FAREWELL TO PARADISE—Frank Thiess—Knopf ($2). To those who have never read him, Author Thiess may be introduced as the hot trumpet in Germany's jazz age. The Gateway to Life (1927) interpreted adolescents; The Devil's Shadow (1928), closed with the picture of its hero setting out for the U. S. as a sort of missionary for a white-slave trust, exulting: "Life is so glorious!" Pillars of Fire (1930) will conclude this tetralogy (4-novel work) whose first work, a prelude to all the rest, is Farewell to Paradise (1929).
The Story. Wolf Brassen said farewell to the paradise of childhood at 14, in 1909, in the southeastern edge of the Harz. Summering there, his father, his friend, his sweetheart, his would-be rival, all unconsciously matured the high-school student. Wolf's father, however, wished to keep him a child, continually worried about Wolf's getting wet feet. The boy felt he would like a country of real dangers, of snakes and apes and Indians—somewhere he could play gallant to slim, brown Suzanne. Of course he "hadn't much use for females," but here was one with whom he could laugh, play, tumble, tease, poetize, and only once was there anything between Suzanne and him like what Ewald, jealous, was bold enough to insinuate. Wolf was a fighter, too: he promptly challenged Ewald but parents suppressed their pistol-duel, whereupon Wolf burst into sobs—"like a child"—on his mother's bosom. Fights Wolf did not provoke with Dietrich who, provocative, was a little stronger, a little older, and who peeped exaggeratedly when Wolf and Suzanne made their little love that left him out. ... All in a world of their own, none of these budding ones saw "how the clouds passed over them and the hour ran on."
The Significance. Like the Booth Tarkington of Penrod, Arthur Thiess is sensitive to the dreams and growth of boys and girls. Unlike the U. S. author, Frank Thiess probes deeply, uncovers with tender hand, like a rose-lover, their straining growth.
The Author. Thin as a rail, Frank Thiess, when high-schooling, tried to look like Abraham Lincoln, his hero. Result: teachers dubbed him idiot. Becoming a famed author, "I loved as passionately as Romeo, hated as intensely as Othello . . . publishers ran after me like hungry chickens. . . . My countrymen disliked my attitude [when] I boxed in public, had photographs with few clothes on in different magazines. ... All my traits were labelled 'American'."