FICTION

Fall of the House of Pride

Author Leonard Cline has been weaving spells* in the vicinity of Englewood, N. J. He has regrown the virgin forest there and placed in its tangled heart a mansion full of dark madness.

In Mordance Hall lives Richard Pride, whose madness is living life over again, living it beside himself with audacious backward excursions into the lives of people he has known. This he does by the aid of drugs and a corps of skilled, secret investigators. In his sepulchral study, entombed by the inky transcripts of his assistants, he traces bizarre designs through the dead mold of past existence.

He is, or suggests, a werewolf. His dog is a jet wolf-dog whose name means Death. His wife, Miriam, has turned into a spiritual succubus, slowly extracting from her lovers their health and sanity and a psychic poison which she hopes to distill to a potency that will humble Richard Pride. Their daughter, Janet, flowers like a enamel blossom. Wilfred Hough is the bloodless wraith of what was a bright young secretary a few years ago, before Miriam used him. A young voodoo Negress moves through the house, darkness serving darkness in silence, and with a small drum. Finally, there is the narrator, Oscar Fitzalan, a youth engaged to furnish musical accom- paniments for Richard Pride's mysteries.

The story is almost entirely nocturnal and consists chiefly in young Fitzalan's survival of the chess, the astrology, the hierophantastic bedchamber of his witch-hostess; the drugged diversions of his host. Composing a ballet-cantata to the solar system is all that keeps Fitzalan from succumbing to so much spiritual midnight. He tries to rescue Janet from the deathly mesh of the place, but fails. Wilfred Hough commits suicide, on a chandelier. All the Prides and the dog Death are horribly dead by the end of the book. Over Mordance Hall comes "a nest of ferns, crawling, vermiform. . . ."

The Significance of this book may be considerable. It is the third novel by an author of whom it has been fairly said that he "can write rings round half a dozen of our ten best novelists." His first book, God Head, had tremendous physical force. His second, Listen Moon!, was young-animal, lyrical, pensive. Now he has opened a squamous dungeon of the mind and explored it with the erudite perversity of a cheerier, juicier Poe. Like all horror stories it is belittled by its own theatricality yet it remains an amazingly worded orgy of the more unspeakable human propensities.

The Author is in prison. One dawn last summer, police found him in a daze in front of his home at Mansfield, Conn., with a discharged shotgun in his hands. Within lay one Wilfred Peter Irwin, shot in the back, dying. Both men had been drinking for days. Before the guest died he swore his host was innocent, the shooting an accident. But Leonard Cline must stand trial for murder. Until the plot of that true story is unraveled next month before a grand jury, one of the most promising careers in U. S. literature is in abeyance. Factitious folk have tried, futilely, to draw conclusions from the identical first names of Mr. Cline's unfortunate guest and one of his minor characters.

Prior to turning novelist, Leonard Cline wrote on art, music and books for newspapers in Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Manhattan. He was born in Bay City, Mich., 34 years ago.

Wrighteousness

Here* is the companion tract to Elmer Gantry. Organized religion in the U. S., lately bombed from behind with Sinclair Lewisite, is now fearlessly confronted and challenged by Harold Bell Wrighteousness.

This time there will be no escape for organized religion, which easily evaded the Lewis onslaught by decrying Mr. Lewis as a malicious infidel. Harold Bell Wright is the exact opposite of an infidel. He is the Sunday School prizeman of U. S. literature. While Sinclair Lewis sways the masses who think they think, Harold Bell Wright inspires the infinitely more powerful masses who never think of thinking. He is a Moses for morons, and where Infidel Lewis gained attention by being sexy, the tablet that Moses Wright has now handed down is graven large with symbols even more potent than Sex among Americans. Mr. Wright presents the Statistics.

The Hero whom Mr. Wright has summoned for this most ambitious of all his labors is Big Dan Matthews, stern, strong, sad he-man out of The Shepherd of the Hills and The Calling of Dan Matthews, the two epics which, with That Printer of Udell's, transformed Mr. Wright from an obscure preacher in the Ozarks into a wealthy national phenomenon. Dan Matthews, as all Wright-minded people will remember, was driven from the ministry for preaching Christianity too simply. He went into mining, made millions and in this book is ready to complete a new ministry of Business. The story sets forth why and how Big Dan Matthews proceeds in this ministry. The "why" constitutes the Wrighteous onslaught; the "how" a Wrighteous triumph. By coincidence, Big Dan's base of operations is Kansas City, Mo., where material for some of the more violent chapters of Elmer Gantry was collected.

The Onslaught. ". . . In this so-called Christian country there is no organization in existence through which one can spend a dollar for a purely religious purpose." Thus says Big Dan Matthews, in italics, to his faithful henchman, John Saxton, in Chapter II. It is the climax to a series of shocking facts unearthed by Big Dan's survey of political, economic and social conditions in the U. S.--"facts and figures submitted by ... unprejudiced observers [which] would convince any sane person that the United States of America is moving toward utter ruin."

And yet, with ruin at hand, U. S. Christianity is found to be divided into 183 denominations. Four of every five dollars contributed to any denomination have been spent maintaining the features which distinguish that denomination from the other 182. As for the preachers: "The modern, down-to-date clergyman, under the ruthless competition of this denominational system, has little time or strength or thought left for the Christian religion. He is 10% social visitor, tea drinker and diner-out; 5% handy man and speaker for all kinds of boosting clubs; 5% political henchman; 20% denominational advocate; 5% protector and comforter of that portion of his membership who, because their deeds will not bear the light, must live under the cloak of the Church; and 50% public entertainer. The remaining 5% of him is teacher of the truths of Jesus, which, alone, constitute 100% of Christianity."

"Religiously," says Big Dan, "we are a race of spiritual grocery-men."

The Triumph. To the town of Westover (pop. 40,698) goes Big Dan's honest emissary. In this "most typical" U. S. community he finds 44 church buildings, belonging to 18 denominations, valued at $2, 559,494.08, with annual running expenses of $137,732.19 and a total seating capacity of 20,321, or one edifice for every 461 of the 21,409 members. The actual average attendance is only 4,845 per Sunday, however, making 110 worshipers per edifice and leaving a total 15,476 empty seats.

With these figures at his fingertips, it takes Big Dan but a few minutes to persuade Grocer Paddock, Banker Winton, Realtor Jones, Judge Burnes and Major Riley of Westover--members of five different denominations--to accept from him, blushingly, and administer, a foundation of $2,559,494.08 to build three nondenominational "temples" costing $500,000 apiece. Invested at 5%, the $1,059,494.08 surplus over building costs will yield $52,974.70 per annum, or $17,658.23 per temple, or more than five times the annual expenses of each of the 44 present Westover churches. Big Dan explains that preachers, powerless under denominationalism ("in the grip of this great un-Christian machine"), will gladly come to the temples. The Westover elders hope so. A temple rises, not without denominational dirty work.

Happy Ending. Unfortunately, the nature of the worship conducted in the first Westover temple is left vague, except for "Nearer, My God, to Thee." But Mr. Wright assures the reader that "there was not a feature of that service which would not have been endorsed by all churches. There was not a word of the sermon which would not have been endorsed by all ministers. It was simply Christianity in spirit and in fact--and it was nothing else. . . . The groceryman and his four friends knew that they had made no mistake. . . . The minister left the rostrum through the arched way. . . . There was no effusive and perfunctory handshaking by an ap- pointed committee at the door . . . the people went out from the house of worship."

The full force of this ending is brought home in a final chapter, entitled "Happiness," where the groceryman's wife, Mrs. Paddock, repents of having flirted with a local literary light and the grocer's daughter, Georgia Paddock, forgives Hero Jack Ellory for having belittled, by premature tactics, "the fully matured love of a man for his mate."

* THE DARK CHAMBER--Leonard Cline-- Viking Press ($2), *God AND THE GROCERYMAN--Harold Bell Wright --Appleton ($2).