Balancing the books

JOHN RIDDELL

In which we present our annual Christmas Guide to aid the busy shopper during the holiday season

I can still remember when books used to he read. In my day (I was drummer-boy during the French and Indian Wars) a person who had been given a book for Christmas would pull on his white turtle-neck sweater with the "Y" on the chest, pull up a red-leather armchair before the fire, cross his yellow-button shoes on the mantel, and blow luxuriant smoke-rings from his bulldog pipe as he slowly turned the pages and devoured the contents from cover to cover, probably moving bis lips a little over some of the harder words.

.Nowadays it's not like that. In these efficient times, the old custom of reading is practically extinct. To make the Best Seller lists, a book has got to be useful, like a book of Backgammon rules or cocktail recipes. Usually it helps to give away a lead pencil with it. too. (And, incidentally, while we are off the subject, someone should investigate just what has happened to those Best Seller lists lately. Practically anything is listed as a "book" today, provided it has two covers and a little printing inside it somewhere. What with Bridge Summaries, and Cross-Word Puzzle Books, and the collections of newsbreaks or Scotch jokes or boners, the modern publishing house is branching out in its merchandise as generally as a corner drug-store. A non-fiction list is apt to contain anything from the Fall and Winter New York, New Haven and Hartford timetable to a new folding map of New Hampshire and Vermont. It is only a question of time before the Baker and Taylor Company will be reporting that the volume most in demand this month is the Manhattan Directory of the New York Telephone Company or the American News Company will announce that the United States Post Office has topped the non-fiction field again for December with its new book of Two-Cent Stamps.)

Consequently, in preparing herewith our annual comprehensive guide to the current publishing season (only fooling) we have tried to fall in line with this new utilitarian spirit. In view of the fact that a whole lot of books are going to be given back and forth this Christmas, instead of the usual Rolls Royce or blank checks, and as a result a whole lot of blonde ladies on upper Park Avenue are going to find themselves for the first time on Christmas morning in possession of a curious oblong object consisting of two covers and some white pieces of paper with funny black letters printed all over them, we have prepared a brief list of suggestions for use in this emergency. If YOU are given a book for Christmas, therefore, you have but to consult our Handy Guide to Book-Owners in order to discover the following practicable uses to which your Christmas present may be put:

1. To prop up the left rear leg of a kitchen table.

2. To keep bridge scores on the fly-leaf.

3. To leave on a guest-room table, usually with uncut pages.

4. To press ferns.

5. To wedge gin bottles tight in a suitcase.

6. To use as an emergency writing-pad in a Pullman car or steamer chair.

7. To swat flies or wasps.

8. To lose important letters which have been placed between the pages as book-marks, and then forgotten for months.

9. To tear in half with the bare hands in an exhibition of strength.

10. To clean carefully, erase the inscription and one or two chocolate smudges, smooth out the corners that have been bent over, wrap up in holly paper, and give away again the following Christmas.

On the other hand, there is still a quaint little group of people left in this country (they are generally reputed to live in hollow trees and subsist entirely on nuts and bark) who do read books now and then, in spite of everything. For this group, therefore, the editors of Vanity Fair have persuaded Mr. Riddell (who is getting to be a pushover each month for persuading) to suggest a few books from the current lists* which might be adapted to their special needs. If the wouldbe purchaser does not find himself included in any of the following divisions, moreover, he will be perfectly safe in selecting any book either from the first group, or the last:

For yourself (after all, some things are too good to give away):

THESE THIRTEEN by William Faulkner (Cape and Smith: DEEP EVENING by Eugene Lohrke (Viking); THE GARDEN by L. A. G. Strong (Knopf; FORTY-NINERS by Archer B. Hulbert (Little, Broun); MEXICO by Stuart Chase (Macmillan); THE POOCH by Ross Santee (Farrar and RINEHART>; THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER by Richard Aldington (Doubleday, Doran; WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND (Liveright); BROCCOLI AND OLD LACE by Frank Sullivan (Liveright); THE GRASSHOPPERS COME by David Garnett (Brewer, Warren and Putnam); S. S. SAN PEDRO by James Gould Cozzens (Harcourt, Brace); DIARY OF A PROVINCIAL LADY by E. M. Delafield (Harper); A BURIED TREASURE by Elizabeth Madox Roberts (Viking); THE LITERARY MIND: ITS PLACE IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE by Max Eastman (Scribner's); DEATH AND TAXES by Dorothy Parker (Viking); SM G HARBOR by W. W. Jacobs (Scribner s I.

"Current as of October fifteenth, that is.

To give to a wife (a) in Larchmont, N. Y., with round hips and a bright black mole under left shoulder-blade, who exhibits her own dahlias each year in the Grand Central Flower Show, wears flat pearl earrings and dress-shields, plays contract Tuesdays and Saturdays, and comes into town every Wednesday on the 10:40 for a marcel, luncheon at Schrafft's, and a matinee of The Good Companions, who is teaching the children to call her "Bubs", and who has barely time between bridge lessons, Charity Bazaars and her facial treatments to keep up on the books that everybody is reading, my dear:

THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S. Buck (John Day); SHADOWS ON THE ROCK by Willa Catber (Knopf); BELLE MERE by Kathleen Norris (Doubleday, Doran); FINCH'S FORTUNE by Mazo de la Roche (Little, Brown); CULBERTSON'S BRIDGE SUMMARY (The Bridge. World); WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND (Liveright); BROTHERS IN THE WEST by Robert Reynolds (Harper); Two PEOPLE by A. A. Milne (Dutton); SUSAN SPRAY by Sheila Kaye-Smith (Harper); JUDITH PARIS by Hugh Walpole (Doubleday, Doran); HATTAR'S CASTLE by A. J. Cronin (Little, Brown); A W HIVE BIRD FLYING by Bess Streeter Aldrich (Appleton); SKYSCRAPER by Faith Baldwin (Farrar and Rinehart); anything by J. B. Priestley.

To give to a wife (b) in Reno, Nev.:

LOVE IS A RACKET by Rian James (A. H. King); RED-HEADED WOMAN by Katharine Brush (Farrar and Rinehart); LOVE WITHOUT MONEY by Floyd Dell (Farrar and Rinehart); THE STREET OF WOMEN by Polan Banks (Cape and Smith); ELLEN TERRY AND BERNARD SHAW: A CORRESPONDENCE, Christopher St. John, Ed. (G. P. Putnam's Sons).

To give to a knowledgeable working-girl, who has a husky contralto voice and a severe brown dress with just a touch of white lace ruffle at the throat, who goes every year to the Horse Show, maintains her own apartment in town consisting of one room (and kitchenette) with convertible day-bed, five Japanese prints and a modern skyscraper bookcase in lacquered scarlet, who taps her cigarette with a vehement forefinger and throws back her head a little when she inhales, who always offers a man a cocktail when he calls to take her out, had a family in town with whom she takes Sunday dinner, and is usually seen with heavy-set and quiet brokers past thirty who have the greatest respect for her intellectual ability and her independence:

ANNA LIMA PLURABELLE by James Joyce (Black Sun Press); RED-HEADED WOMAN by Katharine Brush (Farrar and Rinehart); SANCTUARY by William Faulkner (Cape and Smith); THE FLESH IS WEAK by John Held, Jr. (Vanguard); THUNDER BELOW by Thomas Rourke (Farrar and Rinehart); CITY CHILD (poems) by Selma Robinson (Farrar and Rinehart); THE WAVES by Virginia Woolf (Harcourt, Brace); STUFFED SHIRTS by Clare Boothe Brokaw (Liveright); THE PAST RECAPTURED by Marcel Proust (A. and C. Boni); HURRICANE by Nahun Sabsay (Scribner's).

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To give to an uncle living in the West Sixties who has no children, plays a little bridge in the evenings with his wife, attends a lecture course at Carnegie Hall, thinks Bruce Barton is "sound", and who prefers biography (in two volumes) to modern fiction because there's more meat in it, by God:

THE GREAT MOUTHPIECE-FALLON by Gene Fowler (Covici, Friede); BEHIND THE SCENES WITH EDWIN BOOTH by Katherine Goodale (Houghton Mifflin); FORTY-NINERS by Archer B. Hulbert (Little, BROWN); COMPANIONS ON THE TRAIL by Hamlin Garland (Macmillan)-, PEACOCKS ON PARADE by Albert S. Crockett (Sears); AUTOKIOCHAPH Y OF LINCOLN Sl'EFFENS (Harcourt, Brace); MAN'S OWN SHOW: CIVILIZATION by George A. Dorsey (Harper); EVERYMAN REMEM* HERS by Ernest Rhys (Farrar and Rinehart) ; THE EPIC OF AMERICA by James Truslow Adams (Little, Broun); AMERICA HISPANA by Waldo Frank (Scribner's) ; THE BROWN DECADES by Lewis Mumford (Harcourt, Brace).

To give to a seductive lady in black with a tattooed (left) thigh and a slight foreign accent that shifts with the European watering seasons, who is seen occasionally at The Eiffel Tower in London and the Casanova in Paris, whose lips can determine with equal ease the year of a wine or the years of a gentleman, and whose books are calculated, like her perfumes, for a purpose:

LOVE AMONG THE CAPE-ENDERS by Harry Kemp (Macaulay);DUKE HERRING by Maxwell Bodenheim (Liveright); THE PAST RECAPTURED byMarcel Proust (A. and C. Boni); THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER by Richard Aldington (Doubleday, Doran); Al.EXANDERPI.ATZ, BERLIN by Alfred Dublin (Viking).

To give to a younger brother in his third year at Lawrenceville with a black bowler hat, raccoon coat, and gold football on his watch-chain, who prefers rye and ginger-ale, drives a Chrysler roadster, and who has a handsome collection of pullman and subway signs, a slight discoloration under his right eye, and a young lady awaiting him (for two hours) in a speakeasy on West 52nd Street:

BONERS(Viking); MORE BONERS(Viking);STILL MORE BONERS(Viking); SCOTCH (Simon and Schuster); STADIUM by Francis Wallace (Farrar and Rinehart);CREEPS BY NIGHT Selected by Dashiell Hammett (John Day); THE FLESH IS WEAK by John Held, Jr.(Vanguard);WYATT KARP: FRONTIER MARSHAL by Stuart N. Lake (Houghton Mifflin);JAKE LINGLK by John Boettinger (Dutton);YOUNG AND HEALTHY by Donald Henderson Clarke (Vanguard);AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF KNUTE ROCKNK (Bobbs-Merrill).

To give to a girl named Marge (who has a friend named Betty she's mad at), who lives in the West Seventies, uses Nuit de Noël perfume, wears dark pink dresses with tight belts, and who deserted Riverside Drive two years ago for the literary racket:

LOVE AMONG THE CAPE-ENDERS by Harry Kemp, autographed by the author; THE WORKS OF ROCKWELL KENT, autographed by the author; POETIC EROTICA, edited by T. R. Smith, autographed by the editor.

To give "with thanks for our delightful week-end last August at The Rookery" to a hostess in Port Washington, L. I., who still plays Backgammon, routs out her guests at eight-thirty for a dip before breakfast, exhibits home movies of little Junior, takes her cocktails in with her to dinner, who won't hear of your preferring a quiet nap after Sunday dinner to a set of tennis or a brisk tour of the estate, and whose selection of guestroom literature (with uncut pages) is equal to ten grains of allanol as a guarantee of a sound night's sleep in the country air:

HUMAN NATURE by William Lyon Phelps (Scribner's);BETTER LEFT UNSAID by Daisy, Princess of Pless (Dutton);BELLE MERE by Kathleen Norris (Doubleday, Doran); THE TEN COMMANDMENTS by Warwick Deeping (Knopf);UNFINISHED BUSINESS by John Erskine (Bobbs-Merrill); PERHAPS WOMEN by Sherwood Anderson (Liveright);LOVE LETTERS OF A LIVING POET by Benjamin DeCasseres (Smith).

To give to a fishing partner (unmarried) in a leather arm chair, with a church-warden pipe, two Llewellyn setters and a cellar of Napoleon brandy, who belongs to the Triton Club in New Brunswick and the Long Key Fishing Club in Florida, who prefers a Western saddle, is a fair shot with a rifle, ties his own trout-flies, can bake biscuits in a Dutch oven, and who has just come back from British Columbia and is planning another expedition next spring either to Sumatra or Yucatan:

A TREATISE ON TROUT FOR THE PROGRESSIVE ANGLER by Charles Z. Southard (Dutton);TWELVE SECRETS OF THE CAUCASUS by Essad-Bey (Viking); THE POOCH by Ross Santee (Farrar and Rinehart); FORTY-NINERS by Archer B. Hulbert (Little, Brown); STRANGE ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN by Raymond Ditmars (Brewer, Warren & PUTNAM); OUT OF THE BEATEN TRACK by Major C. Court Treatt (Dutton); EASTER ISLAND by Robert J. Casey (Robbs) ; TOLD AT THE EXPLORERS' CLUB, Edited by F. A. Blossom (A. and C. Boni); COLD by Dr. Lawrence Gould (Brewer, Warren & Putnam); TALES OF TAHITIAN WATERS by Zane Grey (Harper); ON THE OPEN RANGE by J. Frank Dobie (Southwest Press).

To give, instead of cigars or five dollars in an envelope, to the Garbage Man. (He will know just what to do with them) :

ETHER AND ME by Will Rogers (G. P. Putnam's Sons);THE WET PARADE by Upton Sinclair (Farrar and Rinehart);THE TEN COMMANDMENTS by Warwick Deeping (Knopf); WESTWARD PASSAGE by Margaret Ayer Barnes (Houghton, Mifflin);PERHAPS WOMEN by Sherwood Anderson (Liveright);YOUNG AND HEALTHY by Donald Henderson Clarke (Vanguard).