Old Eyes, New Slant

When Pearl Sydenstricker Buck sent the revised manuscript of The Good Earth to her publishers she explained that it might seem "a little stiff. ... I am quite bilingual in English and Chinese, and the story spun itself in Chinese, and I translated as I wrote." Last week this Chinese novel, long since a bestseller, came to new fame as the winner of a 1931 Pulitzer Prize ($1,000).

The Pulitzer Prize in U. S. History ($2,000) went to General John Joseph Pershing for his My Experiences in the World War--"a great national story, displaying the American character in its finest aspects." Henry Fowles Pringle won the Biography Prize ($1,000) with his Theodore Roosevelt--"especially valuable for its candor and its human quality." The Poetry Prize ($1,000) was awarded to 26-year-old Guggenheim Scholar George Dillon for The Flowering Stone--"original and authentic . . . very great promise."

The Good Earth was picked, said the prize-awarding committee, "for its epic sweep, its distinct and moving characterization, its sustained story-interest, its simple and yet richly colored style." The choice was doubly happy for Authoress Buck. A few days prior had been published her third novel, The Young Revolutionist*

When little Ko-sen falls so sick that no pellets from his family's traditional medicine-chest seem to help, his family sends him to the temple, the traditional cure-all for human ills. Recovered, Ko-sen is now a temple-boy, belonging to the pot-bellied gilt gods. Though given to the gods, he feels no dedication in himself, contrives after a time to run away with Fah-li, another temple boy. In the first town they come to they hear a revolutionary orator recruiting volunteers. Ko-sen is much impressed by the new ideas of liberation from traditional religion, from foreign influence. Fah-li takes all this oratory with a grain of salt, but his love for Ko-sen leads him to volunteer along with him.

The boys march north, join in a great battle. Nothing comes of it but corpses. Ko-sen begins to realize that human liberation is more complicated than revolutionary orators would have him think. And Fah-li has been wounded desperately. Ko-sen forsakes the army, goes to nurse his friend in the dreaded white men's hospital. But the white doctor's loving care of dying Fah-li opens Ko-sen's eyes, gives them a new slant on life. Home he goes, begging food & clothing by the way. When he arrives, he is clad in Revolutionary leggings, Christian coat, Temple shoes. "What I am no one would know and I do not know myself," says the motley boy. One thing only does he know--that the spirit of the doctor who cared for his dying friend is good, that in that new virtuous direction lies China's liberation.

The Author. Though her first novel East Wind, West Wind (1929) passed comparatively unnoticed, Authoress Buck's second, The Good Earth, has taken the public's fancy to the tune of 22 printings, has recently been dramatized by Owen Davis & Son Donald, will be presented by the Theater Guild next autumn. A good tale, though of lesser scope, The Young Revolutionist, depicting Chinese idealism swing Christ-wards, will be many a missionary's meat. Mrs. Buck's Virginia parents, named Sydenstricker, were missionaries. She was born in China. Her husband heads Nanking University's farm management department. She well knows the importance of food in China. Once she saw her mother stave off a massacre with a batch of cookies. Mrs. Buck spent ten years reading the whole body of Chinese novels before she herself wrote. She is now translating the Chinese classic Shuihu, written in the 13th Century by Shih Nai-han. Seventy chapters long, this book will not appear before 1934. Sons, a sequel to The Good Earth, is being serialized in Hearst's Cosmopolitan. Mrs. Buck's editors describe her as "overwhelmed by the tremendous furor her works have caused." But Mrs. Buck is sturdy, composed. She has watched Chinese love, starve, kill, die. She knows that "in China interest centres about the work produced and not about the person who produces it."

--Friendship Press; John Day ($1.50).

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