Hanover browsing
High Praise for Most Recent Work of the Very Able and Prodigious Ford Madox Ford
YOUR "BROWSER" recommends to all consumers, men and women both, another "must" book if you want to know how advertising affects you, and it does, written by one who knows. The book is It's An Art; the author is Helen Woodward; the publisher Harcourt, Brace and Company. This is really worth your money and your time.
Now and then I receive advance copies of publications either from American publishers, or from English booksellers, but even so, as this copy is written from four to six weeks before publication, I seldom can get a review in before the book appears here. So my policy must remain what it has generally been: to call your attention to timely books old or new.
Peace With the Dictators? A Symposiumand Some Conclusions, by Norman Angell. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938. Also has an American publisher.
As I write Europe teeters between peace and war. Will England stand firm against Hitler, and if she does will Germany attack the Czechs? Will England sacrifice one of the few remaining European democracies to pacify hungry-for-power Germany? Will England merely postpone the day? or will a firm stand hold Germany's hand? Will it be Peace at any Price? How shockingly weak are the democracies? How strong really are the dictatorships? How long will they be able to practice international blackmail? How long will their threats of force be encouraged?
Norman Angell, who many years ago predicted so closely how the Great War would run, attempts to answer some of these questions in this very able summary of the current European tangle. It is a timely, and to me, eminently sensible book. Mr. Angell feels that the British policy of the last few years has been most detrimental to European peace. Or in other words he favors the strong policy advocated by Anthony Eden and Duff- Cooper, as against the compromising policies of "good old Nevill." He argues that the total weight of the potential force of the Non-Fascist states, if only it couldact as a unit, is decisively, overwhelmingly, against the Totalitarian powers. The task of the Fascist Powers is to break that unity or divide it. Then, and only then, might Fascism conquer. The danger is that the non-Fascist powers become divided. He belives that England has been most short- sighted, not to say inhumane, in their Spanish policy. He believes that it is suicidal not to count on Soviet Russia as an ally. Mr. Chamberlain has a terrific burden on his frail shoulders, and if he follows the precedents, and makes the errors, of the statesman prior to, and during the early days of the last Great War, England and the democracies may well pay costly blackmail for generations. I fear that doves of peace will fare ill against a ruthless power geared for War. To-morrow, or to-morrow, or to-morrow may tell the tale. Personally I feel that even now (Sunday, the eighteenth of September) if England, France, and Russia show a united front against Germany, even Hitler and his coterie would not dare hurl down the gauntlet. Diplomacy is such a pitiful thing; Peace in a barbaric ruthless economy so weak- winged a bird, that only Might will prevail against Might. Perhaps a show of Might would suffice. "Good old Nevill!"1
The March of Literature, by Ford Madox Ford. The Dial Press, N. Y., 1938.
Joseph Brewer '20, President of Olivet College, invited Mr. Ford Madox Ford to reside for a period of time at Olivet. During this intellectual hegira Mr. Ford wrote this really magnificent book, which, in this reviewer's humble opinion puts to shame the more ponderous surveys written by professional pedagogues. Mr. Ford has been around; he is thoroughly grounded in the Classics; is more Latin than Teutonic in his culture, which is to say that he is a highly civilized customer. He wears his erudition lightly, is urbane as Sainte-Beuve was urbane, and he writes with the ease and facility of one who has written countless books. Every time I look at a book catalogue I discover a new title by Ford Madox Heuffer (or Ford Madox Ford), and it may be on Provence, Paris, New York, the Pre-Raphelites, Ford Madox Brown, or a quartette of novels, etc. The man is prodigious. He knows ancient and modern literatures; he knows the best translations; he can translate ably himself. His footnotes are full of interest, and consequently would not pass in any Harvard English course. His friendship and collaboration with Conrad, his friendships with Henry James, Stephen Crane, and innumerable writers of the just immediate past and present give a freshness to the book which is unusual in such a volume.
The March of Literature is for all alumni who majored or where ever interested in English or foreign literatures. This book will help you recollect in tranquillity many of your old lectures, it will serve as a guide for many years' reading, it will enhance your joy and appreciation in good literature, it will stimulate long forgotten dreams. One need not agree with all of Mr. Ford's judgments. I disagree violently with his estimate of Cervantes' Don Quixote, but then again I am delighted with his judgment of the German romantics. And so he maintains a sane, and wise balance. This is a book to buy and read leisurely. It has wisdom and charm. It gives pleasure; it enlightens. I hope you will read it.
The Delights of Dictatorships, by F. L. Lucas. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1938.
Fifty-six pages of ironical comment on dictatorships of the past and present. Mr. Lucas has appeared in these columns before; notably in his fine critical work TheDecline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal (Macmillan). I wish this little book on dictators ancient and modern would be re- quired reading in all undergraduate history or English courses.
Marshall McClintock '26 is now sales manager for The Museum of Modern Art. I have just received from him a work which will undoubtedly be referred to by future historians of the twenties and thirties of this century entitled AmericanPhotographs. The book contains eighty- seven photographs which attempt to portray the physiognomy of America. I might say that Mr. Evans is not of the Walter Nutting school. There are no pictures of the "Campus at Eve," or "The Grand Canyon at Sunset," but there are grotesque designs of the shifting American patterns of our age. Certainly it is only one side of the American scene, but it is a side which must concern us all. It is not the prettiest side, but it is a compelling one, and one that cannot be overlooked. Walker Evans" technique is reminiscent of that of Charles Sheeler. A valuable book.
With Malice Toward Some, by Margaret Halsey. Simon and Schuster, N. Y., 1938.
Toward the end of Miss Halsey's cleverness begins to pall a bit, but for those who know England it will be an amusing book. Miss Halsey, I am glad to know, liked Sweden; also Paris. Oscar Wilde, you may recall, disliked the Atlantic Ocean: "it bores me," Oscar said. I am afraid Miss Halsey's book will have little effect, save on our risibilities, and possibly on those of the English.
Harcourt, Brace & Co., has published two books recently which I read and enjoyed. One was Virginia Woolf's ThreeGuineas, which deals with war, education, and economic opportunities for women. Mrs. Woolf is not Leslie Stephen's daughter for nothing. The other was Rose Macaulay's The Writings of E. M. Forster. Mr. Forster is considered by some England's most distinguished living novelist, and Miss Macaulay does a respectable analysis of his work.
Thrice a Stranger, by Vera Brittain. Macmillan, 1938.
In 1925-1926 Miss Brittain lived at what the London Times called a "provincial university." The University was Cornell; the province the State of New York. She was unhappy there; American publishers would have none of her work; America was a pretty awful place. In 1934 she returned for a speaking tour. She was now the famous author of Testament of Youth, a record of the war in which Miss Brittain was a volunteer nurse from 1915 to 1919 in London. Malta, and in France. Miss Brittain, feted by her publishers, and with a fuller purse, liked America much better. In 1937, making another tour, America became a grand passion. I do not mean to infer that the money she made, and the adulation she received, made her love America. Perhaps she got to know it better, and so grew fonder of it. Miss Brittain is a sincere person, but as the London Times so succinctly stated, the book would have been a better one if Miss Brittain had recollected her experiences in tranquility (London?) for another five years before writing it down. But perhaps there is another lecture tour proposed for 1938 or 1939? At any rate here is another analysis of America by a visiting English woman, famous as a pacifist, as a writer, and as friend and literary executor of a far greater artist, the late Winifred Holtby.
Harpers is, I believe, publishing this fall Richard Hughes's In Hazard. This is his first novel since High Wind in Jamaica, and I think, much better, A hurricane in the Caribbean practically blows a ship inside out. Deftly handled, but marred somewhat by character digressions during the height of the storm. You'll like this one.
PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
1 I leave this as I wrote it two weeks before The Munich Conference where Chamberlain capitulated to Hitler and sacrified a gallant little democracy.
