Books: For Men Only

BEYOND WOMAN—Maurice Samuel— Coward-McCann ($2.50).

Seldom has U. S. womanhood been more soundly affronted in print than it was last fortnight. And it was no unintended insult. Says Author Maurice Samuel: “I think a good slogan for my novel might be, ‘A Novel that Women Will Hate.’ ” Propaganda for masculine superiority, Beyond Woman is written with a passion that some readers will think proud, others despairing. Author Samuel’s theme, that man’s spirit is continually struggling against the earthward pull of woman’s nature, will tread uncomfortably hard on many a U. S. husband’s tender toe. If wives are so ill-advised as to read it, it may annoy them, but only temporarily.

Hugo Enders, a successful Manhattan businessman (notions & novelties) had buried his talent for pure mathematics in the business scramble, but his conscience was still guarding the grave. He disliked his wife’s literary, artistic circle, disbelieved in her “career,” dispossessed her in favor of more responsive women. As long as he had studied mathematics on the sly with his brilliant friend, Abe Parass, he felt some future hope. But now he never saw Abe ; business opportunities were coming thicker ; soon there would be no future. Hugo tried to still his despair with drink and women. Meanwhile his wife had taken a lover. To make Hugo notice, she finally had to tell him; they had a fervid reconciliation, a second honeymoon. Feeling calmer, Hugo then closed up his business, prepared to spend the rest of his life in poverty, studying mathematics. Thunderstruck, his wife left him for good. Hugo, sure of himself at last, went off to find his old friend Abe.

Author Samuel clothes his Odyssean story in rich realism and, on a much less ambitious scale, his picture of masculine Manhattan is reminiscent of Joyce’s Dublin. Some of his characters are drawn from life: Manhattanites may recognize the portrait of Alfred Richard Orage, onetime lecturer, now editor of the London New English Weekly, who appears here under the pseudonym of “Storm.”