Hanover Browsing

IF the quality of American fiction may be judged by Ernest Hemingway's Across the River and Into the Trees, then it is at a low ebb indeed. I am one who thinks that it is at a low ebb, but there is quite a lot written today far better than this juvenile story of a Colonel who is very sorrv for himself, and who calls his inamorata "daughter." Mr. O'Hara in his ebullience did the old master no good in his unintelligent and undiscriminating review in The New York Times. Reading this new book, which does have some fine parts such as Hemingway's feeling for Venice and his description of duck hunt- ing (Don Ernesto seems to have killing on the brain, and no wonder, as it has be- come a major industry), I have decided that Mr. Hemingway has become the Clark Gable of fiction.

A charming, witty, and amusing book is Giovanni Guareschi's The Little Worldof Don Camillo (Pellegrini & Cudahy) about the conflicts between Peppone, the mayor with very strong leftish leanings, and the "black-robed reactionary," the kindly priest, Don Camillo. This is an unpretentious book, wise in a simple way. It will leave a very good taste in the mouth. One wishes that the nations might be as wise in settling their difficulties as these two rural Italians.

In Beyond Defeat, by Hans Werner Richter, a story about a young anti-Nazi, the author ends by writing, "Someday we've just got to get out of the whole filthy meat grinder." It doesn't look as if we ever will, but this book will, in a small way, play its infinitesimal part to that end.

There are some good battle scenes around Cassino, but the most frightening part of the book is the author's descrip- tion of an American prison camp run by Nazis. In their brutality, their loyalty to Hitler, and their strong-arm methods to keep control, they had the sympathy of the Americans in command of that special camp. This small world of a prison camp serves as a model for the larger world of Germany where Americans also showed a good deal of sympathy for the Nazis and their methods. At least it seems to be the author's intention to make this parallel.

A re-issue for Thomas W. Streeter 'O4 is Charles A. Siringo's A Texas Cowboy, published in a pleasant format by William Sloane Associates, and illustrated perfectly by Tom Lea. Professor Dobie's introduc- tion seemed to me to be a model of its kind.

This book is crudely written, but it does give a graphic picture of early life in Texas and a fairer picture of William Bonney, known as Billy the Kid, and it deserves this new reprint. Reading this book for the first time prompted me to turn and read again The Log of a Cow-boy by Andy Adams (1903). I recall that it was Robert Frost who mentioned this latter book to me some years ago.

Elliott Arnold, whose fine novel BloodBrother was reviewed here in 1947, has written a new novel about the war in Italy, called Walk with the Devil, which I found engrossing.

There is much more to this book than the action of an American spy to prevent the Germans from blowing up a bridge in their retreat. There are moral issues raised which are important. Incidentally these do not clog the fast-moving story.

Called by Compton Mackenzie the best adventure story of the last 25 years, TheKon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl is indeed exciting, and well worth reading. The story is now familiar how the author built a raft from balsa logs brought down with great difficulty from the interior of Ecuador, and then floated 4300 miles across the Pacific, drifting with the Hum- boldt and the South Equatorial current from Callao, Peru, to a reef in the Tua- moto Archipelago not too far from Tahiti.

A greater adventure story, I think, is the late Lewis M. Nesbitt's Desert andForest (Hell Hole of Creation was the American title), telling of the first crossing of the Danakil Desert by white men in the late twenties. But this, if true, does not detract from the saga of these adventurous Norwegians.