The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 40

10 II PASSING SnOW. THE COURIERJOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 18, 1913. BOOKS SECTION 3 nn ie ihl il if ib us. Luftwaffe Is Licked A Rerietc by Sam Adkins A Perfect Example Of Dramatic Novel Infinite Realities As Seen By Rice A Review by H. C.

Webster tion, and he gives intimate word pictures of them how they think and feel, and how some of. them were driven from bein'g only intense devotees of peaceful aviation to become reluctant planners of mass slaughter. He grows just a little tiresome telling how great a humanitarian and foe of the Nazis was the late Prof. Hugo Junkers, the greatest figure in all German aviation. But, after all, he worked with the old man, and hero worship is a persistent disease.

A Review by Charles F. Saichill Virtue THE LUFTWAFFE: Us Rise and Fall By Hauptmanr Hermann. 294 pp. G. P.

Putnam's Sons. $3. Curt Reiss, American war expert, gives this book more point than it might carry otherwise by vouching for the author in an introduction. Since "Hauptmann Hermann" admittedly is a pseudonym, the book has an air which otherwise might have given it a touch of the too-good-to-be-true kind of writing which has sprung from some quarters during this war. The thesis of this work is not a new one.

Boiled down to the point of over-simplification, it is that Germany built the Luftwaffe as a political weapon, that the German army is jealous of it be- cause it is solidly Nazi, that its planes were standardized too i soon, and that its fliers superb i in working with troops are prone to fall short of excellence in an even battle. The author says i Did You Finish High School? A NEW APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY: By Cie Young Rice. 169 pp. Cumber, lad University Press. This review is a statement about Cale Young Rice's adventure in philosophy, directed not to the profession philosophers who will criticise it according to the rules of their strange craft, but to the more thoughtful members of the community that knew Mr.

Rice as a distinguished poet and an illuminating commentator on the sources of creative artistry. There was a deep-burning fire in the man, a craving for reality, an incessant and only partially successful drive to get beyond the graceful, the interesting, the emotional, to the bedrock of reality. Mr. Rice always thought of himself as a poet; but he thought of a poet as one who touches, enters into, holds together, and expresses, infinite realities. Hence Mr.

Rice always thought of himself as a philosopher. Mr. Rice's "A New Approach to Philosophy" attempts to reconcile idealism and materialism by taking the most important features of each of them realistically. From naturalistic materialism Mr. Rice takes time, space, and matter.

He never explains these ultimate realities except to assert that they are ubiquitous, independent and irreducible, original, uncreated, and in Mr. Ricc'i language, "infinite." So far Mr. Rice might be classed as a naturalistic materialist; but the fourth of Mr. Rice's "infinite realities'' is mind. It too is original, uncreated, simple, not derived from any other factor, and present in every instance of being.

This is, of course, the fundamental doctrine of idealism. Mr. Rice approaches his problem with the poet's naive directness. The poet deals with experience as he himself knows it to be. Mr.

Rice's experience revealed the world to him as a continuum of space and time, toughly material and always patterned with value, cause-and-effect linkage, and purpose. Mr. Rice would argue that neither the poet, the philosopher, nor the man of common sense explains to himself, or to any one else, his own existence and the indubitable conditions of his own life. He simply finds himself experiencing himself and the world. Hence no arguments are necessary as to whether his experience is subjective or objective.

The real arguments begin after what seem to be the ultimate realities are isolated and the attempt to synthesize them into a seamless whole is instituted. When we remember that Mr. Rice's tutors in philosophy were William James and Josiah Royce, we can understand this direct reliance upon naive experience. What a philosophy rejects is as important as what it asserts. Mr.

Rice's quarduple realism rejects all monisms, materialistic and idealistic; it is at pains to refute both mechanistic and "Calvinistic" determinism. Man is in-dissolubly linked with the rest of the universe; but as that part of the universe in which mind attains its great- the Luftwaffe is licked, and never i Imuran again will be an overwhelming force. That much isn't startling. Neither is the rest of the book. The late CaU Young Rice, whose "A New Approach to Philosophy," reviewed on this page, was first presented as a series of lectures at the U.

of L. in the fall of '41. est complexity, man is self-directive, free, and responsible. Those who disagree with Rice's philosophy will base their disagreement largely upon data which Mr. Rice ignores.

He Is not at home in modern psychology; the relation of matter and energy is not at all clear; the relation of individuals to one another and to the whole is left unresolved. On the other hand, his treatment of aesthetic and ethical value as functions of the psycho-physical continuum of which man is a creative part, and his characterization of religion as awe and reverence for the World Self or Person, God, is in accord, with some of the deepest intuitions of the philosopher poets. William James would say, I think, that this is a manly book; and Josiah Royce, while disagreeing with many of the features of Mr. Rice's philosophy, would rejoice in its cosmic sweep. typical but more interesting.

Then you think of all the people who would walk a mile not to read a novel about a university and, since you know every intelligent person will want to read the novel, you try another tack. "Trio," you say, is about homosexuality and about physical jealousy and intellectual jealousy and the sometimes bad influence, of brilliant teachers and the sometimes aridity of the too purely theoretical atmosphere of the university. Still no good. So you qualify. Homosexuality is treated with great delicacy, used as a tragic flaw rather than as an excuse for sensationalism.

There's a sense of proportion in the way Mrs. Baker deals with all these subjects, a recognition of the way black and white, good and evil fade into 'each other and yet manage to remain black and white, good and evil. As in Shakespeare, you say, and can't take it back, even though you suspect that readers are going to think you maudlin and uncritical and maybe the brother or the husband of the author. And you end up, as this reviewer has done, hitting about the book in the hope that youll sometimes hit and not miss, that you'll get readers to the novel itself, which would be its, own only perfect review. And you finish up stating facts, or at least facts as you see them.

"Trio" took ten years to write. It is a perfect example of the dramatic novel, as tight and compact as a play, yet still a noveL There's no bad writing, no false characterization, no let-up in pace, no let-down in taste. It is by the author of "Young Man With A Horn," the best modern novel about a swing musician. It doesn't have as ambitious a purpose as "The Gates of Aulis" or "The Magic or "For Whom the Bell Tolls," but what it does it does faultlessly. For once a blurb can be quoted with perfect aptness: "Dorothy Baker has achieved the simplicity of great art." TRIO: By Dorothy Baker.

234 pp. Houghton, Mifflin Co. $2.50. Occasionally in a reviewer's life a book such as Baker's "Trio" happens along. It's wonderful to read.

One page into the book, you know that you're going to keep reading until you finish. Two pages into the book, you know that you're going to have a reading experience you'll always remember. You go on, hurrying in your excitement yet wanting to pause over constant excellences, forgetting you have a view to do, being for once the average reader. After you're through the trouble starts. You know you can't give a bare summary of the plot and do anything approaching justice.

What if you said, for example, that Mrs. Baker's "Trio" starts with a faculty tea party, develops through the conflict between a brilliant and perverse Parisian woman and a simple, honest student of dramatics over a charming and misguided graduate student, through a case of plagiarism, to an astounding and dramatic climax? The bare inadequacy of this simple, cliche summary tangles the keys of your typewriter, for it gives nothing of the sense of subtlety in the plot as it actually runs, nothing of the sense of complexity of the characters from whom the plot stems. So you try again. You say, perhaps, trying the approach through subject matter, that this is the most authentic book about college people you've read for as long as you can There's a real dean, not glorified by someone wanting a promotion, not vilified by someone who just got fired. There are real faculty people, real students; the conversation is what you used to hear in university circles.

Only, you say, this is better because Mrs. Baker is an artist who deletes the obvious and heightens the essentials, so that the dean, the faculty, the conversation are for that matter, but it is intensely interesting, for the author ap 1.89 parently has worked with all the modern greats in German avia- Whether you did or not you'll want this book, for it offers you an opportunity to be on an equal footing with tor a timirea time uniy Erntt Hemingway' Crtat Novel "for Whom the Bell Tolls" Only those who did. i.KH 1 Mail Ordcrm) Ope. 1 A.M. 5:45 P.M.

MBy IJ.3 ta P.M. 24 Complete High School Courses In a Single Volume WILDERNESS ROAR IV BOOKSHOP He Brought Scholarship to Public Service Brtwi Hotel BIdt. JA Kr4 A Review by Tarleton Collier HICH SCHOOL SUBJECTS FOR HOME STUDY gives you the knowledge neces sary for social and business success at price hitherto thought impossible. Among the 24 subjects. equivalent to 4-year high BY JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS: Planter-Statesman cf the Deep South: By George Coienwi Osborn.

501 pp. Louisiana State University Press. $4. Elements of greatness combined with human frailty (with the former predominating) were to be found in John Sharp Williams of Yazoo County, Mississippi, Representative and Senator for thirty years. No nore engaging personality moved in the halls of Washington in our times; none was more active and few more influential in public affairs from 1892 until 1923.

If there are those who did not know cr had forgotten these facts, this affectionate biography of the great Jeffersonian is a valuable reminder. Mr. Osborn's book is successful not only in recreating the substance of national political and legislative history of the three decades, but also in pre A South American Must Frank paints an authoritative, timely picture of our southern Good Neighhors A Review by Mary Hodge Cox Williams the man the fond father, the adoring ljusband, the intense but fair partisan, the loyal friend arid boon companion. Williams brought scholarship into public service. The product of an old culture, he studied leisurely in universities in the United States and Germany.

With this equipment he was unique among American politicians, and he graced the Democratic Party of his lifelong fealty and the region and state of his birth, which have not yet replaced him in quality of statesmanship. There is in this record occasion for both pride in the American system at its fairest and strongest, yet alarm at the weakness which politicians impart to it. In the end, the impression is one of disillusionment and tragedy, with Williams, too wise and learned to have a politician's detachment, surrendering to despair at the cheapness and de-structiveness of politicians. They wrecked the League of Nations and broke his heart along with his idol Wilson's body; they took the dross and let go the gold; they bored him with banalities and rationalizations; and he was glad to leave them for nine years of peace before his death. We see them today, as Williams saw them in the last war, pressing for partisan advantage, tearing at the war administration as if there were no war or no threat to the nation's security, betraying pettiness and inadequacy which caused him to write of the 1917 War Congress: "There were so many questions which were new, and there were so many Senators and Congressmen who did not rise to the occasion, who seemed to want to carry parish politics into international affairs." Tommy VJadcIton AUTHOR OF "My Mother Is a Violent Woman" school courses, are: English French Spanish Public Spchking Chemistry Economics Gvics anil Government Algebra Geometry $17S COWAKD-McCANN J5353 This book teaches these and many other subjects in a simple, comprehensive manner.

This is the book Being so widely discussed SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNEY: By Waldo Frank. 403 pp. Duell, Sloan Pearce. $3. Three fields of interest and lines of thought are developed in Waldo Frank's latest book, "South American Journey." They are: An intimate and thoroughly candid presentation of political situations and trends in South American countries, an interpretation of the many classes and divisions of Latin American peoples, and masterly discussions of their art, literature, music, drama and architecture.

Added to these political, sociological and cultural topics are the necessary historical data for complete understanding of their complex politics at the. present time, together with vivid descriptions of the physical aspects of the countries and cities which Mr. Frank visited. These widely divergent themes arc woven together skillfully to form one whole that is as interesting as a novel. Mr.

Frank went to South America in April, 1942, respoding to invitations from universities, individuals and cultural centers to come and lecture to them. For five months he lectured on "The Deep War," that conflict which is going on in every nation and every individual. He urged the Latin American countries to throw off Nazi in fluence and come wholly on the side of the United Nations, and it was for this that the Nazi agents attacked him in Buenos Aires. The book is an outgrowth of this journey. The author has made several trips to Latin American nations during the last twenty years, he has studied their literature and art, their history and their possibilities; he has as a neighbor with their poets and novelists, their artists statesmen, workers and students.

He wrote "America Hispana" in 1931 and has written several critical essays for South American consumption only. It is with first-hand knowledge and unquestioned authority, therefore, that Mr. Frank gives to us his conceptions of South America at this critical time. Any person deeply concerned about the present world crisis or the postwar world will do well to study carefully "South American Journey." The Nazi attack made upon Mr. Frank in Buenos Aires is one of the least important things in the book; the war being, waged by Fascists against the influence of our own way of living in South American development is treated as the most vital matter for people in the United States to consider now.

Mr. Frank's solution is worth studying. over the radio. USE THIS COUPON W. K.

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I Check I I I I 6 I A 'V -r 1 1 fl 1 if i iij i I 40 Days In a New Guinea Jungle W. K. STEWART CO. Incorporated Fourth Avenue Opposite Old Pottoffict senting a living picture of John Sharp Black Hank Wanted Justice THE SHININC TRAIL: By Ida Fuller. 442 pp.

Duell, Sloan Pearce. $3. Ferinred by Jotephine Johnson The author of The Loon Feather," a best seller of a few years ago, scores again with her second novel based on that period of expansion in our national history which marked the expulsion cf the Indian from the land of forefathers and his gallant but fruitless efforts to curtail the white man's march of empire. This is the story of Black Hawk, war chief of the Sauk tribe, who believed that the land was expansive enough to care for the needs of all men. However, when a treaty made on false premises gave the white man the excuse to force turn and his tribe west across the Mississippi and out forever from the fertile valley of the Rock River, Black Hawk resisted.

When peaceful appeals to all offices of the white man's Government including that of the President brought no satisfaction. Black Hawk led his warriors in battle against vastly superior odds in a final futile attempt to get justice as he saw it. The character of this great chieftain rises as finely drawn and impressive from the pages of this novel as does the Taft statue of him from the banks of the Rock River in Illinois. Both are fitting tributes to a leader who fought bravely and with laudable single-mindedness in the cause of justice for the underdog. It is primarily an action novel, but the events march swiftly against a colorful background in which a careful regard for detail plays a most important part.

The characterizations are excellent and the combination makes an interesting memorable tale. There is a wealth of legend and folk lore and sympathetic, vivid descriptions cf Indian festivals and tribal cances highlighting the story. The Sauk tribe is presented as a pleasant, intelligent communistic society preferring to live in peace but never turning away from a good fight The Indians fare very well in comparison with the white settlers and their accompanying armies who eventually dispossess the Indian. An especially interesting byproduct of reading this novel is the chance speculation on what a changing viewpoint can do to terms like "aggressor' and "pioneer. FOURTH AT WALNUT lacking as he tells of his wanderings through the wilderness, during which time he shrank to a mere hulk of skin and bones from starvation and.

exposure. But as the torrid days dragged by and death drew near the fear of death took flight. Quite as remarkable as his physical experiences was his spiritual regeneration. Of that he says, "As I death approach I became surer and surer about profundities I had long questioned, knew at last for certain that somewhere there was a God and that I was in His hands." If Haugland's book serves no other purpose it should drive home to people in this lani of milk and honey the fact that the war has as yet caused no real sacrifice in creature comforts. It should be compulsory reading for all hoarders and chronic gripers about food LETTER FROM NEW GUINEA: By Vern Haugland.

148 pp. Farrar Rinehart. Reviewed by Merrill Dowffen Amazing is the word for Vern Haug-land's "Letter from New Guinea," remarkable account of an almost incredible experience. Haugland is a war correspondent, but here he does not write about battles and bullets and bombs. Rather he writes about himself, and the result is one of the finest human interest narratives that has ever come to this reviewer's attention.

Haugland was hitchhiking by plane from Australia to New Guinea when he and the seven crew members of a B-26, lost in the darkness of a tropical storm, were forced to bail out. For forty days he wandered through New Guinea jungles, with not so much as a jack-knife, in his battle for survival against heartbreaking odds. Suspense is not Like a Chat With Three Noted Authors'. THE THREE READERS As complete as the famous state guides is "Cincinnati," last big volume in the American Guide Series, from tohich this picture of Fountain Square is taken. It is published by the Wiesen-Hart Press of Cincinnati.

(570 $3.50.) 3.00 SHORT SHRIFT Quick Glances At Some New Books Three of America's noted men of letters share with you the joys of their literary discoveries. So when you purchase this you can look forward to hours of pleasure -reading its contents in the company, so to speak, of Clifton Fadiman. Sinclair Lewis NON-FICTION News Is What We Make It: By Kenneth Stewart. An excellent closeup of the working of the American press from the Armistice until now by the former national news editor of PM. Stewart has knocked around enough to have seen a good cross-section of the nation's newspapers.

Recommended for working newspapermen who are a little tired of the personal histories of the glamor boys of journalism and who would like to read about the legmen and gents of the rim. War In The Sun: By James Lansdale Hodson. The author of this war diary was a correspondent for a London paper, and his book is a detailed account of his experiences in Africa, Syria, India and Burma. It is written in diary form and covers numerous adventures during 1941 and 1942. Hod-son's experiences as a novelist have helped him in distinguishing bits of flavor to include.

This is a choice of the British Book Society. MYSTERIES Sweet Murder: By M. Scott Michel. Wood Jaxson, private detective, is called upon by Peter London, famous orchestra leader and playboy, to solve the mystery of the deaths of two girls who were found dead in his bed. The results are sex-ridden and disgusting.

Dead Reckoning: By Francis Bon-namy. Peter Shane was an expert in criminology from the University of Chicago; it was quite by accident that his attendance at a convention in Washington coincided with a series of three murders, the first of which occurred in the dignified passages of the Library of Congress. A sufficient number of suspects are brought in and disposed cJf, yet at no place in the book is the reader reluctant to lay it down for a more sustaining repast. Miss Arabella Fly and her domineering mother furnish the relief, comic and otherwise, which is always welcome. A Bloodhound Mystery.

and Carl Van Doren, who have also delighted in its stones ana poems. STEWART'S BALCONY BOOK SHOP.