Flame-Colored Spectacles

MOVIELAND--Ramon (Gomez de la Serna). Translated from the Spanish by Angel Flores--Macaulay ($2.50).

Spain has long been familiar with the name Ramon, for Author Serna, who prefers to call himself by his first name, has written more than 70 books and by his industry, versatility, publicity sense, has made himself a household word in his native land. Movleland (Cinelandia) is the first of his books to be translated for U. S. readers.

Movieland is a thinly-disguised portrait of Hollywood: a series of cinematic, lavishly colored scenes strung together on the thinnest thread of plot--a revue in words, in modern, cynical-sensual style. Hero Jacques Struk, of no stated occupation, comes to Movieland, falls in love with one of its minor but typical stars, artificial, Kleig-eyed, burntout; after her death he fades from the picture. Movieland is ruled by Director Emerson, absolute autocrat; its queen is Carlotta Bray, perennial virgin lover, who gives herself to millions on the screen, to none in the flesh, and is finally raped to death by fat Comedian Carlos Wilh (reminiscent of Comedian Fatty Arbuckle). Movieland is crude, violent, highly colored: a succession of journalistic pieces rather than a connected narrative.

Author Serna has never visited the U. S. Born in Madrid in 1891, he still lives there, is one of the sights of the Pombo Cafe. He carries seven fountain pens filled with red ink. His apartment contains : a street lamp, acquired legally from Madrid's Consolidated Gas Co., a beautiful wax mannequin en deshabille, a life-size skeleton, a gibbet from which hangs the King of Bulgaria. Famed orator, he once made a speech from a trapeze (at the Circo Madrileno), from an elephant (at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris). Says Critic Waldo Frank: "His true fellow is Marcel Proust. . . . Ramon also weaves the filmy spell of a dissolving world. . . ." Among his more than 70 books: The Black and White Widow, A Doctor of Rare Ingenuity, Torero Caracho, The Chalet of the Roses, The Incongruous One.

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