1934-03-16 — Page 7

FRIDAY

LITERARY NOTES

UNKNOWN WRITER'S

FIRST NOVEL

Simple And Serious In Stylę.

"JACK ROBINSON" A BOOK FOR ALL TIME

"Jack Robinson." (Chatto and Windus. 78. 6d.) which is a first novel by George Beaton, an un- known writer, is, in the exact meaning of the word, a picare-. aque romance, a story of adven-[ tures among thieves and beggars, and for that reason it may not be to everybody's taste. Nowa- days many novel readers want to read only about people rather like themselves; Jack Robinson, the boy who runs away from home, will be too young and too serious in his search for a philo- sophy, and the company he keeps. too uncomfortable for such readers. They will be haunted by that awful tramp "the Chee-. ser." munching his braken bits of cheese, working his throat, wriggling his yellow toes, and breaking into a Welsh hymn in the darkness of a ruined turn.

Simple and Grave

But those who do not require} the novel to be constructed of bits of looking-glass reflecting! our little lives, who have read! and like "Lavengro" and "The Confessions

I English

Ophum-Eater." and who are ready to keep any company be tween the covers of a book, will enjoy "Jack Robinson" immen- Fely.

Just as the beauty of an au- tumn morning depends on the horizontal beams of the scarcely-1 risen sun, the smoke of new-lit fires breathing up in the calm air, and the heavy dow making

War Draina

An interesting flashback to the days of the World War as General Sir Jon Hamilton (left), commander of the famosa Gordyn Highlanders, receives the historic Gordon drums from War Minister General Von Blomberg of Germany, after they had lain in a German war museum since 1914, when they fed into the hands of German invaders who occupied Antwerp, Belgium,

"Life Caught In The Act"

Rolling Stone Character In New Novel

CHINA

«PIQUANT PROBLEMS IN THE ORIENT

When East Meets West

In Istanbal.

OLD STORY SKILFULLY TOLD

Fleeling Shadows. By Anne

Duffield. (Cassell, 7s 6d.) "Piquant situations in the Orient," says the jacket alluring- ly. But they are not so piquant Beatrice Molloy joined her father, Sir Terry, in Constan tinople where he had a business partnership with Mustapha oglu Aziz, high in the favour of Mustapha Kemal Mustapha Aziz had the charm of the Orient to "the nth.

He had "sheer beauty of feature and form," he rode a black stallion or drove a car which "scattered confusion, terror and admiration." He was wealthy and when in eve- ning clothes wore a gardenia at This buttonhole. Richard King- stone had nothing to oppose to this save a faun's smile and

dusty lashes, Needless to say the masterful Mustapha Aziz sweeps Beatrice off her feet;] needless to say, the marriage in haste is followed by repentance at leisure; needless to say, the faun's smile and dusty lashes weight at last against all thel luxury and languor of the Turkish mansion.

It is an old story, re-told not without skill.

That's writing; and you'll find plenty of it in this book.

Edinburgh brought two things | to Magnus-Sheila, an Ameri- can girl, living with Scottish re latives, who became his mis- tress; and adoption as Scottish Nationalist candidate for Kin- luce. He had a wonderful hand

grey the cobweb-hetfed rass. PRODUCT OF A MANY-SIDED MIND of helpers, though he feared that

and not upon the objects on which the light is falling, so in "Jack Robinson" the poetry of the simplicity the style and seriousness of the author's thought make these strangely

symbols of human exeprience.

Unlike most

novels. it is 3

(By Howard Spring.)

Mr. Eric Linklater's new novel Plaisian extravaganza.

One Im-

or wars will affect it any more but wherever Magnus Merriman ashes the abominations of

in an act of considerable dullness, burning and pillage "reduced than they will change the Eng happened to be life kicked up its lish climate, with which it has heels like a colt and indulged in a good deal in common.

LIFE OF A SOLDIER ARTIST.

CAPTAIN ADRIAN JONES WRITES MEMOIRS

considerable capers.

modem world.”

"their diverse enthusiasm for Communism, pacifism, vegeta- rianism, poetic nonconformity and economic heresy might im- pair their presentation of a

imagined tramps and Lily, the "Magnus Merriman" (Cape, 78. Jaging it had some kinship with united front," girl of the streets, into eternal) is best described by one of "Juan in America."

its own phrases, "Life caught in enjoyed it enormously and fail having decamped, with one de-

The public

It did indeed. Magnus's agent the act." There in this differed to see its philosophy, failed posit, and he having forfeited permanent book: no revolutions!ence: life may often be caught to see that every episode of its another, it was, small wonder

to that the defeated candidate's į the thoughts turned to the islands which for so long he had not It was now, when he

was seen. something of a great man, that We see Magnus in this book as fate

From the slightly acid comedy | student.

lay before soldier, novelixi,

traveller, "treacherous as a banana-skin." switches Magus to the peace of Magnus of the election Mr. Linklater poet, Parliamentary He stepped promptly, on the skin, the Orkneys, where he writes candidate, drunkard, lover, farm and thereafter jer husband and father; and, through the book in violent re-writes, till the farming gete the is slithered and farms, and farms and whatever else he may be in any action from experience to experi- upper hand, the writing fades of these capacities, he is neverence. dull, and round about him.

away, afd it looks, as though drawn by the force of his queer of shifting enthusiasm,"

He suffered from "a quality Magnus, married to a shrew, is personality, always moves

and fixed for ever to the Orkney soll. group of people of most divert from Margaret, a woman doctor

when his enthusiasm shifted Back To The Land.

And we feel that he will never with whom he was having a love regret it. With none of the Even on his wedding day, in affair in London, he suddenly wallow or whimsy of the Eail- Orkney, a day which prolonged thought of Francis Meiklejohn, yard school, the author depicts achievements itself in a great drinking-bout an Edinburgh journalist, and he the pleasures and the hardnesses speak for themselves; they are among the neighbours till the flew to him. to be seen in Whitehall, where dawn of the next day was break-

of the island life. his equestrian statue of the Dukeling, the most outrageous people modern fiction before finding in one memorable passage the We assist at You will have to read a lot of country fairs and dances, we see of Cambridge stands; in St. succeeded in being present. The James's Park and Hyde Park; on guests were breakfasting when anything better than Mr. Link-otters playing in a moon-washed the Chelsea Embankment, and. Magnus and his wife set out for later's description of how Merri-loch, we learn of the joy of most notably, on the arch of the mainland.

man and Meiklejohn painted ploughing and reaping Constitution Hill, where is to be!

on the "A short distance from the the decrepit alleys, and the swelling pride of Magnus when Edinburgh red. The high winds, sparse, bony acres, and feel the common teeming life of the pubs he buys the great bull Jupiter-

A SOLDIER ARTIST

Memoirs of a Soldier Artist. Byling liveliness.

Capt. Adrian Jones. (Stan- ley Paul. 128 6d). Capt. Jones,

seen his Quadriga of Peace, house their car stopped beside

R

It is not so much the record of man, one who had lately been wrapped away in the ancient my "gentle and peaceful despite his things accomplished, remarkable dancing and drinking most vigor stery of the "old town" are por-strength. His nature was mild though they are, that gives this ously, who now was faring home-trayed with book its interest, but the man wards, slowly but resolutely, on that makes one think of a Ho We are not surprised when we ner of their achievement and the his hands and knees.

a dark richness as his loins were mighty." Magnus garth subject done with a Rem- come at last to the passage at The two friends, the end of the book in which drunk us lords, setting Shake Magnus, looking at the island "Is this the road to Birsay?speare against Racine in a quiet under the snow, makes his tremendous battle of quotations, final surrender and knows that "Les,' said Magnus, but two, ex-soldiers, if possible even "this soll was his own flesh, and "It's early yet, said the the merits of the Gordons and like a stream that ran in one drunker, simultaneously arguing time passed over him and it the Black Watch, with a chorus bed

people with whom the author has got out and asked if he needed brandt brush. rubbed shoulders in the course of help,

his long life. Capt. Jones, who

is nearly 90, has always been an asked the crawler. artist, but as his father con-

aidered art to be synonymous you've six miles to go, with bread and cheese in a gar-

ret, he qualified as a veterinary crawler, and plodded on.” surgeon and spent over 20 years in the Army before he settled down to art.

DEATH OF JAKOB WASSERMANN.

Among Germany's Most

Famous Authors.

Magnus was a great mixture of boozing sailors and prostitutes Here indeed he was immortal of a man, "He looked like this makes a great and magni- for death would but take him stayr when the topic was bawdy, ficantly handled scene through back to his other self, and this like a rustic, at a fair when he whose reek Mr. Linklater per other self was so lovely a thing" more loudly laughed, and often ceives a parable.^

he had an air of sold worth and

او

Adventures In Edinburgh,

Here, then, is a book of con siderable stature, a book which veers from ribaldry to poetry

even benignity that was some-Thinribbed with hunger or and is equally at home with what misleading.".":

gross with civilian fat they might either the product of a many He came of Orkney stock, the be shambling, in their gait and need mind which is tic son of a schoolmaster, and he dismal in their dress, they were, lifes-littis lunacles, but kee got through a Scottish univer but once their buttons had shone implacable szib sity in time to find the jaws of bright and their shoulders

the Vienna the war gaping for him. He square, and they were Gord The famous German novelist popped into them without hesita-and Jakob Wassermann on January tion, laff the Army "with" none

ths and Car

2 succumbed of heart failure at of the décorations he had

his country seat in Styrin, ageded, and spent the next

years knocking about the

- Wassermann Wan one of the and settling seriously to most prolific and widely read Victim Of Fickle German authors and most of ha! All this is dismiss books, tranB ted into In brief, brilliant

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