UNFINISHED CATHEDRAL—T. S. Stribling—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). Last week Thomas Sigismund Stribling hung his hat in the U. S. Hall of Fame. From unconsidered and inconsiderable beginnings he had made his slow, steady way to the forefront of U. S. letters. When in 1931 he published the first part (The Forge) of his triple-decker novel of the South, it caused little stir. The second volume (The Store) won him the Pulitzer Prize and was chosen by the Literary Guild. Last week appeared the final part of Author Stribling's trilogy (Unfinished Cathedral), which in turn was chosen by the Literary Guild. But Author Stribling had won more than official plaudits. By his solid, slowly earned popularity he showed that in the long run U. S. readers, though they may be taken in by shoddy, like honest homespun better. Readers who passed by The Forge and The Store will do well to retrace their steps, but Unfinished Cathedral stands foursquare by itself, needs no synopsis-guidebook. Col. Miltiades Vaiden, son of a poor blacksmith. Confederate soldier, unreconstructed rebel, has become in his old age the big man of his Alabama town. Banker and pillar of the church, he has left far behind him his wild youth and the ugly rumors that attended his rise to fortune. He is happy with his young wife, his adored only daughter, takes silent pride in his potent citizenship. Chief interest of his declining years is the building of a cathedral which is to be a mausoleum for himself. On the side he buttresses his already sturdy fortune by canny trading among the hotheads of a real-estate boom. When a lynching scare (in outline the Scottsboro case) threatens to undermine the town's prosperity, the Colonel risks his popularity to preserve law & order. When the boom collapses anyway and there is a run on the bank, the Colonel quickly becomes the most hated man in town. But nothing really hits him hard until his daughter turns out to be a different species of flower from the one the Colonel always considered synonymous with Southern womanhood. That breaks up his world. When a bomb brings down his unfinished cathedral on top of him it is almost an anticlimax.
Author Stribling writes so simply that he seems guileless. His own cryptic opinions are buried deep in the characters of his people. Only occasionally does he let his irony be seen: a cynical businessman defines the decision of a jury as "just an idle opinion expressed by twelve negligible onlookers"; when a bankrupt unsuccessfully pleads that the bank should not strip him to the buff, "the Colonel was amazed that anyone should compare the most conventional of American businesses with a gambling house."