Books: Apologist

THE IMMORALIST—Andre Gide—Knopf ($2.50).

Author Andre Gide, wary as a cat treading among eggs, writes delicately of a delicate subject: homosexuality. Michel, archeologist son of an archeologist father, is wrapped up in his career, cares nothing for women, but to soothe his dying father promises he will marry. Shortly after his marriage he comes down with consumption; his wife nurses him back to health, he falls in love with her. But his sickness and his convalescence make him for the first time aware of his body: in his worship of health his intellectual life begins to wane, his preoccupation with his physical life begins to grow sinister.

When he is cured, his wife falls ill, she has caught the sickness from him. He is not so faithful a nurse as she was, leaves her alone for long hours. When she dies in the same town in northern Africa where she nursed him back to life, he has already become homosexual. But not once does Andre Gide speak out, he hints, writes between the lines. The book is certainly not an attack on homosexuality, nor propaganda for it; it reads more like an apology.

Author Andre Gide, 60, wrote L’lmmoraliste 28 years ago; this is the first U. S. translation. The book caused a storm of controversy in France. Other books: The Counterfeiters, Dostoevsky, Lafcadio’s Adventures, The School for Wives, Strait is the Gate, Travels in the Congo.

Sociologist

GRIM YOUTH—John Held, Jr.—Vanguard ($2.50).

Illustrator John Held, Jr. is famed in the U. S. for his funny satirical drawings of flapper youth, of the golden nineties.

Few knew he could write more than amusing captions to his pictures. But Grim Youth, a collection of short stories not only illustrated but written by John Held, shows he can write as well as he can draw. Some of the stories: a semiprofessional winner of beauty contests, tells an artist how she does it; an alumnus father embarrasses his undergraduate son by a display of oldtime college spirit; an earnest student falls for a wallflower. Author Held’s dialog is slangy, up-to-date, topical, effectively atmospheric. Not all the stories are funny: one tells how a smooth young sheik behaves to the girl he has made pregnant. Best story: Man of the World. Best picture: “Go ahead; I guess it must be love.”

Author-Illustrator John Held, Jr., originator of famed flapper moron “Margy,” has a broad face, broad grin, elaborately tattooed arms. He likes farming, raising horses, lives on a farm near Westport. Conn. Grim Youth is the May selection of the Book League of America.

Adventurer

MOGREB-EL-ACKSA, A Journey in Morocco—R. B. Cunringhame Graham— Viking ($3.50).

Adventurer Cunninghame Graham wanted to go to Tarudant, Moorish town, forbidden to Christians, beyond Africa’s Atlas Mountains. That was in 1897. The following year he wrote a book about his journey; this is the first American edition. Tarudant was a dangerous place for a white man, more dangerous for a Christian, so Cunninghame Graham dressed in Moorish fashion, called himself Sheikh Mohammed el Fasi. With him went a Syrian interpreter, a bearded Riff, several followers. Starting from Mogador on the coast they struck inland to the mountains, got safely through a pass only to be arrested by the Raid of Kintafi. He kept them prisoners politely for 12 days, then let them return, would not hear of their going on to Tarudant.

Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, 78, is a Scotch baronet with Spanish blood. Famed traveler, he spent much of his youth ranching in Texas, knows Spain, Morocco, South America, Mexico intimately. A contemner of European civilization, he is fond of comparing its vices to the virtues of more primitive societies. He is a great & good friend of George Bernard Shaw, of the late great William Morris, Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody), Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen Crane (TIME, March 3), Charles S. Parnell. He looks like Don Quixote, but has not the famed knight’s naivete. Other books: Thirty Tales and Sketches, A Vanished Arcadia, Faith, Hope, Charity, The Conquest of the River Plate, Doughty Deeds.

Specialist

I’LL TELL YOU WHY—Chic Sale— Specialist Publishing Co. ($1).

Hundreds of thousands of U. S. citizens have heard or read a story by one Chic Sale called The Specialist:* a humorous monolog supposed to be delivered by a country carpenter who specializes in building outhouses. I’ll Tell You Why is its echo: another rambling, anecdotal discourse on the same theme. The Specialist, now admittedly at the top of his profession, has been asked to address “The Young Men’s Business Breakfast Club.” Says he: “Your chairman has asked me to talk on and point out such problems and pitfalls as confront the businessman of today—and I’ll tell you why.”

Says Newspaperman 0. 0. Mclntyre, introducing I’ll Tell You Why: “Chic Sale is one of the bright-eyed robins of life who has preserved our vanishing emotional nexus with the turkey-wing stove duster, the carpeted brick door-holder, wax doves’ under glass on the parlor mantel and other mid-Victorian what-nots.” Through the muddle of Newspaperman Mclntyre’s metaphors you see what he means, see there is some truth in what he tries to say.

Author Charles (Chic) Sale, young (36), actor, vaudevillian, in one of his acts used to impersonate the Specialist; the act be came his most successful one. Says he: at the suggestion of two friends he wrote down the monolog, had it printed. He expected his friends to buy it, hoped to sell 2,000 or 3,000 copies. For over a year the booklet was a bestseller, for nine months last year led all other U. S. books. Last month The Specialist Publishing Co. announced a pre-publication sale of I’ll Tell You Why of 100,000 copies. But Chic Sale, best-seller author, has not retired from the boards. So This is Paris, musi-comedy opening in Atlantic City April 14, had an old gaffer in its cast: sharp-sighted program readers recognized Chic Sale.

Millionaire Miser

HETTY GREEN, A Woman Who Loved Money—Boyden Sparkes & Samuel Taylor Moore—Doubleday, Doran ($5).

On July 3, 1916, in a shabby brownstone house in Manhattan, Death came to 81-year-old Hetty Green, “Witch of Wall St.” She was worth nearly $68,000,000. Sole heirs were Son Edward Rowland Robinson, Daughter Sylvia (Mrs. Matthew Astor Wilks). Most of her fortune she had made herself, through shrewdness, knowledge of business, fanatical, patient persistence.

Born the daughter of a New Bedford whaling family, Hetty Robinson came naturally by her talent for gain, read her Bible and did not bury her talent. To Grandfather Howland, owner of a fleet of whaling ships, the child Hetty read the financial news daily. A not unattractive girl, she cared nothing for parties, everything for expense. At her social debut she looked suspiciously at young men who danced with her, thought them fortune-hunters. “She bragged afterward that she had blown out the spermaceti candles even before the last of the guests had said goodnight. The next day she sold the unconsumed parts of the candles.” When Hetty decided to marry, she chose a self-made millionaire, a shrewd investor. Edward H. Green was allowed to be the father of Hetty’s two children, agent and advisor of her financial schemes; when he disobeyed her instructions, plunged rashly and failed, she separated from him, cut him off with an allowance. In 1885 he listed his property as seven dollars and a watch.

So passionately acquisitive was Hetty that she could not bear to pay taxes when she could avoid it. She escaped the New York State residence tax of $30,000 by never establishing legal residence in Manhattan. Though she had a desk in the Chemical National Bank to which she went every day, she changed her lodgings constantly: sometimes the Bowery, sometimes Harlem, sometimes Hoboken, sometimes no one knew where. She loved her son Ned, but when he hurt his knee she treated it herself rather than pay a doctor; finally took him to the Bellevue Hospital clinic. When her identity was discovered she did not bring him again. Eventually his leg was amputated. Hetty habitually dressed in very old, shabby clothes, in cold weather supplemented her underwear with cleverly fitted newspapers. She saved every envelope that came in the mail, used it as stationery.

Between 1885 and 1916 Hetty increased her fortune from $26,000,000 to $68,000,000 (some say $100,000,000). She said, explaining her method: “There is no great secret in fortune making. All you have to do is buy cheap and sell dear, act with thrift and shrewdness and be persistent.”

Colonel Edward Howland Robinson Green, Hetty’s son & heir, was trained by her, took over management of her fortune in 1910. His Round Hill estate is one of the show places of South Dartmouth, Mass. When he opened a public drive through it, automobilists drove too fast to please him (he himself drives an electric); he erected signs which read “Go Slow, Bump Ahead,” hoped that would give them pause.

War In Heaven

CLASH OF ANGELS—Jonathan Daniels— Brewer & Warren ($2.50).

Author Daniels’ title is no irrevelant literary allusion: his book tells about war in Heaven. Like Authors John Erskine, Murray Sheehan, Philip Littell, he writes in satirico-parabolic vein; unlike them he begins his story not with the creation of man but with the creation of Heaven.

Jehovah and Lucifer woke to consciousness at the same time and discovered themselves in a green-turfed paradise. As they wandered together through this finite Eden (for Heaven was bounded by an Edge, beyond it the abyss) they encountered other angels, male and female. Most of them were beautiful; they enjoyed themselves accordingly. Then Jehovah had a dream in which the Contriver of all creation spoke to him. From much brooding this dream became a vision: so religion started, and strife in Heaven. Jehovah’s first two converts were not believers but served him faithfully anyhow; Lucretia loved him, Gabriel used him. They encouraged Jehovah’s religious mania, finally suggested to him that he make himself God. Then came war with Lucifer and his cheerful unbelievers. Afler Lucifer’s defeat Heaven was so well organized that Jehovah had nothing to do, so he amused himself by creating Earth. Meaning to compliment Gabriel (who was potbellied, puny) he made his favorite men in Gabriel’s image.

“Afterward Lucretia and Gabriel laughed about it.

‘He meant well,’ she said. ‘He is very proud of it.’

‘I know,’ Gabriel agreed. ‘He’s always reminding me of it. I wish he wouldn’t.’

‘He’s absorbed in it,’ Lucretia declared. ‘He’s always having floods and earth quakes and the like or listening to prayers or giving laws. It serves to keep him occupied.’ ”

The Author. Jonathan Daniels, 27, small, dark, quiet, “has a prejudice against all people bearing banners,” sympathizes with his hero Lucifer, ideal pagan. Born in Raleigh, N. C, he is the son of Publisher Josephus Daniels, onetime (1913-21 ) Secretary of the Navy. He studied law at Columbia-University, University of North Carolina, was admitted to the bar (1923), was reporter on the Raleigh News & Observer, Washington correspondent for the News & Observer, the Winston-Salem Journal. In 1929 he went to Manhattan, became a writer for FORTUNE. Last month the Guggenheim Foundation announced that Author Daniels had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship ($2,500 for one year abroad) to do “creative writing.” Clash of Angels is his first book.

*Approximately 700,000 copies have been sold up to March 1, 1930.