Selj-Astounder

MY FLESH AND BLOOD--George Sylvester Viereck--Liveright ($3). Before the U. S. entered the War George Sylvester Viereck laid the foundations for his subsequent unpopularity by editing the pro-German Fatherland. In this book he quotes the characteristic compliment bestowed on him by the late Col. Henry Watterson's Louisville Courier- Journal: "A venom-bloated toad of treason." But politics and patriotism have never been Author Viereck's whole concern. In this "lyric autobiography," heavily humorless, egregiously egotistic, he tells everything anybody could possibly want to know about George Sylvester Viereck's life and loves. The book's scheme is simple, must have been fun for the author. It consists of alternating Viereck verse and Viereck prose, chronologically arranged, the prose a commentary on the verse. If you don't mind getting your fingers a little greasy you may pull out many a ponderous plum from this fat Teutonic pudding. "The Hohenzollern family seems to have a talent for writing as well as for ruling. . . . My great-great-grand-uncle, Frederick the Great. . . ." Hohenzollern Viereck, it appears, has also been, if not a great ladies' man, at least a big woman's man. He tells of many a kiss and run. "On one memorable occasion I was compelled to hide under her bed in the same state in which Adam concealed himself from God in the Garden of Eden, because her father, returning home unexpectedly, insisted on talking to her through the half open door of his room while he himself was undressing. Ordinarily, with me at least, a touch of danger intensifies desire." Many a personage has taken Poet Viereck seriously. The late James Gibbons Huneker said of his poems that they were "shot through with the splendors of Heine, Swinburne and Keats;" Theodore Roosevelt admired them, though they aroused his "atavistic Puritanism." But even those who like his poetry could do without the author's comments on it, and on his own self-astounding self. The Author. Thick-spectacled, thick-lipped, thick-nosed, George Sylvester Viereck does not much resemble the famed Hohenzollerns, late ruling family of Germany, from whom he claims to be descended. Born in Munich (1884), he arrived in the U. S. at eleven, was educated at the College of the City of New York, and plunged into journalism. The War put a stop to his propaganda paper, Fatherland (later resumed as American Monthly), brought Viereck persecution but no bodily harm. In the post-War millennium he thrives again. Other books: The House of the Vampire, Confessions of a Barbarian, As They Saw Us (Foch, Ludendorff and other leaders).

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