Free to Write

SOME LIKE THEM SHORT--William March--Little, Brown ($2.50).

Twenty years ago a 25 -year-old Alabama War veteran named William Ed ward March Campbell went to work as a stenographer at $100 a month for the Waterman Steamship Corp. Shrewd, well-liked, he rose rapidly to traffic manager, then to vice president. But he was not happy in his job, and meanwhile he had been making a reputation in little magazines as a talented short-story writer. This fact, however, he kept a close secret from his business associates. His stories were published under the pseudonym of William March. His literary output and reputation, though not his literary earnings, increased rapidly. In 1933 appeared a War novel, Company K; in 1936 his powerful novel of Georgia mill hands, The Tallons.

Last year he checked up on his savings account. He figured he now had sufficient income to stop working and write as he pleased. He sent in his resignation to baffled superiors, moved to a Manhattan apartment, began the full-time literary career he had dreamed of. Some Like Them Short is his first book since then--a collection of 20 tight-kerneled, first-rate stories and sketches ranging from the tale of a shoe salesman to a group of sketches about German War prisoners. But only four of these stories were written in the last year. Besides these, Author March has done some work on a novel, a book of fables, enough short stories to fill another volume. To his chagrin he now discovers that he gets no more writing done than he used to.

Lately Author March has got to thinking he would rather like to take up the study of medicine.

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