− + Ath p1301 D 5 ’19 60w
“A maze of vague, incoherent, unproven assertions, a jumble of rambling nonsense, of stuffy, sickly sentimental Raymondiana, interspersed with impassioned tirades against Christianity as seen through the spectacles of ignorance, prejudice, and calumny, and hovering above all this the arrogant, self-canonized opinion of Mrs Humphreys, run amuck among truths beyond its grasp and appreciation, ignorant, irrational, defiant, indecent and sacrilegious.”
− Cath World 111:553 Jl ’20 320w
“The converted will no doubt read her disquisition with pleasure; but it cannot be said to add anything of importance to the controversy.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p783 D 25 ’19 60w
HUNEKER, JAMES GIBBONS. Bedouins. il *$2 (5½c) Scribner 780.4
20–5751
Some of Mr Huneker’s bedouins, in this collection of essays, are real and some are fictitious. A number of the essays are devoted to Mary Garden, whom the author admires as a “wonderful artiste” and an “extraordinary woman,” others to Debussy, Mirbeau, George Luks, Chopin, Caruso, Anatole France. All partake of the nature of extravaganzas, particularly the fiction. The book falls into two parts: Mary Garden, and Idols and ambergris. Under part 1 some of the titles are: Superwoman; The baby, the critic, and the guitar; The artistic temperament; The passing of Octave Mirbeau; Anarchs and ecstasy; Caruso on wheels; A masque of music. Among the contents of part 2 are: The supreme sin; Venus or Valkyr? The cardinal’s fiddle; The vision malefic.
“We find Mr Huneker unreadable. It is not only the rush and freshness of his style, which has all the marvellous energy of a woman in hysterics, that we find unendurable, but we can attach no meaning to what he says.”