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For details, see the full license deed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0. SERAL LIBRARY post Ilibritf^Sl] 1920, FEBRUARY 1925 Volume 2 Number 5 Price : 2 Francs. American Literature of 1924 ELIZABETH STEWART MANN Translations from the French Published in the United States in 1924 Selected French Books Book Reviews - New Books 3 Current Magazines AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS lO RUE DE LELYSEB r j LESQUALITESDELAVOITURETTE J ECONOMIQUE ET LEGERE | CELLES DE LA GROSSE VOITUBE ■ I LUXUEUSE ET RAPIDE » SONT TOUTES REUNIES DANS la 12 cv. HOTCHKISS. c'est le JUSTE MILIEU CHAMPS ELY SEES ncv-x: . HOTCHKISS ISUBSCRIPTION BLANK (To be filled in and sent to "EX LIBRIS ", 10.? Rue de l'Elysee. Paris) Please enter my subscription to EX LIBRIS for one year, commencing 20 franCS (in France). .., for which I enclose 25 francs (outside France). Full name Street City Arr. or Dept Country , CHECKS OR MONEY ORDERS SHOULD BE MADE TO ORDER OF " EX LIBRIS " Dacrlptlot leaflets of EX LIBRIS adoertitcn may be obtained at its Information Bureau, rcz-de-chauue'e, 10 rue de VElys4e. Volume 2 FEBRUARY Number 5 EX LIBRIS - 1935 — American Literature of 1924 Elizabeth Stewart Mann national solidarity of which one constructs the subtle, complicated arabesques hears so much in the more solemn of his impressions. Mr. Hemingway deals THATpublications of America is the salient with more sombre material. His hard, dispas feature of American literature in 1924. This sionate little pictures of diverse aspects of the literature seems to have the fine gift of stability. war, terse, vigorous, sardonic, recall the method It does not shift or change. It is emphatically and attitude of Merimee. With his swift itself. There are no new notes, no strange pointed style, his disabused intellect, his non cadences, no seeking after original forms. It is chalant disrespect, he has added a decisive, well- hieratic, immutable, almost statuesque. Even balanced note to the litany of our disillusion. in its diversities it is unaltered. Mr. Sherman (I) Among the novels of the year, one may, with and Mr. Mencken (2) still bombinate in the void, decorum, note Miss Ruth Suckow's "Country each hailing the presence of the other as a sign People" and Glenway Westcott's "Apple of the of national decadence. Mr. Nathan (3) is Eye". Both are stories of the Middle West, violent about the theatre, and Mr. James Branch one laid in Iowa, the other in Wisconsin. Miss Cabell (4) petulant about everything. Mr. Suckow's story has about it the simplicity, the Hergesheimer (5) has appeared again as a fine strength, and not a little of the greyness of the amateur of twilights, bric-a-brac, and historical life which it depicts. It is direct, subdued, associations. Margaret Deland (6) has shown proportioned. It errs neither in exuberance us, in Chester, a number of new friends with the nor in subtlety. There are no shades, no old ideas ; and Mr. Gamalial Bradford (7) has nuances. Everything is painted in full, broad continued his march, decorous but heavy, over strokes. Mr. Westcott's book is more lyrical. the pons asinorum. It is also more colorful. He has a wider range, Stark Young with his "Three Fountains" there is a sweep and passion in his work which and Ernest Hemingway with "In Our Time" carries far —in fact, a little too far, for he falls have alone diverged from the vast sameness. into rhetoric, a sin of which Miss Suckow is "Three Fountains" sketches South European never guilty. He has more power, but less landscapes, gardens, peasants, tourists, and the control. These books are interesting both for Italian hills. And about them, Mr. Young their subjects and for their skill of execution. weaves the thin, shining garland of his aesthetics: The essence, the stuff, the character, of America In a style limpid, sinewy, and undulent, he lies in these farming communities. These are America. Here, for good or evil, or merely for (1) "Points of View", "My Dear Cornelia". necessity, are stamped the national character (2) "Prejudices" (4th series). the (3) "Materia Critica". istics. They have the vitality of youth, (4) "Straws and Prayerboolss". assurance given by a foreshortened perspective. (5) "Balisand", a novel of the Reconstruction Period in Vir-inia (post Revolutionary). They are strong, simple, and naive, dogmatic, (6) "New Friends in Old Chettrr". credulous, generous, intolerant. They are am k (7) "Bare Souls", essays on Lamb. Voltaire, Keats, Flaubert, Walpole, Gray, and Fitzgerald. "The Soul of Samuel Pcpys". bitious and easy-going, pretentious and exuberant, 131 they are full of piety and of disrespect. Colorful, ter Street" has cast its shadow on the American dreary, half-pathetic, half-absurd, they are the universities —a shadow through which trips no true symbol of a bourgeois commonwealth, Zuleika Dobson, her amazing earrings swaying solid, progressive, complacent, heavy with suc with a faint and delicate sparkle. There is, cess and with spiritual indolence. in fact, little sparkle about the modern college — Edith Wharton, in her New York series, has criticism scarcely more than about the modern recalled at intervals the old sure touch that college faculty ; indeed, the authors are usually created the "Age of Innocence , and the "House professors. In "The Plastic Age", in "The of of of Mirth". She has redeemed herself from Education Peter", in "Streets Night" "Glimpses of the Moon", "A Son at the Front", indictment is yet she has in no way equalled the artistic dignity made, not ag of "Ethan Frome". ainst the stud In "The Midlander", Mr. Booth Tarkington ent body, not has written a book which is sure to be admired against the by those untroubled with literary sensibilities. administration Dorothy Canfield's "The Homemaker", rather or the faculty, hackneyed as to plot, is compared by a number rather, against of critics to "The Bent Twig". "The Tattooed the age."Streets Countess" of Carl Van Vechten is both more of Night", amusing and more genuine than "Peter Whiffle" though scarcely and "The Blind Bow Boy". Thomas Beer, comparable to after the promise of his sensitive and illuminating Mr.DosPassos' study of Stephen Crane, disappoints in his earlier "Three first novel, "Sandoval". Soldiers" is Robert Herrick's "Waste" is a solid, rather the best from heavy portrayal of four decades of American the point of life. Vivacious, shallow, reeking "human in view of style. terest", Edna Ferber's "So Big" (undoubtedly Wiley's is an her best work as yet) is distinguished by having ineffectual, become a "best seller". Donn Bryne's "Blind poorly written, Rattery" is equal to his "Messer Marco Polo", and too caut- SHERWOOD ANDERSON which is the strongest praise one can put into ious produc a sentence. tion. While, over Percy Marks' "Plastic Age" Mr. Dreiser's "an American tragedy", Mr. there arose a fury of protest. That alone would ; Hecht's "Humpty Dumpty", and Harvey O'Hig- argue for its inherent truth but the seal of its gins' "Julie Cane", Maxwell Bodenheim's "Crazy aptness was put upon it when deans and college Man" and Elliot Paul's "Imperturbe" must also professors all over the country arose, and, with be mentioned among 1924 novels which are, for consciously broadminded aspects, shouted that in some reason, notable. it might, of course, be true some universities, 1924, however, is marked by the appearance but as for their young people... And moralists a it of a genre not overly noteworthy, but compara of equal breadth said might have value as tively new, at least in the United States. Among sociological document but would never remain the mass of critical literature, common to a as a literary one. It is not badly written. \ of young nation, and led artistically by Mr. Sinclair Three books of short-stories stand out the Lewis, this new aspect is not surprising. "Sinis whirlpool : Sherwood Anderson's "Horses and \:'.-: Men", and the two annual collections, the benevolent, and with an air of tolerance even O'Brien and the O. Henry. Anderson's book in his malice. He has a great talent for finding follows Anderson's own tradition of cloudy, good points in a book or author, and, if necessary, disjointed, but intelligent realism. Without for inventing them. And that is why he has humor, more satirical than ironic, he paints the written so sympathetically upon Messrs. Sher rawness and chaos of American life in a style man and Mencken. which reflects almost perfectly the qualities Less urbane, but more vigorous than Van of that life. Doren, Ernest Boyd has something of the Flexible, direct, and CRITICISM same Janus-like facility. acidulous, he touches with a fine accuracy the The criticism essential, the characteristic, in books or men.