Kodak Culture

THE FAULT OF ANGELS--Paul Horgan --Harper ($2.50). In spite of strong indications to the contrary, the U. S. still believes that Culture is a hot-house growth and can be fertilized with filthy lucre. When a tycoon turns angel and takes under his wing the perishable eggs of Art, many an ugly duckling, many a dubious chick, come squawking in to get a share of the pickings. The late Kodak tycoon, George Eastman, brooded to such good purpose that he hatched some fine, large eggs. In The Fault of Angels Author Horgan tells a story whose background is the Eastman School of Music at Rochester, N. Y. Citizens of that place will immediately recognize such thinly-disguised characters as Tycoon Eastman (Henry Ganson), Conductors Eugene Goossens (Vladimir Arenkoff) and Albert Coates (Sir Alfred Banner). But Publishers Harper & Bros, are banking on the book's attracting a wider attention than Rochester's. They paid Author Horgan $7,500 and royalties for his book, hope it will sell as many copies as previous Harper Prize Novels (Anne Parrish's The Perennial Bachelor, Glenway Wescott's The Grandmothers, et al.). Judicious readers will rate The Fault of Angels as a moderately entertaining, competent picture of a minor artistic phenomenon.

Henry Ganson was an impersonal philanthropist. He gave money to causes of which he approved but never to individuals, no matter how much he liked them. Though it was not at all evident that Mr. Ganson really liked anybody, almost everybody in the Dorchester School of Music admired him, almost everybody feared him. He applied the same pragmatic principles to the arts that he had found effective in business: he had no use for failures, however interesting. Young John O'Shaughnessy. general handyman of the School, had enough motherwit and social presence to get along with Mr. Ganson and to steer a safe course among the shoals of Dorchester's provincial-artistic society. When Musician Arenkoff was appointed conductor of the Phil harmonic Orchestra, John was told off to help him get settled. This was a pleasant enough job, and when Arenkoffs wife Nina arrived, John adored her at sight. Nina was intense: she often wept quietly for hours because life was so sad. She was also very beautiful and (according to Author Horgan) intelligent. Her principal fault was the fault of angels -- ambition; she could not settle down anywhere with out trying to set the place spiritually to rights. In Dorchester she soon made a series of grand sensations. She made and wrecked parties by her presence, got her self arrested in order to reinstate a poor boy in his job, championed underdogs at every opportunity. But when she tackled Mr. Ganson, Greeks met.

Diagnosing his trouble as heartlessness, Nina set to work to galvanize the atrophied organ--into life. She sent him books, messages, messengers; she talked to him. reasoned with him, finally took to visiting him every day and reading aloud from heart-softening philosophical books. Chivalrous Mr. Ganson stood it quite a long time, then went to John and asked him to call Nina off. But by that time the mischief was done: heartless Mr. Ganson had fallen in love with her. When Nina discovered how much too well she had succeeded, she wept, cheered up. went away, leaving John, Mr. Ganson and Dorchester repining.

The Author, very much like his hero, has also eaten rose-leaves in the artistic provinces. Born in Buffalo but cradled in song (his aunts and uncles were lusty singers), he liked music, was encouraged to cultivate his voice at Rochester's Eastman School of Music. There he spent three years, singing, designing scenes, painting, acting, mingling in Rochester's mixed society. No fool, Horgan found he was no Chaliapin either. When he was offered a job as librarian in the New Mexico Military Institute he took it, still has it. Young (30), unmarried, Author Horgan has found time to write and discard five novels before The Fault of Angels, his first to be published.

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