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SAINT JOHNSON—W. R. Burnett—Dial ($2).
Author Burnett, who usually writes on such timely topics as gangsters or prizefighters, this time has gone back to the days of the Western two-gun men. Partly historical, his graphic narrative smells more of gunpowder than of the lamp. Says he: "This story ... is based on the events leading up to and arising out of the Earp-Clanton feud. This famous old feud is still hotly discussed in the southeastern corner of Arizona."
Alkali was a boom town, law & order had not yet descended on it. The sheriff was in cahoots with the unruly cowmen, and the decent shopkeeping and professional element of the town looked to the Johnson gang to keep order. Wayt Johnson, head of the clan, had a reputation for action, but he was trying hard to be law-abiding, he wanted to be elected sheriff. With his brothers Luther and Jim, his henchmen Brant White and Deadwood, he overawed many a would-be bad man, kept the peace in spite of tantalizing taunts. Even when they called him "Saint John- son," Wayt kept his temper. But when he got a city ordinance passed forbidding firearms to be carried in Alkali, trouble gath- ered like thunderheads in summer. Finally, Wayt's patience tried too far, Alkali saw a gunfight it never forgot. Afterward, when he sheriff tried to serve a warrant on the Johnsons, they laughed at him and rode away.
Author William R. Burnett (TIME, July 1, 1929; Jan. 13) wrote five novels, 50 short stories before he published his first book, Novel No. 6. It was Little Caesar, chosen by the Literary Guild (June 1929). His next book, Iron Man, was Book-of-the-Month for January 1930. Successful, married, he lives in Los Angeles.
Garland of Memories
ROADSIDE MEETINGS—Hamlin Garland —Macmillan ($3.50).
In 1884, when Hamlin Garland was 24, he left his father's South Dakota farm and went to Boston, then U. S. literary capital, with $140 in his pocket. This book tells of his early struggles to become a literary man, his gradual progress, the famed friends, acquaintances, heroes, he met by the way.
That first winter was a hard one: no income and no job. But he haunted the public library, and stood in the gallery to hear Edwin Booth play Shakespeare. "Outwardly seedy, hungry, pale and lonely, I inhabited palaces and spoke with kings." When his money was just about gone he got a job lecturing at the Boston School of Oratory, met literary tycoons, got another job reviewing books for the august Transcript. But even after he had become an accepted shepherd on Boston's Mt. Parnassus Garland was a Western boy, had more than a tinge of the Western radical in him. He considered Atheist Robert Ingersoll "our greatest orator," and fell hard for Single-Taxer Henry George. Few U. S. writers have traveled the U. S. as Author Garland has. For the Boston Arena, "magazine of protest," he made many an inquiring journey through the West and South, incorporated what he found in article and story. Says he: "I had the wish to be a kind of social historian and in the end fell, inevitably, between two stools. I failed as a reporter, and only half succeeded as a novelist."