Fiction

Tarsan Saul

Brian Oswald Dorm-Byrne, the storyteller, has now done* what it has long seemed he might do--put aside his sentimental inclination and surrendered himself completely to the language of the Bible, to the epic fever of the century that produced the last great religion. The fighting man in him has chosen the most iron man of that time for a hero, and while the fabulous First Century colors, passions and mysteries of the Near East are heaped in the pages like exotic scenery beside a straight white road, the story is a lean dark runner on the road, Saul of Tarsus coursing the world with his vision. It is the first non-love-story Donn Byrne has written, the attempt of a prose-poet in his late thirties to achieve an ascetic spiritual masterpiece. The success of the effort will be strongest felt by strangers to the earlier Byrne manner. People who remember and relish how Messer Marco Polo was drawn to the Old Man of the Mountains by white magic, for example, will have difficulty distinguishing between florid fantasy and sincere interpretation when it is told how Saul overcame the snuffling, pad-padding, loathsome shapes of evil conjured by Bar-jesus of Paphps. The Celtic love of melodramatizing the supernatural, in sheer romance a virtue but here a weakness, crops out often enough to mar the fine simplicity with which more familiar miracles are treated--Saul's epileptic vision in a sandstorm on the Damascus road; making the cripple of Lystra leap up and walk; breathing life into the broken boy, Eutychus; surviving the viper's bite at Melita, island of honey. But only by its preponderant power are the book's weaknesses found out. Taken whole it is a book of a noble man seen steadfastly--Saul the scourge, first of the law, then of the Lord; Saul invested always with the dignity of his Roman citizenship, yet humble enough to suffer fiercely, meanly, publicly for peace in his church; Saul the clever theologian and subtle Greek philosopher, never-- save once in his proud youth at the feet of Gamaliel--never letting intellectual pride smother the pure flame of Christ's love; ending his days, near the time of Rome's burning, in humble age, saying: "I am only an old man, to whom one day a thing of wonder happened, and who has gone over the world seeking people to tell it to. . . ." The Book of Acts is as full of names as a map is full of cities and out of ten scores of names Bonn Byrne makes vivid people-- deep-chested Barnabas; Caiaphas, the blue-horned high priest; chaste Thekla, the Greek maiden who followed Saul in boy's dress; easy Peter, shaggy John Baptist, gentle-fingered Luke. ... It is a book to read much more slowly than most. Between his rich phrases about white roses, tawny storms, bleeding grapes, quiet grey eyes, legs "supple as the bending barley," and all the gems and moving animals and rare wonders of the world--a man that should play a tall harp is telling a deep epic. The Author's scholarship, of which he needed and exercised much in this book, comes from the old universities at Dublin, Paris, Leipzig. His way with words and occupation with matters spiritual are natural to a North-Irelander, born though he was in Manhattan. His last book, a novel for Irishmen called Hangman's House, sold tremendously to U. S. people of all extractions. Brother Saul, a Christian epos, is aimed at men of all faiths everywhere.

After "moving around the world by tempestuous stages" the past four years, Donn Byrne lately returned to the home of his ancestors, Coolmain Castle, County Cork. Dirty DemiTasses CRAZY PAVEMENTS--B eye rley Nichols--Doran ($2.50) Critics who said that Michael Arlen wrote like a butler will wish they had saved the epithet for young Mr. Nichols, lately of the Oxford Union. Yet a butler is not the last person from whom to expect vivacity and occasional wit. Moreover, most butlers worth their salt scorn the depravity of their betters, as do Mr. Nichols and his hero, Brian Elme. This hero, a poor but honest Fleet Street scrivener, passes through a 289-page infatuation for Julia Cressey, a lady like a dirty demitasse. He emerges at last, shuddering but unharmed, from that fabulously orgiastic, gin-gulping, dope-sniffing, bed-ridden sector of British society which has lately enriched so many British novelists at the expense of Britain's reputation. Appeal

LIONS IN THE WAY--Hughes Mearns--Simon & Schuster ($2). When an actress is found at the beginning of a novel faced with the difficulty of making the world recognize in her the legitimate successor of the late famed Duse, readers may be certain that the last chapter will be noisy with off-stage cheering, bright with bouquets. Author Mearns sets forth that the proper method of reaching this predestination, when the lady is one of parts and talent, includes an ability to charm gentlemen who guard the public library of success --they are the "Lions in the Way." The charm employed nowadays is a perfectly definite commodity called, with typical contemporary exaggeration, sex appeal. This, then, is a businesslike, and quite proper, novel about sex appeal for professional women. Author Mearns breezily outlines the discreet triumphs of his lady, Stella Hagan, over managers, playwrights, social lights--so breezily, indeed, that occasionally, like a draft from the wings, the canvas of his settings rumples and billows, the cardboard and tissue actors quiver and sway. Quip Shots

DIVOTS--P. G. Wodehouse--Dorem ($2.50). The Oldest Member still sits by the first tee watching people drive off and remembering-- remembering so voluminously that he has to attach himself to his victims' coattails and drag them down to get an audience. Glad to say, the reader needs dragging down less than ever. The sharp sound of splitting wood and the dejected back of the vicar plodding homeward remind the Oldest Member of young Chester Meredith, ah yes, poor chap. . . . and so he relates how Chester came within a chip shot of not crashing the course record, simply through a misunderstanding with his best girl about soul-satisfying, putt-producing profanity. Rollo Podmarsh is the subject of another reminiscence. Rollo was too good to be happy or play golf or make love or anything, until his small cousin put rum in his arrowroot tea. But then-- And Ferdinand Dibble--there was a case--had the heart of a "goof" until his girl booed his opponent on the last tee and he finally won a match. And William Bates, the stolid oaf: it took an insufferable poet and a water hazard to nerve him to propose. And Wallace Chesney with the purple-checked plus-fours; Gladstone Bott, wormcast carom king; storklike Bradbury Fisher; and that horde moving up the rough at dusk, the Wrecking Crew. . . . Golf has not yet begun this season on some U. S. courses but where Funnyman Wodehouse is read, play need never cease. His long irony is always "on the meat." Never out of bounds, his approaches are infallible; his quip shots all hole out. This Ecstasy

THIS ECSTASY--Elizabeth Stern-- J. H. Sears ($2.50). The title of this tale, the purple cover which surrounds its 384 pages, are good hints. In a style which appears to be the offspring of a union between A. S. M. Hutchinson and the King James Version of the Bible, Author Stern, in the first person, unfolds the humdrum history of a young writer, later turned advertising man, later turned merchant. His unimportant love affairs, his inconsequential pokings at life with a stick, fail to acquire emotional value or intensity by virtue of the magenta draperies which muffle the recital. Yet when Author Stern comes to realize that writing prose does not necessarily demand substitution of fervent ellipsis for sound and conventional grammar, she may well write a good book. ^

*BROTHER SAUL--Donn Byrne--Century (2$.50).