Evening Star Newspaper, March 23, 1930, Page 100

SIMARRON. By Edna Ferber, author of “So Big,” etc. Garden City, N. Y. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 66 ELODRAMATIC, theatrical, bi- zarre, improbable, impossible!” - “And is that all? Are you quite through?” “But—did you you like it?” “Like it! T ate it up! Couldn't leave it! Lost iy heart to Yancey Cravat—that no account— loved the riff-raff, glorified in the daily riots! Like it—well!” Now wait a minute. Think of this. Here is a great spread of space which one of these days is going to be the commonwealth of Okla~ homa. But just ncw it is not much except miles of red guey soil that nobody wanted because it was worth nothing at all. And this being true, the great and good Government of the United States said, “Give it to the Indians.” And this they did with formal ceremony and benevolent bearing. The Indians were used to moving, cr to being moved. It began away down in Goorgia, all through the East in fact. As land toward the West seemed desirable the Government grew benevolent toward the Indian, assigning him a brand-new reservation further on. It seemed that this was the last stand for the Indian since no sane body of people could possibly desire this red clay spot of earth. But it proved to be otherwise, and again the West was opened to settlers, Oklahoma was on its way. And here Edna Ferber’s story begins. In- dians, cowboys, cattlemen, restless failures farther East, adventurers, loose women and tight men flocked in, among them Yantey Cravat, with his aristocratic wife from away down South and his little boy, “Cim” Cimarron. Wooden shacks, gambling jeints, highwaymen, ready gunmen, Sunday service, Monday shoot- lnu—thesemkeupawto(themotkyvnh which Edna Ferber, supported gloriously by Yancey Cravat—works out a pioneer settlement through which the reader races breathless with excitement for the “what next?” that is sure to be on the way. Curious issues come from the situation set here in so fervid and telling drama. Yancey Cravat—true adventurer, spec- tacular performer, a wizard of personal attrac- tion and a baby without substance. Yancey Cravat is a triumph of genius—of Edna Fer- -‘ber’s genius. He is true. He is here. You know him and so do 1. Not up to his real mark in our routined life—but he 1s here, somewhat di- minished from this gorgeous lawyer and editor ruling the little Oklahoma settlement. Failure— God bless him! But he had to be just that, for that was the seed of him. So, first, here is a piece of true artistry—Yancey Cravat. In natural sequence of the flamboyance of the man there fell to his naturally competent wife, the lady from the South, the gradual control and making of the paper, the Oklahoma Wig- wam.” Sabra Cravat, by logical development, became editor and pioneer woman. Congress- woman, if you please, and a leader known all over the country for her abdlily and sagacity. Here is a plausible outcome, projected in a per- fectly staid manner of growth. Another big t for this amazing tale. Let us go along with the little boy * "—s0 like his father, but weaker even, s0 his glance, so f boy that girl. He never is passing into a gity. Another poin s the little daughter of the vat househoid. fThe mother sends her East for an education, o get her out of the rough frontier influence. And in the course of time Donna comes home— educated and, in effect, a Ilittle modern vam- pire who chooses the richest man for her own, takes him, lives like a queen with the poor Weakling—and is happy for quite a while. Well, ¥ must stop sometime. But you can see that Bcope-of this novel. You can see too that it is p plausible invention and a significant one n §ts interpretations and projections. I have not said enough to spoil your appetite—I hope I " thave not—for one of the most absorbing tales g¢hat you will come across for, oh, for a long time. Almost every novel has a prize attached $o it nowadays. I assume that this one has. Xt deserves a big one and will get it, I am sure, fn popular acceptance and emyoyment. SFHE WOMAN OF AND]}JUS. By Thornton Wilder, author of “The Brige of San Luis Rey,” etc. New York: Albert and Charles Boni. loneliness of the human. The seeking and not finding. The half promise, the full failure. Loneliness. An island off .the coast of Greece, lovely in its sea and sky, in its fields tlimbing toward the one, sioping toward the pther. Simple folks busy, with the vines and the flocks and the tradings from island to land. Busy, too, with marriage plans for heir sons and daughters, a rich harvest of sturdy grandsons and great-grandsons as the truly desired issue. Then, the coming of the woman, “the woman of Andros.” Different, dis- gurbing, alien. The life of this woman becomes !cute in its troubling quality to the islanders. t is diverting their young men from the itherto accepted path of an island wife and y island children. Strange ceremonies take place at the house of the woman from Andros— feasts to which only the more beautiful or the more manly of the young men are bidd¢n. The food of epicures is placed upon the tables wround which, reclining, the woman and the young men gather while she intones from poet or philosopher the music and the wisdom of the great world outside the island. The charm of ¢he exotic is upon her. The lure of the new, fhe beautiful, the lifted one, is fel, by this poung Greek or that one. Questing, ever quest- ing, the woman. A vague sublimated promise of fuifiliment hovers around her—then, away from ghe spell of the beauty and the night and the THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 23, 1930. \ % 1IDA_GILBERT AMMYER/ Edna Ferber’s New Novel—“‘Oil and Peace,” by L. Vernon Gibbs, and “The Woman of Andros” by Thornton Wilder. Thornton Wilder, author of “The Woman o] Andros.” music, youth moves on to be served by youth. And her search ends in loneliness and defeat. A beautiful, austere, classic inlooking upon the life that is being lived by Mary and John and Tom—lived in something less than a half- realization of its real content of unquiet lone- liness, of half promise and full failure. OIL AND PEACE. By L. Vernon Gibbs. Los Angeles: Parker, Stone & Baird Co. IN spirit and effect “Oil and Peace” constitutes a warning to this country, to its industri- alists, financiers, legislators, to the public gen- erally. The book sums to a compact body of research that is concrete in fact, significant in implica- tion, vital in its possibilities of issue. It is not a story of optmistic outlook. Some may look upon it, instead, as clear case of running out to meet trouble. However, here it is. ‘The last word points upon the present in- ternational commercial competition as the di- rect and immediate road to industrial war. Oil is the one indispensable factor in the on- coming struggle, according to Mr. Gibbs. Neither modern industry nor modern war itself can be carried on without oil. Therefore, if any one nation should come to control the oil trade that nation is on the way toward industrial and military supremacy. The discussion opens with a brief summary of the uses, the growing uses, of petroleum and certain of its by-products in everyday life. Along with this runs a geographical survey of the distribution of the considerable oil fields of the world. And since this, like every other natural resource, is subject to ultimate exhaus- tion, the. inevitable question of conservation and further acquisition becomes a pivotal point of industrial and legislative concern to every nation. - Prom this point on the study becomes of in- ternational scope with definite comparisons be- tween Great Britain and the United States in forward-looking plans for the acquisition and control of oil. By implication, at least, this country stands charged with youthful over-con- fidence in the richness of its oil reserves, in its own genera! wealth and enterprise and power, in its own divinely shaped ends. Untrained in the long diplomatic schooling by way of which European nations have achieved shifting su- premacies, this country—half optimist and half lack-wit—swaggers on under the illusion that every country is at heart a “good fellow,” mean- ing no harm to any other nation in this great day of common understandings and genuine friendships. International diplomacy is cited, by occasion and date. More than that, its pockets are turned inside out for a better appraisal of their real content than the suavities and subtleties of international speech is likely to make tlear. “Great Britain Becomes Oil Minded,” “British Oil Diplomacy” head significapt chapters in this discussion. The American oil industry is reviewed for the purpose of showing the ulti. mate dependence of this country upon oaiiside sources of supply. Our door to the wide worid is in this respect, so Mr. Gibbs says, much tos wide open. Entangling alliances are in the offing, and heré steps in a brief restatement of the Monroe Doctrine from this new and modern point of view. The study reaches up to the present moment of the London Conference, with reports in which the note of warning is unmis- takable, and this is accompanied by the sorrow- ful reflection that President Hoover and Prime Minister Macdonald are too honestly optimistic themselves to realize the intricacies of the diplomatic web that is at this moment being spun in the interest of national selfishness, of national greed coupled with complete mastery of Machiavelian methods of achievement. This is a compact body of admirably co-ordi- nated fact upon a current matter of importance. In that respect the book is worth deep atten- tion. Reading, one creates his own impressions and spirit toward the matter. That Vernon Gibbs is clearly distrustful of Europe need not, in itself, make the reader share his lack of con- fidence. The assembled facts constitute the high value of the study. THE BATTLE FOR YOUTH. By Boris Soko- loff. New York: Covici, Friede, publishers. FORM!RLY professor of experimental biology at Petrograd and again at Prague, Dr, Sokoloff came to New York as guest of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Again, he worked at the institute of cancer research of Columbia University, Biologist of international reputation, his work with such conclusions, or such opinions, as derive from it are of the highest importance. It would seem that, for the reader of even above-average quality, this man of science could have not so much to say. Yet in this study he does ap- proach a theme of such absorbing and gen- eral interest that a clear sharpening of even the common man’'s mental acumen is bound to be exercised upon this study. A great scientist takes up from the standpoint of biological re- search that obsessing fact of old age. What is it? What are its contributing causes? What can be done about it? The answer from this scientist is that old age, senility, is a disease” of definite source, to be met in a definite way as other diseases are. Not curable, certainly by immortality, but curable in the sense that the human being may live in a sustained high quality of living, instead of walking around practically dead, as he now does, for a quarter of his allotment of time. The conclusion is based speaking very roughly, on an appreciation of the cellular structure of the body, upon a fair con- ception of the nature of these cells, upon the fact of their functioning in communities—as human society functions-—under - particular leadership. And then upon a vision of the co- ordination of these communities into a general unity of reciprocal accommodations to one another. Much like the social whole, with dis- orders and disasters following upon revolt in any community on the part of any clique of cells. Pressures, contaminations, infections, disease and degeneration become the sequence of such revolt. Death is not the punishment. Death is bound to come. That other death, & senile incompetence of action and attitude and incompetent savorings of life—this is the effect of cellular bolshevism within the body. And what is the point of all this in so far as the individual program goes? First, one is led by direct and fairly simple statement on the part of Dr. Sokoloff to a conception of the cell—the millions of it—of which he is built up, to an intelligent grasp of its diverse and specialized groupings, to certain habits and attitudes ‘that are conducive to the legitimate activities of these minute bodies, to certain states of mind as well that are influential to their sympati€lic physical reactions. And, be- sides, one is given an illuminating look-in upon those mysterious and magic organs, the glands, which have so much to do with keeping one abundantly alive as long as he remains on top of the ground. There is much in this book that the intelligent seeker-out of his own case can grasp and make use of. But, it takes work. Popular writing is not the field of Dr. Sokoloff. Appreciating, however, that there are certain points in his scientific research that can be brought into the open for practical service, he has offered these “vital statistics,” 80 to speak, for better understanding, better outlook and a better practice on the part of the general reader. “The Endocrine Glands as Centers of the Dynamic Energy of the Or- ganism” will be of value for your study. “The Problems of Old Age” also. “The Struggle With Senescence,” too. And to certain students, “Cancer as a Problem of Biology” will be re- vealing and profitable. An adventure into one's biological self is offered here, simple as . may be and “understandable—yét not in the common sense a pepularized discussion. BALZAC: The Man and the Lover. By PFran- cis Gribble, author of “The Romantic Life : g;xelley," etc. New York: E. P. Dutton CLIARLY. Francis Gribble, historian and biographer, believes in the dependence of genius upon the passion of love. No less than a dozen of his deeply interesting studies of famous men and women are based upon this theory and approached from this point of view, Leaving purely literary appraisals of these to the professional critic, Mr. Gribble holds him- self largely to a consideration of the love life of the great artist as the unfailing source of high achievement and sustained power. Not always bappy love. Indeed, often disappointment and suffering from this fountain head of literary creation have produced the loftiest and most ;n;:innng re:ults:th:ut no other emotion serves us as does one, either as ecs despair. . So with Balzac, possessed of but two “pas- sionate desires—to be famous and to be loved.” Rather pathetic in its outcome, this double yearning. For Balzac was not famous until after he had"died, not greatly famous. And that he was loved at all is a question. -Cer= ::;nly he was not in the feasure of his seek- The story of Balzac in his human oute reachings this way and that—for friends, com- panions, lovers, for recognition and praise of his gigantic literary program—is a poignantly A demon for work, for surpassing work, here is a child in habit given to excesses of any indulgence—all night work the rule, with no sustenance save oceans of coffee al- ways nthl:alnd, or at mouth. A devourer of the ‘women oved—exacting, pleading, crying like a child. The story of Mme. Hanska, set down here in such revealing simplicity, is not a pretty story. And Balzac dies of Hanska and hard work and no attention to his body. Dies with- out knowing his fame, without knowing that he was to be a pattern and inspiration for genius beyond his own day. The record is very interesting also because of the spread of its implication—which is nothing less than the truth that love is largely an act of creation on the part of the lover, male or female. Balzac created a Mme. Hanska that in reality did not exist. That is the program of love. That is its power, its weakness. Men make angels out of the women that attract them, as Balzac did. Women set up gods, or try to, in . clodhopper boots—and then are hearte broken at their awkward and ruinous clump- ings within the seemingly sacred purlieus of the woman’s dream of him. However, that is an- other story. Yet the case of Balsac, given here with such complete understanding, turns the particular into the general, the personal into the universal—which is the way with every truly great story like this one. MY AUNT ANGIE. By Roy L. McCardell, author of “The Jarr Family,” etc. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. qu\mous fooling upon a foundation theme as serious as a sermon. Getting married and unmarried and married again—on and on and on—such is the familiar modern se- quence upon which “Aunt Angie's” adventures make headway in this exciting world. Married at 16 for the first time—many “times” follow this one—-my youthful aunt would seem to have so much time ahead of her that over- lapping matrimonial ventures would not have been either necessary or desirable. But, active and forehanded, Angle is taking no chances on having idle moments at her disposal. So potential spouses lurk around every corner and peer from many a humble watch tower—or so this modern young woman construes the mas- culine activity around her. The beginning of “a ribald saga"-—saga of the Crutch fanmuly— is the identifying tag pinned to this story of many marryings and as many repentings. Nat- urally, moderns are sensitive to burlesques built upon its most sacred sentiment—marriage and the home, family and all that. And here is the lightest sort of handling of a deep matter. But it is good fun from Angie’s first appear- . ance straight through her pyrotechnie nmtrie monial career. True, too, under its extrava- gance—and that is why the humorless will scowl at it while the good sport will enjoy the laugh that is, more than likely, upon himself, Continued on Twenty-first Page