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Lovers of Detective Stories, Attention! English Omnibus of Dr. Thorndike and Other New Books Are Recommended

I HAVE JUST FINISHED READING 1088 PAGES about one of the best of modern detectives: Dr. Thorndike. This omnibus volume contains 37 short stories of this famous detective, slightly reminiscent of Holmes, written by R. Austin Freeman. Although you may have read all of the long novels about Thorndike I doubt very much if you have read any of these tales. They "all maintain a high standard and I guarantee will delight any lover of detective stories. This is a London volume published by Hodder and Stoughton. If you want it, and your own bookseller cannot supply it, order direct from Bertram Rota, Bodley House, Vigo Street, London, W. 1., England. Use my name if you wish and I am sure Rota will open an account for you. It is a magnificent bargain at 7 shillings and sixpence (roughly $2 plus postage and duty). The full title: Dr. Thorndike:His Famous Cases as Described by R.Austin Freeman. When six million volumes went up in smoke about a year ago in Paternoster Row this book was one of those to go. However, in spite of a paper shortage, it has now been reissued. I hope you take the trouble to get it.

For an understanding of the Russian character (Slav) you can do worse than to read Mikhail Sholokhow's And Quiet Flowsthe Don, and its recent sequel which I have not yet read. This is brutal stuff but so was Russia during the First World War. I imagine it still is.

Late in the summer I stumbled across a book called Until I Find. .. .written by one Edgcumb Pinchon. I believe it to be one of the finest novels I have read during the last year. Knopf is the publisher (1936). The book had no sale to speak of, is now out of print, and yet I venture to say that it will outlast any of the best selling fiction of its year. It is a story of an English boy hood on the Isle of Wight, and in the New Forest about the time of the death of Queen Victoria. Beautiful prose, thrilling narrative, subtle and exact characterizations, and one superbly handled incident concerning a great and wonderful horse. Highly recommended.

Howard Fast's The Last Frontier, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1941, is a well written tale about a group of 300 Cheyennes who, starving on an Oklahoma Reservation, decide to go back North to their old hunting grounds of the Powder River Valley in Wyoming. How some of them got there, although harassed by several regiments of U. S. troops, makes a tale which will make you proud to be an American. You will see the contemporary parallel as all over the earth people are beginning the long trek to freedom. If they show the courage of these Cheyennes they will arrive safely. This story is based on fact, and occurred shortly after the Civil War.

E. Gordon Bill recommended to me Henry H. Curran's Magistrates Court (Scribner's, 1940): human interest stories told by a New York judge. I liked best "Betty's Vacation."

For lightness, and for sheer enjoyment, buy or borrow Isabel Scott Rorick's Mr.and, Mrs. Cugat (The Record of a HappyMarriage) published by Houghton Mifflin Company. A swell book to read aloud. You will chuckle for days over the story of the Mink Coat, or of Gary Cooper and Mr. Cugat's hat, or of the time Mrs. Cugat took a holiday and met an artist, etc.

John Masefield's In the Mill (Macmillan, 1941) contains his reminiscences of a Yonkers carpet mill many years ago before he wrote "Dauber," "The Everlasting Mercy," etc. Minor Masefield but well worth reading for the warm tribute he pays to American labor and industry of some forty years ago.

The Autobiography of Eric Gill (DevinAdair Cos., N. Y., 1941) reveals an extreme Catholic individualist's ideas on life. (He was a convert.) Gill was a great artist completely devoid of social or professional ambition. He detested material success and the book is full of penetrating and vitriolic attacks on capitalism, imperialism, and other isms. He lived the perfect craftsman's life, and turned out work in stone, wood, etc. He was an excellent printer and designed a new type face called perpetua. An excellent book.

For those interested in American college education Macmillan recently published An Adventure in Education: SwarthmoreCollege under Frank Aydelotte, written by the Faculty. This is the record of an experiment in higher education, of honors methods, of external examinations, of the place of athletics in a progressive institution, of college community life, etc. Aydelotte believed in a small college, in as much self-education as possible, in fewer lecture courses, and in general some of his ideas resemble those at Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington, etc. If you believe in progressive education, a dubious term I think, you will find this worth your while.

The best novel I have read, or the best account in either fiction or historical narrative, about Dunkirk is David Rame's The Sun Shall Greet Them (Macmillan, 1941). The author took part, was wounded, and knows from first hand experience the valor and suspense that was Dunkirk. This story, though realistic in its telling, symbolizes the rebirth of England during the last fateful days of the Fall of France (and what a fall it has turned out to be). The work Dunkirk will ring for a long time in the ears of men. It may be that we, foolishly unaware of our very real danger, may yet have to undergo some such tragedy as Dunkirk before we fully awaken, before we become spiritually aware not only of our danger but of our responsibility in defending the things we have said so long we believe in. Little things like liberty, freedom, and what we have called democracy. A thrilling and moving story. The love story, though beautiful in its way, is not as convincing as the graphic pictures of the hell of those three days. Rame's earlier novel Wine of Good Hope is worth reading, too.

Eleanor Dark's novel The TimelessLand is something, too, and I shall report more fully on this at a later date. For low comedy H. Allen Smith's LowMan on a Totem Pole (Doubleday Doran, 1941) will amuse. For high comedy I give you Kenneth Patchen's The Journal ofAlbion Moonlight which may be had at the Gotham Book Mart in New York. A book which may well be a work of genius if, as Dryden said, genius is close to madness as this is as wild an outburst as I have read in many a day. For the man who likes curious and esoteric literature. I'm not so crazy about it myself for I am old fashioned enough to believe in clarity first and last in any prose work.

Kingsbury Badger '29, in the English department at Muhlenberg College, has been kind enough to write me a long letter full of recommendations of nature books. Some of his recommendations follow: Eden Phillpott's My Devon Year, Macmillan, 1903; Hilaire Belloc's Hills and The Sea, Dutton, N. Y. (No date); Frank Bolles' Atthe North of Bearcamp Water, Houghton Mifflin, 1893; Odell Shepard's The Harvestof a Quiet Eye, Houghton Mifflin (about Connecticut); Wilson Flagg's A YearAmong the Trees, Boston, 1881; Mary Webb's Poems and the Spring of Joy, and finally Bradford Torrey's Footing It inFranconia, Boston, 1901. Nature writing may be an acquired taste but when you have it you add immeasurably to your inner life.

Which reminds me to recommend Peattie's new book The Road of a Naturalist, and a new book about the Chinook salmon, magnificently done, Roderick L. Haig-Brown's Return to the River. More about these later perhaps.