A Chip of the Old Balzac

"-- & Co."--Jean-Richard Bloch--Simon and Schuster ($3).

Time was when novelists, like sculptors, tried to mould their creations in the round; nowadays most of them are content with line drawings. Author Bloch has achieved what few of his contemporaries even attempt Though his story covers only 18 years (1871-89) in the history of a family, he has so manipulated the elaborations of its detail that it reads not only like the blended histories of individuals but the story of an epoch.

The Simlers of Buschendorf have been the principal citizens of their little Alsatian town for generations. Although they are orthodox Jews and speak French with a German accent, they are intensely French. The Franco-Prussian War almost ruins them; their little cloth-weaving factory is shut down. Hippolyte Simler, patriarch of the clan, sends his two sons to the west of France to lease another factory; then with all their belongings, a faithful foreman and a score of loyal workers, the whole Simler tribe moves to Vendeuvre. Their new home, one of the centres of the French textile trade, has its local aristocracy of mill-owners, who at first find these shoddy, plodding Jews amusing; then, as the shoddy Jews somehow do not fail and even begin to make a small success, the lords of Vendeuvre resent and fear them. But little by little the Simlers get a foothold in the town's respect. When plutocratic Chevalier Lefombere's factory burns to the ground, old Hippolyte Simler astounds everybody by subscribing 2,000 francs to the emergency fund. When black cloth suddenly goes out of fashion, the Simlers remodel their entire plant, learn the business of making colored and patterned cloth, start again. Finally old Hippolyte dies; his dour brother Myrtil and his two sons carry on as before. Gradually they enlarge the Nouveaux Etablissements Simler until they become Simler et Cie., with a factory "which four hours' continuous walking was not sufficient to cover, which was doing business to the tune of 14 millions, with an increase of one million annually," and which effectively enslaves not only the town of Vendeuvre but the clan of Simler, body and soul. One of the sons, Joseph, falls in love with Vendeuvre's most aristocratic girl, and she with him; but the Simler clan will have none of her: she is a goy, he must marry one of his own kind. He succumbs to family pressure and marries his red-headed cousin with the soul of a dumpling; but at the end of the story there are signs that his son, who is to inherit all this power and glory, will not in his turn let his life be crushed out by the Juggernaut the Simlers have created.

The Significance. A book on so grand a scale as this must fill many different requirements: it must be a record of industrial development, social change, contemporary manners, individual history. On all these counts Author Bloch must be given a high mark. "--& Co." is a big book, in every sense of the word.

The Author. Jean-Richard Bloch, 46, born in Paris of Alsatian Jewish parentage, onetime schoolteacher, onetime soldier, is one of France's leading novelists, a playwright, director of a publishing house, assistant editor of Europe. At seven he wrote imitations of Moliere; at 26 his first play was produced at the Odeon. "-- & Co." was ready for the press when the War broke out, was put on sale in August 1917, the day the German army entered Montdidier (50 miles from Paris). "This circumstance was not favorable to the immediate success of the book." Author Bloch read the proofs of "--& Co." while in a hospital recovering from wounds. In 1925 he revised it; the English translation was made from this edition by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, translator of Marcel Proust's famed Remembrance of Things Past. Author Bloch lives in the country most of the year, likes to move about: on bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles, canal barges, his own feet. Catholic in his tastes, he likes opposites: society & solitude, struggle & peace, traveling & tranquillity. Says he: "I dislike work and I work enormously." He has at present in preparation three novels, three plays, a book of short stories, a book of poems, a book of essays. Other books: La Nuit Kurde, Les Chasses de Renaut, Sur un Cargo, Cacaouettes et Bananes, Locomotives, Levy, Carnaval Est Mort, two plays: Dix Filles dans un Pre, Le Dernier Empereur.

Says Author Bloch's great & good friend Romain Rolland, himself a famed novelist (Jean-Christophe): "I have known and loved him as a brother for 15 years . . . these stormy 15 years which have been the touchstone of souls and of friendships have only served to consecrate our mutual faith . . . within this virile artist who thinks as he writes, and who acts as he thinks, there is a character which is the equal of his art. . . ."

"-- & Co." is the February selection of the Book League of America.

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