Books: Men’s Life Catalog*

THE COMING FORTH BY DAY OF OSIRIS JONES—Conrad Aiken—Scribner ($2).†

In spite of its intelligentsia title, this is a good and straightforward book. You should not let a little thing like the author’s preciosity put you off it. The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones is a brief, impressionistic, fairly comprehensive catalog of a man’s life—a man not quite universal enough to be called Everyman, but typical enough to bear the name of Jones. In a note, Author Aiken explains he is indebted for the rest of his title to a translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, in which the deceased is always called “Osiris.”

The catalog’s scheme is ingenious. Two introductory poems set the stage, the scene: “… a shabby backdrop of bright stars: one of the small interstices of time.” Then the itemized catalogs begin. First, The Costumes (“Item: a pair of infant’s socks two inches long . . . Item: long trousers . . . Item: a tweed hat bought in England, green . . . Item: a coffin”). Then Characteristic Comments from: the nursery clock, the shoes, the fire, Shakespeare, Vivien, the desk, the prostitute, the heart. You hear Remarks on the Person of Mr. Jones from: the trained nurse (“it’s a fine boy, not a blemish, God bless him”); other boys (“hey bricktop! hey carrots”); the snow (“centuries hence, it will be long ago”). You follow his career by reading a list of Inscriptions in Sundry Places, from which you learn that he spent his boyhood in the South at the end of the last century, that his father was a doctor, that he went to college, traveled abroad, that he had several adventures with women, one affair that made all others shady. Various Rooms he lived in have something to say; Trysting Places tell a little more, etc., etc.

Author Aiken’s method is impressionistic. He makes no attempt to answer such comparatively impertinent questions as: Did his hero ever marry Vivien? What did he do for a living? What caused his death? But in a space seven times as short as an ordinary novel Aiken has compressed the emotional gist of a man’s life. His method owes something to James Joyce, father of synthetic catalogs; but Aiken has simplified Joyce’s method. His manner is sometimes reminiscent of Thomas Stearns Eliot, godfather of modern sophisticated verse (e. g.:

It was the hour of Venus and the sailor.

TJiey sat here eating popcorn. She

was a Jewess.).

but Aiken has emancipated himself from the all-pervading literary allusiveness that makes Eliot such a self-conscious delight to the initiate, such an uninteresting riddle to the plain man.

The Author. Conrad Potter Aiken. 42, shares some obvious likenesses with his hero: son of a doctor, he was born in Savannah, Ga., has lived abroad, has sandy hair. When he was 11, Aiken saw his father kill his mother and then commit suicide. He was Class Poet (1911) at Harvard, among a generation that included Poets Thomas Stearns Eliot, the late Alan Seeger, Journalists Walter Lippmann, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, the late Radical John Reed. Few graduates stick to their undergraduate determination to be a man of letters: Aiken did. Last year, after reaping the Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems, he took his wife and three children (John, Jane, Joan) to live permanently in England. Nearsighted, silent, excruciatingly shy, Conrad Aiken is a serious, hard-working poet who occasionally ventures into prose. To a fellow-passenger on a liner who asked Aiken: “What’s your line?” he replied: “Blank verse!” Aiken’s ambition is to write “a sort of absolute poetry, a poetry in which the intention is not so much to arouse an emotion, or to persuade of a reality, as to employ such emotion or sense of reality (tangentially struck) with the same cool detachment with which a composer employs notes or chords.” Other books: Punch, the Immortal Liar, Pilgrimage of Festus, Priapus and the Pool and Other Poems, John Deth and Other Poems, Blue Voyage (a novel), Bring! Bring! (short stories).

Prohibitionist as Prig

THE WET PARADE—Upton Sinclair— Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).*

Upton Sinclair, hack writer extraordinary to the Socialist Cause, once wrote dime novels for a living. Now he writes them in all seriousness. Like his literary cousins, the late Jacob Abbott and Horatio Alger, Sinclair is apt to make his heroes into preposterous prigs. In The Wet Parade he has out-prigged himself: his hero is a conscientious Prohibition agent.

Kip Tarleton was born & raised in Manhattan but his family were impoverished Southern gentry. Kip watched his father drink up the profits of the family hotel, drink himself into his grave. Kip’s mother made him swear never to touch a drop, and Kip was willing. Kip was always anxious to do the right thing. When he got a job as assistant superintendent of a big Long Island estate and found that his boss was taking a commission on purchases, he informed his employers, was snubbed for his pains. He met Maggie May (also Southern though not so impoverished; her father of course had died of drink), relation of the family he worked for, and fell in love; but he was so unassuming that Maggie May had to declare her own intentions.

When Prohibition came into effect Kip and Maggie May, united, rejoiced. When it fell into desuetude they mourned, wished they could do something about it. Kip’s chance came when his employer, Banker Fessenden, went into the ‘legging racket and had liquor run ashore of nights under Kip’s unsleeping nose. One night the watchman was shot. At the coroner’s inquest Kip told all. When he lost his job Maggie May became a Prohibition lecturer. She enthralled bigger & bigger crowds, telling about the degeneration of her father. Not to be outdone. Kip got a job as Prohibition agent, visited many a Manhattan speakeasy to collect evidence. At first sipping liquor made him sick, then he got used to it. Once he got drunk and liked it very much. Maggie May was horrified and made him get a different job. Kip always accepted bribes, then arrested the briber, turned in the money to the office. He was also very successful at betraying dishonest colleagues. One of his bosses once told him: “Ye’re a bit too gude for this worrld, young man; but ye’ll have a fine time in the next one. I’ve nae doot.” Even Author Sinclair calls his hero “a wet blanket, a killjoy, a spoilsport, a mollycoddle.” “He had to be,” explains Author Sinclair. You will probably not be sorry to learn that Kip was finally shot, in line of duty. Maggie May went right on lecturing, with another big talking point.

The Author, like his hero & heroine, comes of impoverished Southern gentry. Educated at the College of the City of New York, he was graduated at 18. Then, “when I got to be 20, and had marriage in view, a desire to write serious things overwhelmed me.” His first best-seller was The Jungle (1906), whose profits ($30,000) he sank in Socialist Helicon Home Colony at Englewood, N. J. Now he lives in Pasadena, Calif., with his second wife (he was divorced from the first). They have made “some rather startling experiments” in mental telepathy. Sinclair likes to play tennis, requires his secretary to be able to play a “rattling good game.” His own game has been described as “the picture of confident grace.” Last week, threatened with a nervous breakdown, he was taken to a hospital for rest and observations. Some other Sinclair books: King Coal, Oil!, Money Writes!, Boston, Mountain City, Roman Holiday (TIME, Jan. 12).

French Empire-Builder

LYAUTEY — André Maurois — Appleton ($3)*

When a reputable man of letters such as John Drinkwater writes a flattering biography of such a tycoon as Carl Laemmle (TIME, May 4), angels weep, men laugh knowingly. When famed and popular Author André Maurois writes a no less flattering account of his still-extant compatriot, Marshal of France Hubert Lyautey, angels may control themselves but men will exchange speculative glances. There is no comparison between the two books, as jobs, nor between the two men who form their subjects. But after reading Lyautey and remembering Ariel, you cannot help feeling that this horn-toot by André Maurois is unfortunate.

Even when a portrait-painter takes to cabinet photography, however, he is apt to turn out a more artistic likeness than a journeyman photographer can. If you do not know much about Lyautey or French colonial policy you will be both interested and entertained by Maurois’ sympathetic picture.

Hubert Lyautey was born in Lorraine, to a heredity of aristocracy, military service, absolute filial piety. He naturally entered the army. There he found stupidity in the discipline, incompetence in the red tape. He was glad to be sent out to Indo-China. Under Joseph Simon Gallieni he learned how to be a wise administrator, to let native customs alone, to win over the ruling class, to think in terms of government, not of conquest. Fighting was only the policeman’s part of his job: when he could avoid using force by showing it he always did. In Madagascar, still under Gallieni, it was the same story. The scandals of the Dreyfus Affair (1898) found Lyautey out of France. He was accused of sympathizing with both parties. When he was made General and appointed to Algeria his big chance came. By cutting many a Gordian knot, disregarding or disobeying feeble or contradictory orders from Paris, Lyautey added Morocco to French Africa, held his protectorate loyal all through the Great War. Moroccans trusted him; his own subordinates swore by him. One reason: “I muster them at each stage of the march, and explain the day’s policy on the map, the result obtained, the reason for each movement—an unusual practice, and all the more appreciated.”

When France mobilized, Lyautey sent thousands of colonial troops to help, would have liked to go himself, but the Government could not spare him. In Morocco he was No. 1 man, and there was no No. 2. “In the year 1915 no monarch on the face of this planet wielded a personal power more widespread and untrammelled than General Lyautey.” But black days came at home. Briand’s Cabinet wanted a popular figure for Minister of War, thought Lyautey would be the man. With misgivings that were justified he took the job. Accustomed to rule, he found his hands were tied; he was no good at being a figurehead and resigned a few days before the Briand Cabinet fell. Restored to Morocco he breathed more easily; he still had some good years left before he retired, a Marshal, in 1925. Lyautey left Africa amid great ovations. His official welcome to Paris was a bill for taxes. He retired to obscurity near his war-ruined old home in Lorraine, among his medals, his memories. This year’s Colonial Exposition in charge of which he was put brought him one more blaze of celebrity (TIME. May 11).

The Author. André Maurois (Emile Herzog) was brought up to be manager of his family textile mills at Elbeauf, France, an uncongenial job from which the War rescued him. Since he spoke English Maurois was made liaison officer to the Ninth Scottish Division, then to British G. H. Q. His first book was about English troops (Les Silences du Colonel Bramble ) but sold well in France. After the War Maurois worked three days a week at business, three at writing. Gradually he became literary entirely. Last year he visited the U. S., lectured for a term at Princeton University. He lives in Paris with his second wife, four children. Maurois’ early biographies were like novels and he admits that “at heart, the novel appeals to me much more than biography. It is terribly difficult to invest real life with any kind of unity and beauty. . . . Life is complicated. It is not simple enough.” Echoing critics might apply the same criticism to Maurois’ Lyautey: might add that Maurois has told much of Lyautey’s achievements, little of the simple facts of his life. Other (translated) books: Ariel: The Life of Shelley, Byron, The Life of Disraeli, Aspects of Biography, Voyage to the Island of the Articoles, The Weigher of Souls (TIME, Apr. 20).

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.

†Published Sept. 11.

* Published Sept. 10.

*Published Sept. 4.