FICTION

Lipt on
BROTHER, THE LAUGH 18 BITTER. By Lawrence Lipton. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1942. 309 pp. $2.50.
Reviewed by N. L. ROTHMAN

croy

Daly.
SEVENTEENTH SUMMER. By Maureen Daly. New York: Dodd Mead d Co. 1942. 255 pp. $2.50.
Reviewed by REBECCA LOWRIE

FAMILY HONEYMOON. By Homer Cray. New York: Harper <& Bros. 1942. 313 pp. $2.50.
Reviewed by RALPH CROWLEY

4GA HIS is t h e first prize winner of GAIN Homer Croy (fhooses the MUST confess t h a t I have already the Dodd, Mead Intercollegiate Midwest for t h e background of seen several reviews of this book, Literary Fellowship. It's author his new novela simple yarn most of them to the effect that it is a senior at Rosary College in Chiabout naive, u n c o m p l i c a t e d folks. is very good, very strong, but this is When a youngish widow, about to r e - cago, and her photograph on the jacknot the time, no bitterness now, too marry and fussily solicitous about her et indicates that her own seventeenth one-sided, perhaps not in the best of summer has had only a few successfour children, informs her college protaste. With all of this I heartily disors. Her book is very appealing. There fessor husband-to-be that the honeyagree. Bitter it is, as is no effort to recapture the emotions moon is off unless the bitter a harsh laugh as of youth, or to give them the dewy children go along, he rehas been uttered about touch of sentiment with which even luctantly consents. Most the Jews in a big city. elderly people in their thirties like to of the novel is a collecOnly one question has caress their m e m o r i e s . The sevention of assorted misadto be asked about this: teenth summer in a perfectly charmventures a r i s i n g from is it justifiable? Is Liping little girl's life writes itself in her the unconventional famton making capital of a own words from t h e June evening ily journey. The children provocative and tender when Angle Morrow and Jack Duluth fight and get lost, varisubject, or is he saying first smiled a t each other in Mcous m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s something not only true Knight's drug store, to the August a r i s e , and the newlybut p e r t i n e n t ? Each morning when she said " 'Bye Jack" weds are denied even a reader will have to deand started away to school. After that fragment of privacy on cide about Lipton's sinfirst evening Jack asked Angle to go their e x t e n d e d honeycerity for himself; for sailing; and her mother said yes. I t m o o n . Frustrated a n d my money he's one hunwas fun, sailing. And Jack, smelling exasperated as mishaps Lawrence dred per cent h o n e s t , of ivory soap, told Angle things about multiply, they are about Lipton and his book is one of himself, and his family: "You know, to separate, but a cloudthose barbaric yawps that belong in all my life I've wanted to know about burst of good luck at the end washes the American tradition. beautiful thingsto be cultured. Mayaway all misunderstandings and diffibe that sounds funny to you. I haven't But as to pertinence, I can see no culties. any b a c k g r o u n d or anything." He room for disagreement. If we're fightThe story is so thin and tenuous as worked in a bakery and h e played ing about anything a t all it is about to be almost one-dimensional. The guard on the High School basket ball minorities, about man's inhumanity characters are shadowy figures of a team. There were many more dates, to man, about democracy, about the quiet farce, who have only a sort of cokes, dancing to juke box music, picright to live. Let's not pretend, then, comic-strip reality. There is perhaps nics. There was an althat these a r e things one must imtoo much restraint in most disastrous Sunday press upon one's enemies, while at the humor (we wish at dinner at the Morrow's home we'd best not be too loud about times that the novelist when Jack had trouble them. Anti-Semitism is an American would pull out t h e with the salad bowl and virus as well a s a European one, and stops); in fact what he Angle's c o l l e g e sister its workings, here in particular upon achieves is good humor. Lorraine talked a b o u t one Max Levinsky, make a hard and But it is not quite all "The Bridge of San Luis unpleasant tale. Levinsky is no nobles w e e t n e s s and l i g h t : Rey" and William Saroman by any means, just a shrewd, amAunt Jo is there with yan . . . and there was bitious, lusty, kicking, and scratching wry and cynical comthe b l a c k time w h e n city-dweller, trying to survive and ments on human behaAngle w e n t out with enjoy it too. But there is one card vior. It is a bit startling Tony, who was "fast" in t h e deck stacked against him, and to find Ilka Chase west and who found her resteverybody plays i t : in a pinch he's of the water tower. If ful. a despised alien. I t boils down to a the story lacks bounce Maureen lot of melodramasex, death, suicide, and vigor, it has Homer Not all smooth, this Daly other thingsbut you will remember Croy's sound, if negas e v e n t e e n t h summer, a harsh light cast upon the whole tive, virtues to sustain but it is recorded that a turbulent scene, Chicago just under it. There is no synthetic cleverness, no limpid honesty and simplicity that the surface. This is something straight archness in the humor, and the surface makes novels about adolescence seem from t h e shoulder. detail is right. Many readers will welpontifical and phony. Angle Morrow come a warm novel in which all t h e and Jack Duluth are the young people characters are treated sympathetic"I observe, sir," said my man Dodfor whom the world should be made ally. Even the siren is never slinky, sley, as he was polishing the bread freeand beautiful. knife in preparation for a commando only gauche and stupid. exercise with the Home Guard, "that In "Family Honeymoon" lie innoThe gift of a large collection of a coming book about conditions in cently all the materials for a risque books, periodicals and manuscripts by Italy is described as being written 'by and about F r a n k Harris is announced a hona fide secret agent.' Is one to in- farce by some carefree disciple of Avery Hopwood. Some readers will be by the New York Public Library. The fer from this, sir, t h a t the author is relieved t o learn that it has already collection numbers between 1,500 and an Old School S p y ? " been dramatized by Owen Davis. 1,600 items. "The Bookseller," London.

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STORY-IN-THE-MAKING

Inside
GOODBYE JAPAN. By Joseph Newman. New York: L. B. Fischer. 1942. 338 pv- $2.50.
Reviewed by MARK GAYN

J a p a n
JAPANA WORLD PROBLEM. By H. J. Timperley. New York: John Day Co.* 1942. 160 pp. $1.75.
Reviewed by MARY E . KERSEY

HY did Japan go to w a r with B r i t a i n a n d tiie U n i t e d States? Tiie current crop of books on Japan offers two explanations: one, the Nazis browbeat the Japanese into armed action; the other, the Japanese a r e maniacs, who have an inherent desire for aggression. Both explanations a r e unfortunate, for the first is childish, the second dangerously misleading. The only exception this season was George E. Taylor's "America in t h e New Pacific," which gave the political and economical motivations in Japan's behavior t h e important place they properly deserved. To this minority of one add now the name of Joseph Newman, the former correspondent in Japan for the New York Herald Tribune, whose sparkling and forceful "Goodbye Japan" has just made its bow. Newman does not deny the importance of psychological factors in the molding of Japan's public mind and policies. H e rightly observes that the mystic balderdash of Japan's "mission," preached for the past half a century by her farsighted, canny empire builders, has completely warped the thinking of the Japanese man-inthe-street. His chapter on the doctrine of "Hakko Ichiu""eight comers of the world under one (Japanese) roof" is a startling revelation of the point reached both by the Japanese ambition and mentality. "Hakko Ichiu," however, is only one of the products of empire-building, not its causeand Newman makes this point clear beyond all doubt. The mystic nonsense took a firm grip on Japan only after she began to e x p a n d n o t before. T h e m u c h - i g nored economics lay at the basis of Japan's aggression, a n d Big Business was one of the Unholy Trinity which i n s p i r e d and paid for the new conquests. I t s p a r t n e r was the Army, which sought to retain political influence by new wars. T h e i r m u t u a l puppet was the emperor, through whom the generals and big The Shadow Lengthens

businessmen c o n t r o l l e d the masses. Unlil<:e the bulk of the current books on the Orient, Newman's is not a rehash of old articles but a fresh picture of Japan on the eve of the war. When he goes back to facts already known, it is only to fill out the necessary background or to provide a fresh interpretation. His chapter on "Rice, Rickets and Rackets" is a striking account of war-rooted poverty sapping Japan's moral, physical, and economic fiber. He emphasizes, however, that the J a p a n e s e man-in-the-street can tighten his belt a great deal more before he is driven into a revolt. Equally interesting is Newman's account of the struggle between Big Business and the Army in 1940-41, and Prince Konoye's strange role in the internal tug-of-war. Newman describes Konoye as a "distinguished political blunderer and weakling" with a "confused, bewildered and sickly mind," whose main achievement was to solve the conflict between the two warring partners of the Unholy Trinity. In achieving this, however, he had shipwrecked both his own ambitious plans and his career. One of Newman's startling revelations is that t h e original design for aggression, decided at an imperial conference on July 2, 1941, was to seize completely Indo-China, attack Russia, and then turn to the South Seas in the order named. The plan broke down when the Germans failed to reach the Volga by the end of July. Enough has been said to indicate the excellence of "Goodbye Japan." I t is an exciting, thoughtful, and informative account of a foe a t war.

ITH this book Mr. Timperley, A u s t r a l i a n newspaperman, has achieved conciseness of approach toward a problem c o m p l e x in its ramifications, and opened the impenetrable labyrinths of Japanese history and psychology heretofore unknown and obscure to most. In almost startling contrast to his earlier "Japanese Terror in China," his present book proves that Timperley can, as some were inclined to doubt, present a well-integrated, c a r e f u l l y documented work, as well as one journalistically brilliant.

"The history of Japan is ten centuries of legends, seven centuries of copying and uncopying the Chinese, eight centuries of feudalism, and something over half of one century of capitalism." Around this theme Timperley builds the historical, psychological, and geo-political explanations for Japan's status today as world nuisance No. 1. With an admirable deftness Timperley manages to thread together aU t h e strange and diverse elements which form the Japanese mind and psyche into a single, fanatic entity. Legendary Japan evolved into actuality when an awakening island people set about t o copy as much as possible from their continental neighbors. Timperley advances the theory that history rei>eats itself since the same copying has taken place in the case of modern Japan. It was only 100 years ago that Japan awoke from her second deep sleep of isolation, and began a feverish period of copying of foreign ways and methods. This time instead of adopting Chinese culture they looked to the West. This type of false-bottomed civilization, according to Timperley, accounts for Japan's maladjustment among the nations of the world, and explains her concomitant necessity of warring upon them. Just how diflferent is the Japanese cast of thought from ours is shown clearly throughout the entire book. In grammar school we learned that in Japan everything worked' "backward." It is not only books that read backward but . . . everything. Timperley sets each item in our occidental set of values in juxtaposition with almost diametrically opposed Japanese conceptions, i.e.We believe in the right of individual expression, t h e supremacy of the individual will. Japanese believe in subjugation of individual will, bending its dictates to those of an artificially

-Montreal

Gazette.

MAY 30, 1942

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