NOT FOR HYPOCHONDRIACS WE TAKE TO BED

Marshall McClintock '27. Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith. New York. 1931. $2.50.

This is a courageous book written with an amazing objectivity considering that it deals with the experiences of the author himself. It is, too, the record of a steadfast love affair which withstood the devastating attacks of poverty, the indifference of family, separation, nerve wracking discouragement of one kind or another, and finally TB. Love, in fact, was sealed, one might say, by the bugs of tuberculosis.

This is the epic of Saranac. I can scarcely imagine that it can ever be done as well again. It would be a daring writer who would try. In another sense it is a clinical analysis of the disease itself, and for one who is subject to hypochondriacal fears, I advise him to leave the book alone. The author leaves nothing to the imagination and the book could easily be recommended to medical students for "outside" reading.

Saranac! A city of the dying? The American via dolorosa? Perhaps, but much more. Saranac! fearful secrets, unspoken thoughts, hopes, fears, courage, laughter, friendships, sacrifice, kindness, unselfishness, costs, worry, life, and death. All are there. The author tells his story with that na'ive feeling for truth that only men of integrity and genius have. One can scarcely call it cheerful, but life, unfortunately, has its shadows. Saranac's air is good for TB. Saranac's inhabitants are alive with what the Spaniard Unamuno called "del sentimiento tragico de la vida." One has had friends "who have gone to Saranac?" This book tells their story.

Here is no literary confetti which will be chosen by a book society, but instead a revealing of a high courage and cheerfulness against what all men instinctively fear. Such a record has value both as art, for the book is extremely well written, and as a revelation of tragedy bravely met.

The timid reader of "glad books" will not be interested. I cannot imagine that the book will be a best seller for it purveys no cheap optimism nor is it loaded down with melodrama. The book is simply an unvarished tale of two young people with a baby, who happen to have TB, and who go to Saranac to be cured. It has earned the praise of discriminating critics, among them Dorothy Canfield. It is a fine book and should have a wide audience. The author ends on a tragic note but I have reason to believe that both are doing nicely, thank you.