Hanover Browsing
Dartmouth's Recommender of Reading for Alumni Reviews Best of the Summer Crop of Books
I HAVE DONE A GOOD BIT of reading this summer but will report here only on some of the cream, and let the skim milk run down the drain where it belongs.
Bob Monahan '29 favored me with a letter in which he recommends Gerald Warner Brace's Light on a Mountain (G. P. Putnam's, 1941). "Since two of the characters are a Dartmouth professor and his prize English student (although the college itself is not named), the story has enough Hanover flavor to warrant mention in your column. I found it very interesting reading and was amazed how well the author seemed to understand and interpret life and people on a 'hill farm.' "
Bob also recommends Stewart Holbrook's latest book Murder Out Yonder which consists of the nine or ten back- woods crimes which the author considers the most mysterious of all rural murders throughout the country. Belle, The FemaleBluebeard, one of the cases, appeared in the American Mercury. "But the chapter that many Dartmouth men will want to read tells what Holbrook believes to be the authentic account of the Christie Warden murder in the Vale of Tempe."
Holbrook has a rough and ready style as those of you who have read Holy OldMackinaw and Iron Brew will remember. His Ethan Allen left something to be desired so far as research goes.
In August, 1941, Lewis Parkhurst '78 issued a timely pamphlet called WARNINGS which quotes Bill Cunningham's warning to the people of this country not to underestimate Hitler and his allies at this time. Mr. Parkhurst writes (I hope all isolationists may come to believe this very, very soon): "I detest and abhor war, and because I felt sure that the present administration was leading us slowly, cautiously, but surely into war, I did my best to defeat it in 1940. But the majority must rule, and under the circumstances'in which we now find ourselves I shall support the present foreign policy of the administration to the best of my ability. I am too old to take the field, but I am ready to give every dollar I possess, rather than live in an America a slave to the present German ruler. Even at this late date we may avoid war if we present a solid front. In war, as in football, there must be perfect cooperation to win the game. Our greatest foe at this time is within our own borders I believe in young men, and if we support these young fellows and give them the equipment and training that they deserve, they will win again, either with or without war. Let politicians for the present give way to statesmen. Let every man and woman in this country forget all else and determine that our first duty is to defeat Hitler and his allies. When that is done we can begin a new civilization."
At this point I should like to refer you also to an article in the August issue of the Connecticut CIRCLE by Major Willis S. Fitch '17, general chairman New England Flying Cadet Committee, called "The Present and the Future of the Flying Cadet." I hope that the Editor may see his way clear to reprint this in a future issue of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Also, Mr. Parkhurst's timely broadside.
Most of you have already read William L. Shirer's Berlin Diary as it will have reached over 400,000 copies by the time this reaches the press. Shirer doesn't agree with General Wood, Mr. Lindbergh, or the Honorable Mr. Wheeler of Montana. In spite of the fact that it covers material we have all read about for the past three or four years it remains fascinating reading. Every page holds an implicit warning to the people of these United States, but there are many, especially in the McCormick belt, who are yet to be convinced. Nothing short of a bomb on the Tribune tower will convince some of them. I am inclined to believe that there are quite a few who would claim the bomb was an English one dropped by "good old Winnie" himself.
Virginia Cowles is a young lady who has been around and in Looking For Trouble (Harpers, 1941) she tells all or nearly all of her travels in Spain, France, Germany, and so on for the past several years. Good stuff.
Jay Allen will soon have a book out concerning his forced incarceration in a German-French hoosegow near Chalons. There will be many other journalistic accounts of Europe for it is the journalists who are writing the history of today.
Francis Williams, an English editor, has written a book far less sensational than most journalistic accounts, and far better than most of them, called Democracy'sLast Battle. I have the English edition but it has been published over here, too, and may easily be procured. It deals with the price that must be paid to preserve English democracy, and it applies pretty well here, too. A wise bit of thinking.
In America we are going to get a plethora (state of being overfull; excess) of anthologies reflecting the American or democratic spirit. The best of these that I have seen is Bernard Smith's The DemocraticSpirit (Knopf, 1941). I am certain that this book of over goo pages contains a good deal of good American writing that will be unknown to you. Have you ever read the Mayflower compact of 1620? Or Samuel Sewall's "The Selling of Joseph?" Do you know Jonathan Mayhew's "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers?" Read again James K. Paulding's satire on English snobs who visit America to sneer at democracy (Paulding died in 1860) called "John Bull in America." Here are 99 American writers from Roger Williams to Heywood Broun ("They will die at the hands of men in dinner coats"), and there is not a writer here who is unworthy of being read by Americans at this hour. More than worth the five dollars asked for it.
A totally different kind of book but one which delighted me was by Ruth and Bill Albee and called Alaska Challenge. I have seen no mention of this in the American lists (hard to fathom) but it has been issued by Robert Hale (London, 1941). This couple wandered through wilderness which was declared to be absolutely impassable, and finally ended up teaching school just opposite Diomede Island (within sling- shot of Russian territory in the Behring Strait). A perfectly swell book. You can order this from Blackwells in Oxford or your own bookseller could get it for you if he (or she) is any good at bookselling.
Two Survived, by Guy Pearce Jones (Random House, 1941) is the incredible tale of Widdicombe and Tapscott who after 71 days of horror in an open boat finally dragged themselves ashore in the Eleuthera Islands (not far from Nassau). Their ship was sunk and the survivors machine gunned by a German raider. Seven men get away unnoticed by the Nazis. Five die, but two youths survive a trip that makes the Bounty voyage seem like a crossing of Occom Pond. Widdicombe was killed on his next voyage. Tapscott still lives with memories that will haunt him for a long time. The British can take it all right, and if these men are examples, the Battle of the Atlantic is already won.
Keith Ayling has written a readable novel called R.A.F. The Story of a BritishFighter Pilot. Henry Holt, 1941. The ending is unnecessary and banal but the rest of it is straight enough stuff though written with no particular distinction.
For those who like historical novels I can recommend a fictional account of the tempestuous life of Baron H. W. Stiegel (circa 1750-1800 in Pennsylvania), written by Mildred Jordan and called One RedRose Forever. Knopf is the publisher.
Also recommended: E. G. Pinkham's Aunt Elsa, a gem of a story about Salem, Massachusetts.
James Cain will be remembered for his fast clipped The Postman Always RingsTwice. His new novel Mildred Pierce is more ambitious. I read it at a sitting, or at least in one evening. It is the tale of people, cheap and vulgar, but real in their own way. Of a mother's relationship with her daughter, who is almost too vicious to be true, with a couple of husbands, and with the gold coast of Southern California.
At the opposite pole is Miss Angela Thirkell's charming novel The Brandons. This is a trifle on the fluffy side, a more serious feminine Wodehouse (not Jane Austen), but there is wit, lightness of touch, humorous and exquisite characterization, and a charm that is forever English. You will like it.
And don't forget J. Frank Dobie's TheLonghorns, a history of a great breed of cattle, and the West as it once was.
IT DOESN'T SEEM seven yearsago, but it is, that Herbert F. West'22, professor of Comparative Literature, wrote his first installment of Hanover Browsing. The editors aregrateful for his unfailing willingness to provide one of the importantincentives for the continuing education of Dartmouth men in the yearsafter college.
