The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 44

10 BOOKS THE COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY, 14, 1951. passing snow SECTION 3 ir nn ie WdDHaiLDD IF IBDDIK. SHORT SHRIFT 'The Life and Riotous Times' of Mencken The Rebel, Clown and Savant tant minister, spearhead of a national vice crusade, who was seized at the local Y.M.C.A. closeted with a naked Boy Scout. THE SUN BECAME a lively newspaper so lively that its publishers had to soft-pedal their editor, albeit reluctantly.

But Mencken had earned for The Sun an international reputation, and he himself emerged as a first-class polemical writer, very familiar with the libel laws. More than that, he had blueprinted much of his later literary career, for in his Sun columns lay the germs of his "Prejudices," his brilliant editorials in The Smart Set and The Mercury, his "Defense of FICTION So Great A Queen: By Paul Frischaucr. Scribners. $3. Throughout this novel of Esther, Queen of Persia, one is conscious of the great amount of painstaking research which has made it possible.

Her love for Ahasuerus, King of Kings, and the proving of it, provides the plot stimulus. Woven into the colorful backgrounds are the details of the life of ancient Persia and many characters of the day. The book is likely to be of more interest to students of the times than to those who want a story swiftly paced, with emphasis on plot development. Joy Street: By, Frances Parkinson Keyes. Messner.

$3. Mrs. Keyes' latest novel' concerns Emily Thayer Field, the daughter of proper Bostonians and granddaughter of a lovable old matriarch whose personality dominates much of the long novel. Emily asserted her independence first by her marriage to Roger Field; he belonged socially, but he chose to practice law with a firm who recognized as well some "worthless Italians," "Castle Irish" and "presumptuous Jews." The plot involves, among numerous other facets, Emily's endeavors to make her home on Joy Street a place of universal understanding. Mrs.

Keyes' picture of the family and their friends and of life in Boston is vivid and detailed; her plea for tolerance, subdued as it is, is memorable. MYSTERIES Career for The Baron: By Anthony Morton. Duell, Sloan Pearce. $2.50. John Mannering is one of those rich characters who operate on the wrong side of the law.

Robin Hood and The Saint do it better, but this one isn't too bad. Known as "The Baron," Mannering gets mixed up in a deal for an antique shop. Money, jewels, action, blood and smart dialogue make this one pretty fair reading. Night of The Jabbcrwock: By Frederic Brown. Dutton.

$2.50. This is the story of Doc Stoeger, owner and editor of a small newspaper who wanted more than anything to have one really exciting issue of the Clarion. He has his chance when in a remarkably short time he becomes involved with violent murder, a bank robbery, big-time gangsters and a haunted house. Each chapter begins with a quotation from "Alice In Wonderland" and familiarity with that story provides an interesting thread throughout. A worthy successor to the author's "The Fabulous Clipjoint" and "Compliments of A Fiend." A REAL TOOL FOR USE WITH 1 95 1 SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS I college factotums, district by district, man by man.

Such invective had never been heard in America, and the stuffed shirts recoiled from this provincial lexicographer who, equipped with one callow assistant, a brass spittoon, and an irascible temperament, cut the ground from beneath them without mercy and without quarter. Such writing had not been seen anywhere since the days of Swift, Johnson and Pope. He banged his battered Corona ceaselessly and ground his teeth into long, mean, black cigars. He systematically exploited his chief asset his own effervescent personality. A massive chorus of American Legionnaires, college professors, preachers and Rotarians seemed to have been organized for his own private amusement; he had but to titillate it, and the chorus responded with a vast, spluttering hysterical hymn of vituperation.

TODAY, MENCKEN cannot be classed as a liberal; he probably never was one, despite his crusades, though many tried to identify their progressive causes with him. As the rebel of the Twenties he was venerated by the emancipated intellectuals; as the clown of the Thirties he was ignored or ridiculed; as the savant and raconteur of the Forties he is enjoying a spectacular come-back. He is, of course, anathema to most of the avant-garde critics and literary poseurs who affect sideburns and a precious vocabulary of esthetic gobbledegook, for he is an individual productive, energetic, honest, articulate, and with a keen nose for human hypocrisies. He does not "identify" with any group; he does not follow any party-line; he is full of prejudices and glories in them; he makes his own mistakes, and has lived some of them down. The thing he has fought hardest is the regimentation of mankind from within man himself.

Walter Lippmann probably summed him up best when he said, "He denounces life and makes you want to live." He has done just that for millions in his own century, including some of those he attacked most bitterly. A word about the author; his name is William Manchester and I have never heard of him, though I have known the subject of his book for many years. This appears to be his first writing of consequence as it might well be, since he is now twenty-eight. Let us hope that it is not his last, for he has done a magnificent job on a subject which is difficult, to say the least. Despite some rather gauche typographic experiments, he has a style of his own, a fine, clear perception of the man Mencken, an admirable objectivity, especially noticeable when he treats Mencken's idiocies, and a remarkable grasp of an age which he is too young to remember.

alarm fire." Sweating every night in his third-floor study, he fired salvo after salvo into the literary fat cats and the virginal professors (male and female) who dominated American letters. The prevailing criticism, he thundered, "smells of the pulpit, the Chautauqua, the school-room People with progressive minds, especially younger professors and bright students, liked this kind of talk, and Mencken later noted "a great stirring beneath the college elms, as if a naked fancy woman had run across the campus." Conservatives didn't like it, and the battle between modernism and fundamentalism was on. It swept into The American Mercury of the fabulous Twenties, and came to a climax at Dayton, where one John Thomas Scopes, infidel, was tried for teaching evolution in the local high school. William Jennings Bryan (described by" Watterson as appropriately named "The Silver Tongued Young Orator from the Platte" since the Platte was only a foot deep and a mile wide at the mouth) sprang to the prosecution's aid with a view to writing an anti-evolution amendment to the Constitution and running (again) for President; Mencken recruited Clarence Darrow, greatest of. modern criminal lawyers, and the -whole English-speaking world focused its attention on the little town of Dayton.

Darrow put Bryan on the stand and macerated him with cross-examination so vicious that Bryan went upstairs in his hotel and died. "Well," said Mencken many years later, "we killed the son-of-a-bitch." Mencken reported the trial and narrowly escaped a lynch-mob; his story was printed everywhere and is one of the bright spots in American journalism. It was a milestone in academic freedom and the freedom of the press. PROBABLY the most significant result of Mencken's magazine venture was his sponsorship of young writers, some of whom probably did not deserve it. "I'll be glad to see the manuscripts of any new one, buck or wench, and give them my personal attention" was his policy, and he meant just that.

He criticized, he helped rewrite, he encouraged and he analyzed; he personally escorted from obscurity such people as Theodore Dreiser, James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, Thomas Beer, Eugene O'Neill, Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, Ben Hecht, Ruth Suckow, Ernest Booth, James Stevens, Louis Adamic, George Mil-burn and many others. During these years he continued to thump the tub in The Mercury and other publications, did mighty battle with the censors and the Comstocks. Wearied of assaulting stupidity on a nationwide basis, he went after the boobs, the cultural editors and the "OUTLINE STUDIES IN MARK" by JOHN L. HILL Those eager to learn more of the old, old story ever new will find this book helpful. Price $1.50 BAPTIST BOOK STORE 317-319 Guthrie Street, Louisville 2, Phoned 4419 Store llourt 10 A.M.-5:30 P.M.

this page or booki TO ORDER ANY BOOK Use This Coupon Reviewed on any other WSSSUPD a ail Order Dept. 667 S. 4th, Louitville, Ky. Please send me the following (Add 10c poitafe per Book) for which I enclose (PRINT TITLES WANTED) Name Address City (Zone) State EDWARD R. MORROW Of C.B.S.

CALLS THIS "The history bookof the IS HILAHiuu- v--' A Review by David Maurer DISTURBER OF THE PEACE: Tha Life and Riotous Times of H. I. Mencken. By William Manchester, with an introduction by Gerald Johnson. 336 pp.

Harper Bros. $3.75. A THIS is being written, there sits, in an old Victorian house at 1524 Hollins Street in Baltimore, a wasted paralytic; he cannot read, he cannot speak, he cannot understand much that goes on about him. He is awaiting death, and not too patiently. He is Mencken, Mencken the super-newspaperman; the critic; the clown the editor; slayer of pasteboard dragons; patron saint of a generation of writers, some of them great; phrasemaker; prankster; philologist.

The benign proprietor of the greatest medicine show in American letters is about to slough the joint and pack the racket in. Louisville, then one of the national pivots culturewise, first took notice of this incarnation of the antichrist in August, 1906, when as editor-in-chief of The Baltimore Sun at the nubile age of 24, he described Henry Watterson as "astride his galloping cayuse, with a baleful glitter in his eye. Watterson, astounded at such phraseolog in the stodgy Sun, answered editorially: "Think of it! The staid old Baltimore Sun has got itself a Whangdoodle. Nor is it one of those bogus Whangdoodles which we sometimes encounter in the sideshow business merely a double-cross between a Gin-Rickey and a Guyascutis but a genuine, guaranteed, imported direct from the mountains of Hespidam Not only had The Sun found a Whangdoodle, but the Whangdoodle had found himself. For the next 40 years The Sun was plagued with him for some 20 years as its chief workhorse.

During the early years he opposed everything respectable, mocked everything sacred, inveighed against everything which substantial middle-class opinion supported. He defended prostitution, vivisection anti-vivisectionist is one who strains at a guinea-pig but swallows a advocated Sunday sports, alcohol, and war. He openly advised armed resistance against the prohibitionists, the supporters of blue laws, and certain Maryland tax collectors. He drew up and urged the passage of a law legalizing the assassination of public officials. His aim, apparently, was to combat, chiefly by ridicule, American piety, stupiditv, tin-pot morality and cheap chauvinism in all their forms.

As a result, posses of old ladies besieged The Sun offices and the clergy, with cassocks flying, charged down on the newspaper. As the battle surged toward a climax, Mencken scored a decisive victory with the aid of the police (he had long been a faithful police reporter) by rescuing a Protes- Much Fiction In The Story Ahout Lautrec A Review by Adele Brandeis MOULIN ROUGE: By Pierre La Mure. 438 pp. Random House. $3.50.

JT IS evident from the many exhibitions, including the outstanding one from the Museum of Albi, from the illustrated articles, notably The Art News Annual's and from the sudden spate of reproductions, that we have a new god to worship in the art world this year. In place of Van Gogh the tragic Hollander, we have the almost more tragic, though far less noble figure of the Frenchman, Toulouse-Lautrec. Vicompte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa to accord him his full name and title is in for a period of rather belated recognition in this country. As added witness to this there has recently been published a life of this brilliant artist who died just half a century ago. The youngest of that loosely held together group which was more or less committed to the tenets of impressionism, Lautrec deviated as far in one direction as Cezanne did in another from their theories.

Many of the group he knew; he chose what he wanted from the technique of each. But it was Degas alone whom he truly revered, and it is to Degas in the last analysis that he owes something of his style, his spacing, his design and his subject matter. They were both of noble descent, they were both sardonic and disappointed An Analysis of A Review by William C. Mallalieu CRISIS IN BRITAIN: Plans and Achievement of The Labour Government. By Robert A.

Brady. 730 pp. University of California Pr.is. $5. TTNLIKE most American writers on the British Labor Government, the author of this valuable study is not blinded by prejudice for or against socialism.

He demonstrates that even if there had been no war and no Labor Government, the reconstruction of British society and economy would have been urgent. Labor is criticized, not for assuming direction of industry, but because its aims are confused, its con- Fearful Fiction Along The Amazon One of the Dali illustrations in "On The Verge," reviewed below. Madmen's Tales And DalVs Art A Review by Josef Dignan ON THE VERGE: By Maurice Sandoz. Illustrated by Salvador Dali. 127 pp.

Doubleday Co. $4.50. "OEADING "On The Verge" reminded me a little of the Helen Hokinson ladies who, standing before a puzzling bit of modern art, remarked: "It's an allegory. You have to be feeling unreal to enjoy it." Much of the effect of these four stories depends on "mood." Above all, one must feel a bit "unreal" in order not to be too much impressed by the implications behind them. All the stories are based on material obtained by the author on numerous visits with patients in mental hospitals.

After telling us, in his preface, that statistics would have us believe that there have never been so many madmen about as there are today, Dr. Sandoz goes on to say: "If cases of insanity continue to multiply, madmen will constitute a majority who, as a measure of precaution, will not hesitate to lock up those who have remained sane." However, there is nothing "statistical" about Dr. Sandoz's stories. "The Tsantsa," which tells about a man whose Salome-like mistress would be satisfied with nothing but the shrunken head of a murdered man, is certainly the most horrifying, and I think the best, of the stories. "The Trap" runs "The Tsantsa" a close second in horror, and the title story gives one a great deal to think about.

But my choice for second best would be "Mr. Rabbi" which offers, through the fantasy of a patient who believed himself the Messiah, a touching portrait of Jesus as one whose miracles were really only a reflection of the magic of a glorious holy personality. Without rubberized watches, ant-clusters and burning plums, Salvador Dali's illustrations display a more than customary simplicity (see accompany-, ing cut). Otherwise, they are pretty much the same old Dali. The story is told by one Mark Allison, a man who because of a tragic experience has hidden himself in a small and forgotten city in Brazil as a representative of an air line.

Drinking too much and living day by day in apathy he meets a former friend, a South American, who half against Mark's will involves him in an expedition to the wilderness of the upper Amazon in search of oil and, as it turns out, in search of a scientist, Dr. Nils Barna. Dr. Barna's wile accompanies the party, affording the never intrusive romantic motif of the book and she is, refreshingly, a real, not too glamorous woman who suffers in appearance but never in morale on the dangerous, savagely primitive journey. This is an uncomfortable story, there are several bits of exquisite horror recounted, and one doesn't finish the book with any desire to in the footsteps of the explorers, but it is exciting and interesting to read of their experiences and, as in "The White Tower," one finds that Mr.

Ullman's characters are searching for something more than oil and thrills their soul's fulfillment perhaps. BEST SELLERS FICTION-(l) Joy Street; (2) The Disen. chanted; (3) Son of A Hundred Kings; (4) The Cardinal; (5) The Adventurer. NONFICTION-(l) Kon-Tiki; (2) Boswell't London Journal; (3) The Hinge of Fate; (4) Out of World; (5) Look Younger, live Longer. Reg.

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L. Mencken Women," and even his extensive lexicographical work, "The American Language." Meanwhile, In 1908, Ke and George Jean Nathan (now better known as the dean of dramatic critics) took over The Smart Set, a New York magazine of dubious ancestry, and made it the cradle of modern American literature. Today we forget that before Mencken and Nathan there was no recognition of sound contemporary writing in America; that in those bleak years Robert Frost grew potatoes for a living and slyly wrote poetry on the side; that Edgar Lee Masters was a lawyer; that Sherwood Anderson manufactured paint; that Edwin Arlington Robinson kept books in a customs-house; that Vachel Lindsay rode the rods as a common tramp. It is hard to visualize Theodore Dreiser editing Butter ick's Magazine (for women, largely) and Willa Cather doing hack work for McClure's. Mencken summed it up succinctly: "Our American manufacturers of best-sellers," lie wrote, "having the souls of fudge-besotted high-school girls, behold this human comedy as a mixture of a fashionable wedding and a three- "Gentleman Driver," illustration by News Annual, is jrom "Leaves From men.

They both added notable chapters to the history of modern French painting. This highly fictionalized biography, "Moulin Rouge," is however far more interested in Lautrec, the dissipated, disdainful nobleman than in the artist whose new types, new methods of drawing and lithography flamed across the Paris of the 90's. He makes a perfect subject for a somewhat lurid life story. He was a weakling from birth, a cripple from boyhood, a deformed man frustrated, except in his art, until his death at 37. The important women in Lautrec's life were few, the unimportant, ephemeral, myriad.

He inspired devoted love in his mother, but the tarts on Monmartre and the cancan dancers of the Moulin Rouge were his affectionate friends even though he had always to buy their is with his life with these light ladies, so sad, so sordid, and with his one The British Labor trols weak and its plans inadequate. The goals of British socialism, deriving more from Webb and Keynes than from Marx, are summarized as social security plus national capitalism. Results so far have been meager, according to Mr. Brady. Wages have been raised, but largely at the expense of the salaried class.

The nationalized industries are hampered by overcen-tralization and lack of planning. Planning and controls for private irl-- dustry have failed to bring about technical progress, better use of labor, or wise direction of investment. JL IVou? Ready! the IY ew 1951 Information Please Almanac The Book of essential information for Home. School and Office. A Review by Dorothy Reesm RIVER OF THE SUN: By James Ramsey Ull-man.

444 pp. Lippincott. $3.50. JT IS with somewhat of a shock that one encounters James Ramsey Ull-man in a hot country because of the breathtakingly realistic "The White Tower" (1945) and the equally fine and absorbing factual books he has written on mountain climbing: "High Conquest" and "The Kingdom of Adventure: Everest," one has become accustomed to finding this author permanently ensconced in ice and snow. Let me hasten to say that he is equally at home in the steamy and unexplored jungles into which he leads us in "River of the Sun." Colorful and expressive writer that he is Mr.

Ullman has used his descriptive talents this time to make us feel, smell, taste and hear the qualities of the sinister and sometimes unexplored tributaries of the Amazon. As before he is writing from firsthand information he has traveled in this little-known part of the world crossing the Andes to the Amazon with one other person, the record of which hazardous undertaking he has reported In another factual book already published: "The Other Side of the Mountain." Now with his own particular skill he has woven this tremendous experience with the personal story of a group of fictionalized characters to produce this novel. W. K. STEWART CO.

550 S. Fourth, Louisville, Ky, Gentlemen: Send me copies of I 1951 Information Please Almanac at Edited by John Kieran I No other book packs to much interesting and essential information in one volume. A million valuable facts so arranged that you can find quickly what you are looking for. $2.00 I $2.00 each. Charge my arc Remit NAME ADDRESS Extra Crossword Guide Puzzle I I CITT W.

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I i Off 1 Toulouse Lautrec used by The Art Lautrec's Sketchbook 1880-1881." (fictionalized) long liaison that this book is concerned. M. La Mure gives us almost as enlightening word pictures of the brothels to which Lautrec retired from struggles with the haute monde, as the artist does with his inimitable brush. The society to which he had entree as a descendant of the Comptes de Toulouse, one of the oldest families in France, bored him. For the bourgoisie he felt contempt.

It was only with the artists, with horses and with the underworld he was completely at home. Although this book gives a onesided picture of this talented man of whom one of his friends wrote, "Once one had acquired the fond habit of liking Lautrec, it called for special efort to see him through the eyes of others," it will help to arouse interest in someone who has perhaps been too long overshadowed by the great men who just preceded him. Party Policies That the author has grounds for many of his criticisms will be admitted even by some supporters of the Labor Party. But he makes little allowance for the obstacles in the way of rapid progress, such as the necessity of concentrating on exports and of preventing inflation. The recent data on investment and exports were not available at the time of writing.

In short, the book gives a valuable analysis of labor policies, but is prema ture in rendering judgment on the re su-ts of plans which are just getting under way. BOOKS BOOKS I Expert Murder Novel A Review by A. J. Beeler THE CHOICE: By Marc Brandel. 243 pp.

Dial Preii. $3. HJARC BRANDEL has previously published three novels, "Rain Before Seven," "The Rod and The Staff" and "The Barrier Between." All have been superior novels, eliciting from the critics such phrases as "another brilliant novel by one of the most brilliant younger writers in this country." "The Choice" is a novel of a projected murder, of the strange young man who planned it and of the seven other people who inadvertently became involved. Nat Mason operated his own exterminating business in New York. Quite suddenly one day he determined to kill a young lady whom he had met on his rounds.

To prepare her, he wrote a letter declaring his intentions; to avoid further suspicion he chose six other names at random and submitted to them the same message. "The Choice" concerns the ensuing 19c Fiction Biography Travel Poetry Arts 29c Books Dictionaries Books for boys and girls they're all here in this wonderful col-5VC lection of books, now at special savingsl BOOKS, LENDING LIBRARY, LITERARY GUILD, MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS MEZZANINE activities of the eight people, all expertly acterized, and the final tying up of story fragments..