Books: Farce

SPIDER BOY−Carl Van Vechten−Knopf ($2.50).

No place for the man who loves home and normalcy, Hollywood is grist to the mill of the farceur. Van Vechten takes a spineless playwright, lover of normalcy, and pitches the unwilling wretch into a kaleidoscope of temperamental screen-stars, their mamas (chaperones?) and parasitic Spanish nobles, of shrewd Jewish producers and bland rewrite men. Imperia Starling snatches Ambrose Deacon to her Italio-Spanish-Tudor-Romanesque villa, gives him a small dinner party for 60 or 80, makes passionate love to him, orders him to write her a script. He escapes to New Mexico. She pursues with a sheriff. In self-defense he signs a rival producer’s contract, and marries a sub-star from Kansas City, to the luxurious jingle of magnificent jewels, gilt-edged limousines, plum-colored footmen, in short−Hollywood. The author handles his glittering incredible material with staccato brilliance.