The New York herald. [volume], June 25, 1922, SECTION SEVEN, Image 77

About The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
THE
M
SECTION SEVEN.
THE PA]
VACATION reading is one of I
those questions which, in the I
woras 01 a iormer cmiei je.xecuthe,
confronts us with "a condition
and not a theory." That is
the simple explanation of the bewildering
and often absurd paradoxes
Offered by the annual output of advice
on summer books when surveyed
en masse. The prevailing belief,
amounting almost to a superstition,
is that with the advent of sport
clothes and fluffy parasols, of camping
outfits and fishing tackle, there
comes also a certain distinctive type
of summertime fiction, characterized
chiefly by the slightness of its tax
upon the human brain; a mere souffle
of words and thoughts, to trick
the mental palate into forgetfulness
of breezcless air and baking heat.
'"Hammock Novel" was the term
coined a decade or two ago to designate
this special type, inspired perhaps
by the familiar doggerel of an
earlier generation:
Shady tree,
"Rahhlint* brook.
Girl In hammock
Reading book.
A diametrically opposite theoryholds
that vacation time offers opportunity
for filling in the gaps in that
broad and general course of reading
which educated men .and women are
assumed to have covered?and which
so very, very few of them really
have. "Paradise Lost" slips easily
into a pocket, and with diligence can
be absorbed even during a two weeks
vacation. t ai l} IV a 11 cuci ivn uic
Great" is equally solid but somewhat
Jess portable. And a recent earnest
article vigorously urged certain
works of religious dogma as ideal
summer companions, naively arguing
that most people would never
re ail them at home.
From a different angle it is suggested
that summer reading is, like
reading for any and all seasons, a
matter of the personal equation?and
this is by far the sanest view, coming
nearest to actual experience.
Approximately everybody reads more
than one type of book, tor more than
one purpose. We read the technical
works bearing on our own business
or profession; we read a modicum of
serious books so as to talk intelligently
on topics of the day, and
gTeatly to be pitied are the few narrow
souls who have never learned
the tonic value of desultory reading
with no definite purpose beyond that
of killing time. In the words of an
English reviewer (who unfortunately
chose to remain anonymous!, "it is
for pleasure and pleasure simply
that so many hard workers take to
desultory reading, until with a few
of them it becomes a stimulant
hardly to be foregone. They read as
a drinker swallows, and we do not
see wnerc uic uujctuuu iu ouv-n icaulng
comes.'* It is this sort of reading
matter that most of us by instinct
take with us to the country,
according to our individual tastes. If
at home we And our best antidote for
a tired brain in Gaboriau or Sherlock
Holmes, then by all means let us
take along the newest of the season's
detective stories. But if our minds
call for the frothy cleverness of the
"Dolly Dialogues," then the "Girl in
Hammock" type is our first best
guess. And those of us who happen
to b3 honestly "high brow" in the
better sense had better slip into our
suit case that new volume of verse
or those essays we have all winter
Jong been meaning to read, or perhaps
that most recent simplification
of the theory of relativeity-but
then we need not be told to do so,
for we will do it anyway.
Summer reading, it should be repeated,
is a condition and not a
theory. Theoretically summer is a
season of great activity in the book
world. Yet current statistics show
that book sales for Juno amount to
only one-twelfth of the year's bu?i
Summer
; NEW
AGAZI
Copyrigh
NEAY YO
RADOXE
By
noss, while in July and August, despite
the activities of train boys and
of watering place newsstands, the
business drop3 to a bare 6 per cent.
It is true that the spring and summer
publication lists contain a large
pioportion of light fiction, but so also
does the list of fall and winter, only
public attention is not so directly
drawn to it. It is quite true that
g: eat numbers of people traveling by
boat or rail or idling at summer recr?rts
i^Avnur an innrdinntp nnnntitv
of reading of the lighter type; but
no one knows better than the publishers
that if these same readers
could be followed to their various
home3 during the rest of the year
their summer tastes would be found
not to differ materially from their
T A B 1
The Paradoxes of Summer Rea<
By Frederic Tabe
Summer Reading: The Publishe:
Intimate Views of the Pope.
By Sanfor
The City That Tried to Be Ron
By Hel
The Austrian Mother of the E;
By Finr
Transatlantic Captains of Form
By Seabury :
Is the Indian Misrepresented i
By Jose
Literary Pilgrimages. X. 1
Vosges of Hugo ai
Trancnlanted Italv Has Colonic:
Where Are the Cabs of Yester;
Ape's Teeth Like Man's
Chronicle and Comment.
By Artnur Bartlett
Authors' Works and Their Way
The World of Letters as Others
Reading
YORK
N E and
t, 1922, by the 8u n-H erali Corp
RK, SUNDAY, JUNE
S OF SU1
FREDERIC TABER COOPEF
winter tastes. A practical prcM* <
of this is found in the interesting 1
fact that in the case of two or three t
prolific writers of the "best seller" j
class who for several years have <
averaged two novels annually of a 1
fairly uniform quality, the records f
show that the volumes published in I
the fall have been much more profit- t
able than those issued in the spring. <
Far from being surprising, this is i
precisely what one would expect if, t
instead of theorizing, one looked the e
facts in the face. There is no place j I
on earth where one sees so many 1'
volumes lying with closed covers on j 1
tables or in laps as on a summer hotel I
piazza?unless It be on the deck of I
an ocean steamer. The mental j ]
"bracer" of a stirring tale, so wel- 11
, E OF CONT
I
r?>B^
ling. New Fiction in V
x Cooper.... J Flaming Jewels.
. . Refirn of Alfr
rs Advise.... a Mortal Coils?'
All the Way by
d Griffith.... 3 Betty Varian..
le. My Own Chinese
en Augur.... 4
aglet. Fanner Boy's Drc
linDredd.... 5 ? . * ... ..
Mountain Cumbir
Lawrence.... 6 Mordkin Salutes ]
n Literature? The Search for tl
ph Gould.... 7 gats Given a Pla,
rhe Place des B;
id Balzac 9 For Women Reac
5 of Her Own. 10 Qne More Don P
/ear? 10 A Revi<
11 A Fresh View of
A Re\
; Maurice.... 12 The World of Fc
s 12 Books of the We
1 See It 13 The Book Factorj
Number
. HER,
BO O K
oration.
25, 1922. TV
MMER R
L
:eme after the workaday routine,
oses it3 zest when the woods and
he fields and the skies call out together,
"Throw aside your book and
!?me and play!" Marguerite Wilkinson
recently wrote that when we
to to the country we should be sure
:o take three things with us, "soliude,
imagination and books." Ac:epting
her definition of solitude as
i frame of mind, this is an excellent
;rio to take with you if your idea of
l real vacation is a rest'cure rather
iV AVv
Cft O w LEV
I
Lhan an adventure?or a romance,
rhe trouble with most advice on
bcoks and rending is that it comes
rrom confirmed book lovers, people
to whom the absorption of the
printed page is an ingrained habit
and who forget that to the average
ENTS 1
i
Page
aried Forms.
?Peter?The Heretic?The
ed?Claim Number One?
i ne (juannea Adventurer?
Water?The Vanishing of
??. l*
Romance.
By the American Wife.... 16
:am of Palace Comes True. 17
ig Then and Now 18
Metropolitan.
By Margaret Case.... 19
ic Perfect Foot 19
ce to Roost.
y William T. Hornaday.... ao
lers in Current Magazines, ai
'assos Soldier.
:w by Harold Callender.... 22
Vergil.
dew by H. L. Pangborn.... aa
treign Books 33
ek 23
r. By Edward Anthony...24
. - - : #&
\LD
LS
/ ?' ' ? iSI
VENTY-FOUR PAGES.
EADING
[ normal man or girl living a story la
infinitely more thrilling than reading
one.
VAl'APtHolacc Vi rt enmmA* Ktstlr
habit has come to stay. The vacationist
will continue to slip a book or
two Into trunk or suitcase and the
stay at home will still bestow rectangular
parcels upon departing
friends. There is Just one golden
rule, whether buying for yourself
or another: buy the sort of book
that you are sure you or he would
erjoy at home?then your effort has
not been wasted, for the book will
be read after the vacation is over,
if not sooner, and with all the mors
pleasure because of its chance connection
with pleasant memories.
There are, of course, certain
classes of books which are so ob?
viously vacation books that it seems
almost superfluous to mention them.
Few places are so out of the beaten
track as not to have their share of
readable travel books that are almost
fiction or novels that are guide books
in disguise. To take a hackneyed
example, a visit to Florence is not
quite complete without a copy of
"Romola"; in Constantinople one
naturally reads "Paul Patoflf." and
in Bermuda "Marv Pacet" is the nm
ubiquitous novel. Every generation
has its own best sellers of this class;
back in the 70s a man would as soon
h<ve thought of going to the Adirondacks
without his rod and favorite
(lies as without a volume of "Adirondack"
Murray's inimitable fishing
yarns.
But when people speak of summer
reading they don't mean travel books
of this sort any more than they
mean Baedekers or timetables.
Without being quite aware of It,
what they really have in mind is
certain volumes that have lingered
in the memory, inseparably associated
with fields and flowers and
country lanes. They were read perhaps
years ago, and still are vividly
recalled by the scent of lilacs, tbs
flash of a bird's wing, the suddeu
leap of a trout. Often there is no
logic in these memories; it just happened
that the book in question was
read one midsummer day and held
you in its spell, despite the call of
open ioad or lapping waves. But
one thing is certain: such books all
have at least two points in common
?they are full of osone, and they
have the zest and tingle of buoyant
youth. It is worth while, now and
then, to see how many old time favorites
one can recall. Such a list
is always largely personal and the
making of it rather amusing?the
irnnbtU' ltufvine u'hpn vmi t rv (f)
reread those masterful pieces of a
day.
William Black, Oulda, the Duchess
arc lust a few of the names that
come surging back from remote days.
No one seems to read them any
nore They are mere dim traditions
Yet Black, in his mild mid-Victorian
f'shlon. was for a time a veritable
prince of summer novelists. In "The
Strange Adventures of a Phaeton" hi
was the painter par excellence of
the English ' landscape: in "The
Princess of Thule," in "Madcap Violet."
In "White Heather." he embodied
the quintessence of epic battles
with reel and line: in a score of
volumes of blended humor and hope
ana nennacne ne caugiii ana inurored
back a nostalgia for the far
northern coast and isles of Scotland
so lasting that the very words "peat"
and "heather" recall them with the
old vividness. Ouidfi. too, though she
chose to write pretentiously of titled
harradens and pritoely ofres, who
talked in a linguistic mr lange unknown
to Oliendorf, and * -eated unhappy
maidens with a <? *Uelty borrowed
from Grimm's "FAlry Tales.'
Is best remembered <n her simpler
vein, when she pictu/ed the sunny
vineyards of France or of Italy, and
in "Trlcotrin" or "Pascarel" oK
[ Continued <0 Followtma Pop*,
/