her own Manhattan playhouse, where she can give Ibsen, Hauptmann, Werfel, Schnitzler, Molnar, Chekhov, "Shakespeare, even!" "We'll call it the American Theatre," she cries, noting as she departs that Nola, tall, erect, indomitable on the bridge of the show boat Cotton Blossom, looks "like the River." The Significance. After hearing about show boats from Mr. Winthrop Ames, and rushing into the Midlands to amass properties and backdrops for a panoramic old-American production, Miss Ferber appears to have been so overcome by her discoveries that she felt justified in asking the audience to absorb and admire the stage-setting for 153 pages, before putting her characters in motion. Similarly, the reconstruction of Chicago is rich, racy but redundant. Splendid characters and material are worn down by overuse of the catalog sentence, repetition of scenes. Nevertheless, the material and characters are splendid; the theme broad, native. Gathered speed at the narratives end puts Show Boat over the sandbars--a deep-draft, beamy vessel; a gorgeous excursion. The Author. Edna Ferber, pride of Kalamazoo, Mich., where she was born 39 years ago, and at Appleton, Wis., whose public schools she attended, lives beside Central Park nowadays, a national celebrity since 1912 or so, when her stories began appearing regularly in the magazines. Roast Beef Medium, Emma McChesney & Co., The Girls and So Big are the most familiar echoes to her name. She trains severely for authorship; swims, dives, secludes herself in a Basque fisher village.

Negroes Exposed

NIGGER HEAVEN -- Carl Van Vechten -- Knopf ($2.50). Sullen-mouthed, silky-haired Author Van Vechten has been playing with Negroes lately; writing prefaces tor their poems, having them around the house, going to Harlem.^ They have been his latest fad, just as cats, perfumes, precious stones were his fads before. And now he seems to have sickened of Negroes. In this story about high and low brownskins in Harlem and Atlantic City he shows Negroes wallowing in extreme depravity. He makes the comparatively chaste, intelligent heroine most unhappy. The hero, an ambitious graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, is discouraged, disillusioned, thoroughly seduced and debauched by a saffron sadist who curses her race tor its jealousy of "rising" members and its hypocritical renunciation ot "nigger" instincts. There is no health in the book, no humor. There is feverish color, hot animalism, degradation. Whether he has told the truth or not--and the glossary appended shows that he at least knows Negro language--jaded Author Van Vechten will, henceforth, probably avoid the headquarters of Negro self-betterment.

NON-FICTION

Professor Rampant

THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND ITS RULERS--J. E. Kirkpatrick, Ph. D. New Republic Inc. ($1). Kirkpatrick of Olivet College (Michigan) speaks out loudly for rights and recognition for the U S professoriat. Professors are responsible gentlemen, he says, quite capable of running the colleges they tea"h in without assistance (except, perhaps, financial) from boards of businessmen or ever "captains of erudition" (as Stephen

Leacock calls college presidents). At least they deserve a hand in college administration. The voice that lectures should be heard in making policy. Dr. Kirkpatrick deplores the fact that Yale was "invented" by some clergymen as an educational plant to be manned, but not run, by their employes. "Camouflage it as one may, the fact is that the American teacher of today is a hireling, with most of the characteristics of his kind. To Yale belongs the credit (?) of setting this fashion." The fashion has spread until even learned Secretary Collins of Princeton is found ignorant (in Dr. Kirkpatrick's view) of what constitutes a "genuine" college. Telling points are made anent the removal of college control "from campus to skyscraper." A Morgan partner (Dwight W. Morrow) is indicated as Amherst's "ruler" and hence the antagonist of one of Dr. Kirkpatrick's heroes, Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, deposed Amherst head and latterly pedagogical pioneer, with Dr. Glenn Frank, in the open spaces of Wisconsin (TIME, July 5, EDUCATION). The book is highly controversial but not entirely so. Terse sketches vividly illuminate U. S. collegiate history. Survivals of the democratic spirit, and modern liberal ventures, are noted at Antioch, Vassar, Clark, Commonwealth. Latin-American universities are described, where students rule. The "new" U. S. student is shown in his ardent revolt. Commission government for colleges is discussed, found hopeful. And a "next step" is proposed : a somewhat Utopian "copartnership in higher education" between teacher and student, assuming a gratifying high-level of student intelligence and introducing "the spirit of play" to seminars. The writer exhibits a comprehensive awareness of contemporary life --from Eugene O'Neill's plays to the Shenandoah disaster. He writes with vigor, despatch and no more sarcasm than may be expected from an active-minded idealist working for the swift betterment of a stupid, often ignoble world. The University of Virginia may be annoyed at having its betrayal of Jeffersonian principle revealed. The Rev. Bernard Iddings Bell, eloquent jet-browed little president of St. Stephen's College, may be irked at having his Christianity impugned in the strongly prejudiced account of a strike in his student flock. The civic fathers of Kansas City may wriggle at being bracketed with "Rotarian 'Babbitts' and their kind." Yet, in all logic, Dr. Kirkpatrick's central contention is fairly unanswerable: "Education cannot be left to bankers, politicians and tradesmen or any other type of citizen whose prime interest is not education" -- especially when the student is included among those for whom interest in education ts prime.

* SHOW BOAT--Edna Ferber--Doubleday, Page ($2)