Charades
THE LAST POST—Ford Madox Ford— A. & C. Boni ($2.50). The supreme ability of Author Ford, as displayed in all of his previous works, is that of implying the presence of profundities, tragedies, actions which he is presumably unable to state. His prolixity makes a dark and impenetrable screen around his stories; the only suspense is that of waiting for something to be said, something to happen. In The Last Post, as in the three preceding volumes (Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up) of the series which it concludes, the story veers and sways, the characters faint and reappear. Christopher Tietjens, who loves Valentine Wannop, watches his wife Sylvia practice unfaithfulness; at the end of 285 pages Mark Tietjens, brother to Christopher, dies of disease. Were it not doubly impertinent to offer advice to an author whose works are so obviously satisfying to himself, some brash but discerning critic might paraphrase one of Author Ford’s titles, saying to him: “The purpose of writing is to express, not to conceal; let us have no more charades.”
Again, Twins
CUPS, WANDS AND SWORDS—Helen Simpson—Knopf ($2.50). The plot of this novel bears so exact a resemblance to the plot of Red Sky at Morning, most recent work of Author Margaret Kennedy, that, had the two books not been published almost simultaneously, there would have been an enormous hoot about plagiarism. These are the likenesses: both books are about mixed twins of dangerous heredity, who keep company with fashionable, questionable artists, who feel for each other a more than normally intense devotion; in both books the girl twin’s marriage threatens this devotion, produces, in the Kennedy case, a murder, in the Simpson case, a suicide, by the boy twin; in both books there is a character called Tony. The differences, mainly differences in treatment, are more important and less conspicuous. Author Simpson nearly cracks a harder nut than the one Author Kennedy so easily pried apart. The ties that bind her twins are not such simple ones of sympathy and affection; her tragedy, confused with fortune tellers, horoscopes, telepathic visions is a more subtle, more bitter but less potent mixture.
War Short Stories
OUT OF THE RUINS—Philip Gibbs— Doubleday Doran ($2.50). When an old mustached rascal startled a credulous world by asserting that he had discovered the North Pole, Philip Gibbs, then a sharp-witted newsmonger, investigated. The record of his discreet queries and of Dr. Frederick Albert Cook’s vague ambiguous replies soon made him the hero and Dr. Cook a laughingstock. Since then the Doctor has been put behind the bars of Leavenworth, Kan. prison, while his suave interrogator has become a famed correspondent, a knight, a novelist, and now a short story writer.
His stories are not as sharp and sensitive as his quivering nose for news. Nonetheless, the title story, about a gallant deserter who, undemolished by a firing squad, returns after the late War to rescue his inamorata from marriage with an ogrish profiteer, is able romantic melodrama. Most of the other stories have the same rank in the same class. As a rule, they also have some connection with the late War.