Dada Novel

THE EATER OF DARKNESS--Robert M. Coates--Macaulay ($2.50). "To My Father and Mother, Nick Carter . . . ex-Mayor Hylan, Gertrude Stein . . . Oleg Skrypitzine . . . Gerald Chapman, Harold Loeb, The New York Times . . . and Fantomas this book is affectionately or gratefully dedicated." Author Coates lives in Manhattan's Chelsea at the end of a disconnected telephone-wire, and it is in Chelsea that his story begins. There one Charles Dograr, "a rare and sensitive soul" meets "one night at 5 a. m." a remarkably white-browed, long-handed old gentleman clad in a pair of long green silk stockings. Old Picrolas reveals that he is an eater of darkness. He controls a ray invention, by which he can not only see through distant men's brains but pulverize them as well. Hospitably, Picrolas offers Dograr a share in his ray-murders. Charmed, Dograr accepts. They aim the ray. Soon the city awakes to find Harry Hansen, William Soskin, Heywood Broun, Henry Seidl Canby, Asa Huddleberry and George Jean Nathan all dead. When the old man's hospitality becomes too exacting, Dograr leaves, preferring to have six Weber & Heilbroner shirts "in the Manhattan manner" at $4.40 each (advt.), and an Oriental dancer named Sweet Adeline. At the end Charles is seen walking down Fifth Avenue smoking a cigar (brand not noted: Author Coates advertises everything but cigars}. Significance: Ford Madox Ford calls this "not the first but the best Dada novel." Dadaism is extinct. Fathered by Painter Francis Picabia, mothered by Poet Tristan Tzara, Dadaism was born at the Cabaret Voltaire, Paris, 1916, when Poet Tzara, 20, thus christened it (in verse) : "Dada is not a literary school. . . . Anonymous Society for the Exploitation of Ideas, Dada has 391 different attitudes and colors according to the sex of the president. It transforms itself--affirms--at the same time contradicts--without any importance--cries-- goes fishing, Dada is the chameleon of rapid and interested change, Dada is opposed to the future, Dada is dead." Added Andre Gide: "These two syllables [Dada] reached the goal of sonorous inanity."