Double Debut

A reasonable number of Dartmouth men have had the satisfaction of seeing their work in print, and a smaller number have translated their feelings to canvas on the professional level. Very few have had the dual satisfaction experienced by Langston Moffett '25 late ill January when his first oneman show of oil paintings and the publication of his first novel were celebrated simultaneously at a reception in his honor at the Joseph Luyber Gallery in the Hotel Brevoort, New York.

A former newspaperman both here and abroad, Moffett first began work on his novel, Devil by the Tail, over three years ago on his fortieth birthday as the result of a conversation he had had with Ford Madox Ford in which Ford told him that no man knows enough to write a novel until he reaches forty years of age. Moffett became interested in painting in 1939, while watching a Provincetown artist at work in his studio. His first oil was bought for the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum.

His novel, published by Lippincott, has for its central character a chronic alcoholic who tries to forget his own problems in a series of colorful and gargantuan sprees in this country and Mexico.