FICTION

Golden Moth

A moth desiring a star makes poetry. A moth excited by electric light makes a contemporary novel.

The Story of Gay Leonard--for it is far more her story than Dolly Quinn's -- makes one of the better contemporary novels.-- She is one of those astonishingly fragile moths, dusted with gold, who first distract football behemoths at col lege proms; then able young busi ness men at country club week ends; then men-about-town, reputable and otherwise. These moths cease to discriminate as their pow er and need of distraction increase. Sometimes they alight safely, their powdery gold dusts away and they become more or less plumply con tented. Other times, especially if their wits are as nimble as their wings, they keep going until they fall, perhaps under a public chandelier, perhaps into a highball glass.

Gay Leonard's wits almost matched her miniature physical perfections. They carried her so far that she failed to notice how they spoiled her, undermined her values. She could get an Alan Pomeroy so easily by the time she met him that she could not relish him -- rufous, genuine, generous, but so obtainable. A Jerry Davis, her natural match at seduction and vastly her superior in experience, could destroy her indifference with one infallible weapon, greater indifference.

Jerry's charm was as shady as his sleek hair, his mesalliance and divorce, his cocktail apartment, his never mentioned publishing business (pornography). But Gay's family's intervention was not all that kept them apart the first time. There was Dolly Quinn. What remnant of decency Jerry had was in his feeling for her, a dance-hall hostess who really would not be kissed.

Dolly's ambition to paint, her modesty through an Atlantic City beauty contest, her success as a magazine illustrator, can scarcely escape a tinge of Elinor Glynnocence. But her effect on Jerry and on Gay, who of course hates her, is what counts.

Gay, after marrying Alan, gets Jerry back from Dolly on the rebound, helping him terminate a trial ride on the water wagon. Then Jerry's car, "the loudest roar in the Roaring Forties," and too much whiskey, balance her accounts for her. Jerry is not so attractive with a leg cut off. And the lacerations on Gay's lovely little throat are not nearly so costly as the fractures in her reputation, the smear on her soul. She is fairly lucky to find a market for the remains of her "class" in a night club.

Dolly and Alan, of course, come through unscathed together, with far less assistance from their creator than might be expected.

The Significance. Nowadays it takes a mental eye of high velocity detail, the myriad activities of knowing young Manhattanites. There are so many things to do and everything is done so quickly. To cover the assignment with the thoroughness and mimetic accuracy (but not the rancor) of a Sinclair Lewis, and at the same time to create four central characters of breathless reality, and a Dickensian hurly-burly of minor characters, and to keep them moving through their swift social traffic under their own power and in their right positions, requires a highly developed social instinct and something akin to literary genius. Socially and book-technically, Little Sins is a stunning performance. And to its fundamental perfections are superadded real whimsy, real pathos, an unobtrusive cleverness at small talk.

The Author. It was Booth Tarkington who lately pointed out that real "sophistication" lies in the way you know things, not in the things you know. Katherine Brush qualifies either way you like. Being the daughter of Headmaster Charles S. Ingham of Dummer Academy (South Byfield, Mass.), only 26 and surpassing fair, she comes naturally by her understanding of nice young modern emotions. How she assimilated the more feverish, spotty metropolitan spectacle--down to the contents of a drug-store cowboy's frayed wallet, stage door argot and the private thoughts of night club Neros--is another story. She worked on metropolitan newspapers, married T. Stewart Brush of the New York Herald Tribune staff, whose father, Lewis Brush, is a press potentate in Ohio.

Her first novel, Glitter, got into cinema.* Little Sins looks like another sure-fire scenario but it is one of those rare books with more electricity in its pages than can ever be added to it in a projection room. Feeble Fantasy

THE DRUMS OP PANIC--Martin Feinstein--Macy-Masius ($2). The aim of this nebulous narrative is to show the effect of the War not only upon a warrior but upon the family to which he returns. Author Feinstein is a poet. In fact he won the Nation's poetry prize in 1922. Hence his disregard for the pedestrian logic of coherent storytelling. In a fine frenzy of disillusion he causes the hero, named Edsel, to mouth his horror of the corpse-strewn Argonne, what time, back on the family farm, he cuckolds his hayseed brother Hiram. For some reason Hiram's wife, Rebecca, believes in life-weary Edsel as the ambassador of a richer existence. After the bucolic Hiram has fled his shame, she stays on until Joe, cowshed philosopher, reminds her to leave for greater conquests. Gene Riminy, wastrel squire, and his mad, illegitimate Yolande furnish further confusion to a fantasy in embarrassingly amateurish water colors.

NON-FICTION

Hedonist

THE RIGHT TO BE HAPPY--Mrs. Bertrand (Dora) Russell--Harpers ($2.50). To eat scientifically instead of by snacks from cans; to drink and play intelligently, not to excess; to work productively because knowledge is everyman's right; to enlarge the province of women, recognizing its particular character, without unnecessary emphasis on its "equality" with the province of men; to love, and to have children, for purposes alike but separate; and to clarify the rights of children, then honor their rights--these are the desires oi many a modern thinker for society. Granted, they will promote that happiness to which humanity is entitled, the thinkers think. To search and establish her title to happiness, Mrs. Russell, calm and able wife of Philosopher Bertrand Russell of England, examines the ethical roots of the western world and then proceeds with her opinions thereanent. Conservative readers may be dismayed by her small opinion of Christianity and her subtle opinion that the mechanical U. S. is proceeding along the same philosophical lines as Soviet Russia. But few will fail to join in the familiar battlecry of her hedonism: "Away with hypocrisies, timidities, doubts!" Mental Exercise

WORD CHANGE PUZZLES--John Knox--Laird & Lee ($1.25). They used to have these in the Chatterbox, in case you were brought up on that. St. Nicholas magazine still has them, after puzzling generations of readers. Author Knox is a sort of archaeologist posing as an entertainer. He dedicates his book to the feature sections of the newspapers and describes his creations as "the most fascinating mental exercise of our times." The definition represents a hope that may become a fact. The object is to transmute one word into another of the same length by patient process of altering one letter at a time, with as few intermediate stops as possible. To go from "here" to "hell," for example, you go "here," "herd," "held," "hell." You are allowed six steps to make "boss" out of "wife." From "wedding" to "divorce" takes too long and so is omitted. Other omissions include Philadelphia to San Francisco, "Calvin" to "choose," Puzzler Knox to Rockefeller.

* LITTLE SINS -- Katharine Brush -- Minion, Balch ($2). --As Drop Kick with Richard Barthelmess. soon to be released.