Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

New Books In Brief Review IN modern literature the Problem is the thing. Hie plot wear) author, laboring overtime, seeks sedulous!) until he finds something ne« to worr) himself and his public about. Having painted in sad hues various pun of married life in his last novel, "Brass," Charles G rris, nun with equal gloom u> the lot of the working woman in "Bread" (£. r. Dutton & Company). Lasl yeai \ S. M. Hutchinson in "This Freedom" forced his heroine to undergo all -on of unpleasant vicissitudes in an effort to prove that marriage and office work do not matt' well. Mr. Norris in an utterly dissimilar novel has tlit -ami' end m view. But after all. arc not these two authors bothering themselves ami us with something which is no problem at all? The majorit) of women turn gladly, willingly from office work to married life. The comparative freedom of a home is vastly preferre'd b) most women to tin monotonous routine of an office, rhere an not man) secretaries like Jeannette Sturgis who get any thrills over business dictation or typewriter keys. Not often do we find a woman sticking to the humdrum existence of an office when a dominating lover enters her life. There may he. then probably are such resolute spinsters who loudly contemn the holy state — but our guess i that ninety-nine out of every hundred are only whistling to keep up their courage. Mr. Norris tells his story in rather a colloquial style, not altogether pleasing. The early part of the novel drag wofully. evoking yawns rather than interest. Jeannette Sturgis — brave and independent, efficient and headstrong — i remarkably well portrayed, as are her mother, the little music teacher ; Martin Devlin. Jeannette's conquering husband, vulgar and rough, but virile and somehow splendid. There is a certain power in his description of Jeannette's love for Martin and her struggle to stifle that love because it interferes with her passion for independence. Dramatic intensity, too. in the tragic end when bereft of everything but her once prized independence, she finds herself alone in the old-maidish flat she had chosen to take the place of life with the careless, spendthrift Martin. The poignant memory of that scene still lingers. Mr. Xorris runs to monosyllabic titles. In previous novels he has given us "Brass" and "Salt." Now we have "Bread." One wonders how long our creator of terse titles can keep this up. At this rate we can expect next year a novel by Mr. Xorris, entitled, "Dough," dealing with the unsuccessful efforts of a poor man to amasgreat wealth. "The story of the first and second Hungarian revolutions of l°dS-19 is told in all the details of its terror and debauchery in a remarkable book entitled "An Outlaw's Diary" (Robert M. McBride and Company). Its author, Cecile Tormay. is a novelist of international fame. Her book is not merely the diary of an outlaw during a national upheaval, it is the record of a nation plunged into suffering and sorrow of an almost overwhelming description. Miss Tormay wrote her thrilling record of the progress of the revolution day by day and week by week, secreting het manuscript wherevei he could, and with th< tl oi death hanging over I writing discovered, Proscribed b) revolutionar) h< who had installed a "t< hi she fled from the parental rool the death of hei mother one ol man) innocenl victims of the revolution taking refuge in lonel) castles, provincial villas and rustic hovels. Hie secreted fragments of hei diar) be tween the p hook-, under the i houses, up chimneys, in of cellars, behind furni tute and huried m the ground. It has survived in it integrity almost miraculously to serve as a memento when the graves of the victims il describes are forgotten, when the grass ha grown over the gallows' pit-, and when the writings in blood and bullet have disappeared from the walls of the torture chambers. T UNCHARTED By Jeanne Oldfield Potter There is a land of gold Rimmed by a sea of light, Never a day dawns cold. Lo%v hang the stars at night; Even the young are wise, liven the old arc fair. Time knows not where it lies, Love has its dwelling there. Jade to the rainbozc sea Falls its beloved shore, Land that is calling me, Land that my Youth forswore; How shall we find the place Close to the sun's warm heart? I who have known its grace, Dear, I have lost the chart. o certain people "The Future of Painting," by Willard Huntington Wright (Ilucbsch), will seem the most important critical discussion of that art since the Trattato della Pittura, despite the intervention between the great Leonardo of Taine's lectures on Art and Reinach's AjkjIIo. But these later works estimate a glorious past. Mr. Wright defines an epoch. The whole subject of modern art is made clear. Modern art, to be sure, is an outgrowth of painting, hut only in the sense that those who practise it have been painters. Modern art is really the new art of color. With painting, as we have always understood the term and athe academicians understand it. the new art has nothing to do. Hence the controversy. It was trying to affect the optics with sharp, clean color values, not to suggest recognizable objects taking position in space. But recently it has found its true medium — namely, light. Light is pure color. But if the medium has been discovered, machines for projecting itsharp effects remain to be perfected. W'allace-R i mington's color-organ and Thomas Wilfred's clavilux are far from satisfactory. Furthermore, the new art will conform to the old standards that have been the same thru the ages. Enlarging his field of definition. Mr. Wright goes to the Chinese for a statement of these -tandards. It must in honesty be admitted that one approaches a book by Upton Sinclair with a certain degree of prejudice. He is an inveterate digger-up ranees He has generally a chip on his shoulder. His hand is more or less against every man because he has brought himself to believe that every man's hand is against him. It would come almost as a shock to find Mr. Sinclair praising anyone or anything which i held in good esteem by normal and kindly disposed people. All this is by way of preamble to the few remark we shall venture to make on his latest hook "The Goose p." Of course it is an expose, this time of American colleges and universities. It is. perhaps, not without significance that he is his own publisher, which suggests that either he could not get another publisher to take his book or that he would not entrust it to another. Anyhow (Continued on page 99) (Seventy-nine)