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The Author. Andrew Nelson Lytle is one of the group of young literary Southerners (others: Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Lyle Lanier) which is trying to organize an agrarian movement in the South. Author Lytle lives on a farm in north Alabama. Bedford Forrest is his first book.
Pitkin Passes
THE ART OF LEARNING—Walter B. Pitkin—Whittlesey House ($2.50).*
"[This] book is emphatically not intended for sappy souls who sigh for inspiration, in the hope of being kicked upstairs. ... It is a work book. In the hands of a lusty toiler, it will show solid profits." No trilling Pippa of pedagogy, no profound Paracelsus either, Professor Pitkin is nothing if not practical, hates waste, is hot after results. In this Pitkinesque textbook, thumb-printed with many a helpful hint, anecdote, rule, bristling with statistics and questionnaires, you may spend some lively hours, may even learn something about learning.
What shall you learn? Says Pitkin, you must decide that for yourself; but he advises one of the three "hardy perennials in the garden of knowledge": geography, psychology, mathematics. When is the best time of day to work? "For more than 30 years I have made it a rule to study and do other intellectual work as early as possible in the morning. Whenever I can get under way before seven, I do so. Eight o'clock is late. Nine is fatal." Regularity-is important. "Work a little every day at your subject. I mean that you should work 365 days a year at it, except during leap years. Then put in 366 days." Logical, loyal to efficiency, Pitkin gave up smoking when he found it was slowing up his brain work, advises others so to do.
The Author. Walter Boughton Pitkin has worked at 40 different jobs. He started herding cattle at 14, at 53 is professor of journalism at Columbia University. In his spare time he writes books, occasionally gives galvanizing advice to editors of moribund magazines.
Yes-Girl
THE JEWEL—Claire Goll—Knopf ($2).*
Marie was a Parisian maid-of-all-work but a country girl at heart. She worked for the Deloses, an avaricious jeweler and his discontented wife, was in love with Babylas, a mulatto chauffeur. Babylas' motives were neither pure nor unmixed: he took Marie for lack of something better, and hoped through her to get at her master's jewels. When Babylas told Marie his scheme she was horrified, carried her fear so openly on her face that M. Delos took it for an invitation and complacently accepted it. Marie, servant and a yes-girl, wrung her hands and said nothing, not even when she discovered she was pregnant. As soon as Mme Delos saw what was Marie's trouble she fired her.
Marie's few servant friends did what they could for her; now & then a man helped her after blackmailing her into submission; but there was nothing but a little time between her and the bottom of the hill. Her baby was born at a charity hospital and lived long enough to break her heart by dying. At the end Marie found the Seine more comfortable than the boulevards.
Authoress Claire Goll has made a sordid story a little too true to be sordid. Enterprising Publisher Knopf has indicated the dual nature of the book, beckons two different publics by putting out The Jewel in two different jackets: one lurid, one chaste.
Bogus