Man Hole

MINER--F. C. Boden--Dutton ($2.50).

Like frogs in praise of Spring, British Literati Gould, Walpole, Bullett, Strong, Priestley, Straus periodically raise such a chorus in praise of some new Britisher's new book that U. S. publishers prick up their ears, try to reproduce the music on their side of the waves. Recent resulting importations are James Hanley's Men In Darkness and Boy, now supplemented by a first novel by Derbyshire Coalminer Boden. Though less savage than Hanley's books, Author Boden's novel treats the same general theme--the brutalizing misery of those on or below the economic ladder's lowest rung.

When young Danny Handby refuses with tears to take another bundle of household goods to the pawnbroker, to piece out his father's wages from the mines, his mother sorrowfully tells him what must be his life's philosophy: "It's not what tha wants, lad, it's what tha's got to do." At 14 he wants to earn some money for his family, but he has got to become a coal miner to do that. Down into the pithead goes Danny among the sooty veterans who, when they stop to think, curse the darkness into which they have been born. There is a certain amount of camaraderie below the ground, but these undergroundhogs are mostly swine above.

With careful factual detail Author Boden tells of a Derbyshire miner's life, with all its withering working details. The narrow tunnels, the coal seams in which men pick lying sideways all day, the half-blind ponies, the constant fear make up a pretty picture of hell. Above ground things are complicated by lockouts, strikes, broken-spirited drunkenness, and filth. Danny is luckier than most: he has a good though poverty-stricken home, and he has a love affair with a coal-country girl that Author Boden sketches with extraordinary tenderness. But shades of the prison-house begin to close. First there are accidents, then an explosion in the mine. Danny helps to haul the cooked bodies out. Horrified, he wanders about the streets in a daze, realizing what a life it is to which, for hunger's sake, he is doomed. Above his boy's head, above the sooty fog, shine out the stars; but these he cannot eat, and barely see.

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