A Parody Criticism of Mr. Wells

Notes Upon the Author of "Meanwhile" and Other Outstanding Figures of the Current Literary Scene

JOHN RIDDELL

EDITOR'S NOTE: With this issue Vanity Fair inaugurates its Department of Literary Prejudices, which will be conducted henceforth by John Riddell. This Department, which will appear in approximately this space each month, will be devoted to criticisms of current American and foreign writers, lyrical appreciations, sour dismissals, lampoons of popular novels, modest recommendations to the devoted reader, and sundry gossip and scandal of the literary circus. Mr. Riddell will preface his reviews in each issue with a Parody Criticism, the first of which considers Mr. Wells's much-discussed book, Meanwhile

THE book was long and lofty, a novel of scarlet phrases and pale brown ideas, unilluminated by any of the red-shaded high-lights which customarily flooded the Wellsian scene. To be sure, a tiny fire burnt and crackled in the Italianate grate; but this fitful glare only emphasized the bare and monotonous expanses of beeswaxed discussion, the massive mental furniture which cluttered the action and made it almost impossible to move, the great shelves of encyclopedias, dictionaries, treatises, sociological pamphlets, scientific volumes and the collected works of Immanuel Kant, which formed the dull background of this vast book, lurking forever in shadows, untouched by even a flicker of interest.

The window (which was slightly cracked) stared out at a modern world of factories and revolutions and general-strikes: a very good exposure indeed for a novel.

And it was wonderful how varied and yet how dull the great talk was, that was set going that night in Casa Terragena by Mr. Wells, a talk that bored Mrs. Rylands and her guests altogether. It was wonderful how its topics went about and around and interwove, and yet got nowhere. For it was little more than a gathering together and a fitting together of the main suggestions for the regulation of human affairs that Mr. Wells had been saying for the last few score years, and publishing now and then in the Times. Mrs. Rylands was reminded of a phrase Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan had used once for some restaurant stew, "Nothing but dumplings". This was a stew of warmed-over dumplings. The public had had them before, and the public would have them again.

There were moments of difficulty. The Mathisons were visibly being lulled and opiated by the slow, arid parade of opinions. Nor could Geoffrey nor Puppy Clarges help them. These four lay with their heads pillowed on their arms on the soft felt mat of the bridge-table, breathing heavily. Colonel Bullace was asleep—positively asleep, in a polite way with his hand shading his eyes as if the light hurt them, but asleep. Mrs. Bullace had loosened her stays resignedly and slithered back onto the end of her spine with her chin sunk on her bosom. Lady Catherine had slid off the sofa and dozed comfortably under the library table. At midnight they had not moved an inch, Mr. Wells still talking, Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan nodding and catching himself with a start, Philip pouring himself another drink, Lord and Lady Tamar snoring fitfully with their mouths lolling open, Lady Grieswold draped in a unique posture against the Chinese vase, dear Miss Fenimore with her head in the coal-scuttle, Bombaccio sprawled beside the umbrella-stand in the hall, Mr. Haulbowline creeping on his hands and knees toward the door. Mrs. Rylands glanced at the page with a guilty start; it was past ninetyfour. In sheer ennui she had skipped three chapters. Mr. Wells was still talking.

" . . . someday people will realize that if the state paid all the cost of exploiting coal in this country, at ten shillings a head, and ten men working six hours a day could mine fourteen tons a week, the stimulation of every sort of production would equal the increase of taxable wealth to the community, or $2.68 a ton. Ans."

Mrs. Rylands turned over four chapters and shuddered. Page 162. Mr. Wells was still talking.

"Someday they will realize that the direction of orbital motion is the same for all planets and for the sun's axial rotation. Someday they will see that the quantity 1/2mv2 is the measure of the kinetic energy of motion possessed by a mass m moving with velocity v. Someday, we can but hope, they may understand that the capital of Wisconsin is Madison, and French adjectives in au form the masculine plural by adding x, and all five cards of the same suit constitute a flush. Someday they will see. these things. Meanwhile ...

Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan nodded, and caught himself in the nick of time from falling out of his chair.

"Someday, perhaps, there will be a just measure of economic worth," sighed Mr. Wells.

"Meanwhile ..." agreed Mr. PlantagenetBuchan, stifling a yawn.

"Someday the Millenium will arrive."

"Meanwhile ..." Lady Catherine mumbled wearily.

"Someday men will grow their happiness in gardens, a great variety of beautiful happiness, happiness all the year round. Meanwhile . . . "

The group inclined their heads and echoed in their sleep: "Meanwhile ..."

"Growing under glass," added Mr. Wells, reaching for his ukelele.

"Meanwhile ..."

"Not for us, alas!" swaying back and forth to the rhythm.

"Meanwhile ..."

"Not," striking a chord, "for just a year,

"Not for such as we're,

"This will come, my dear—"

(Plunk!)

"ME-E-EAN WHI-I-ILE ..."

Softly Mrs. Rylands rose and turned the last chapter. Mr. Wells was still sitting with head cocked on one side, his legs crossed, his large foot beating time to the chorus: . . . not for us, alas!"; and in a sleepy echo the group intoned once more the sad refrain: "Meanwhile . . . ", as she shut the book reverently behind her.

"THE OLD VISITER"

Trader Horn is the book of the month for you. For unaffected comedy, for colour, for heady adventure there is nothing like it in the bookshops today. You will read it all night. The stunning accuracy of his casual phrasings will astonish you; you will chortle at the mild innocence with which he annihilates French colonials and Martin-Jolmsonish big-game hunters and bigotry and intolerance and weariness. You will love his shuffling philosophy, the brazen story that flickers like a tropical bird in and out the tangled facts of his memory. And you will come upon solitary gems that you cannot help but quote, even if you must quote them to yourself:

"Writing's always been a bit of a furore with me."

"What is poetry but the leavings of superstition?"

"Feller I know who had a pretty sympathy with the guitar ..."

"The rich are happy when there are no mosquitoes. For the poor there are greater mercies."

I cannot recommend a book more heartily.

A GENTLEMAN FROM VIENNA

Conflicts by Stefan Zweig, the Austrian, is a collection of three long short stories or "novelles", which aspire to introduce the author more than adequately to the American public. They succeed in this intention, although they serve to show that the best of translations must fail really to translate the best of books. Zweig is one of the few successfully bold artists who dare to describe tears without letting their own fall on the page. He is as preoccupied as his fellow-countryman, Schnitzler, with subtleties of feeling, but with the difference that he deals with the trite emotions of conventional people. Of the three stories, The Failing Heart seems to me the best, maintaining in translation its closely-built, mounting excitement. It shows, unspoiled, a mind of open and passionate sensibilities, absorbed in the exact word, motive and picture. The book should be widely read.

(Continued on page 124)

(Continued from page 79)

ORGAN OR CALLIOPE?

In Circus Parade, Jim Tully has achieved an at least conspicuous achievement. In a masterpiece of reporting, he shows people that have the somewhat meretricious importance of news value, people whose baseness is almost beyond belief. There is no way of telling whether the artistry in the book will carry it after this special interest has faded. If Tully distorts, he is clever enough to do it with a straight face. He does his special pleading with facts, in a terse, highly charged style, and no one cares whether the facts are distorted so long as he does more than shock us. The fact is that Tully cannot face with equanimity the ugly, the tragic, and the unjust. He is horrified and inflamed. He goes bitter, closes in on himself, and gives his material false and hysteric values. He is a revolted sentimentalist, but Circus Parade is a challenging book. Only the completely "hard-boiled" or the completely sentimental should avoid reading it.

ON THE GRAND SCALE

Thomas Mann is that event in modern letters, a writer at once of character and intelligence. He has a highly developed social consciousness and conceives of himself as the critic and interpreter of, by and for society. In this role, he reviews all of the twentieth century's most inspired fallacies. Although the setting of The Magic Mountain is a tubercular sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, the theme is war, war of the mind and flesh against disease, an epic of those mortal struggles of the spirit with silent and invisible hosts, where there is no quarter and none may aid. This is the strangely thrilling effect that Mann gives, dealing with issues that are commonly thought dull, and giving to the reader suddenly a sense of the frightening importance of the result. It is, precisely, a story of mammoth conflicts, of heroes wrestling in the dark, of all the Gethsemanes of the mind, and ending in a Gethsemane of the body, as the central character plunges across No Man's Land in the opening days of the World War.

Tristram and Revolt in the Desert were well and justly received by the American critics and public, so that they need only be mentioned here.

RECOMMENDATIONS

(with or without reservation)

Trader Horn, by Horn and Lewis. (Without)

The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. (Without)

Enough Rope, by Dorothy Parker. (Without)

Men Without Women, by Ernest Hemingway. (Without)

Circus Parade, by Jim Tully. (With)

Conflicts, by Stefan Zweig. (With)

Marching On, by James Boyd. (With)

Always Belittlin', by Percy Crosby. (With)

The Early Worm, by Robert Benchley. (Without)

WARNINGS

(with or without reservations)

A Good Woman, by Louis Bromfield. (With)

The Glorious Adventure, by Richard Halliburton. (Without)

The Book Nobody Knows, by Bruce Barton. (Without)