(2 of 4)
When a book of gossipy memoirs entitled The Story of San Michele was launched in the U. S. (May, 1929) by Publisher Dutton, the little imported edition (364 copies) slid simply down the ways, struggled unostentatiously against the flood, then sank apparently without a trace. But ten months later it emerged again as a bestseller, led all non-fiction books for eleven months.* So famed grew The Story of San Michele and its author, Dr. Axel Munthe, that shrewd Publisher Dutton wanted to launch another Munthe book. Not having a new one handy he raised from the bottom, where it had been reposing out of print since 1898, Memories and Vagaries.
These 16 stories and sketches, written in romantic turn-of-the-Century style, are based on incidents of Dr. Munthe's early career as an interne in Paris, a doctor in Naples. Italy is Dr. Munthe's love, and even his Parisian subjects are Italians in exile: Hurdygurdler Don Gaetano, Tragic Poet Monsieur Alfredo, Model Raffaella. Though his tales are by nature grim, Author Munthe has whimsied them into wistfulness which never quite loses an old-fashioned charm. His humor is of the same mellow vintage. On a vacation at Ischia he struck up a friendship with a donkey. "Each morning came my neighbor, the old donkey, and stuck in her solemn head through the open door, looking steadfastly at me. I always wondered why she stood there so still and did nothing but stare at me, and I could not hit upon any other explanation than that she thought I was nice to look at."
The Author. Axel Munthe, 72, one-time cynically fashionable doctor, confidant (he sometimes extricated himself from pretty malades imaginaires just in time), raconteur of Paris and Rome, attending physician to the late Queen of Sweden, according to his own account took from the rich with his right hand, gave to the poor with his left, had enough left over to buy his villa in Capri, retire in comfort. There he lives alone, resents tourists, admires the view.
Sexes
THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY—D. H. Lawrence—Knopf ($2.50).
Like many another unusual man, David Herbert Lawrence, even while he was still alive, was famed for the wrong reason. Many a U. S. reader condemns him publicly, reads him privately, as a lewd fellow. Actually a plain dealer, his outspokenness on sex got this passionate preacher a bad name. This posthumous novel, his first to appear since the privately-printed Lady Chatterley's Lover, is sufficiently outspoken, but contains no Anglo-Saxonisms that would horrify a censor.