Pulp

COME AND GET IT--Edna Ferber--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

The raw material of art is common property. So is the finished product. The process of making one into the other is the trade secret of artists, but on each book, picture, statue is the trade-mark of the maker's tools. The smoothly machined product of such novel-factories as Edna Ferber needs no watermark: consumers know it is standard brand, Grade B entertainment, an honest product sold for an honest price.

Appropriately enough, Author Ferber's latest run-of-the-mill is about pulp. Come and Get It is the story of Barney Glasgow, who fought his way up from chore boy in a logging camp to lumber king of Wisconsin, then lost his kingdom while it was still worth losing. As usual in Ferber stories, the fortunes of the dubious hero and his train are merely a framework for a lively description of logging society, from the snowy Wisconsin camps to the over-stuffed comfort of a rich small-town community. Barney's defeat by his son, who got both pretty Lotta Lindbeck and his father's business, Lotta's adventures in European "society," the 1929 crash and the return to Wisconsin, are narrative trimmings for Author Ferber's slickly factual researches. Lumbermen may be impressed by proofs that she can talk their lingo.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.