20–18299
The theme of this novel is stated in Chapter 1: “I am blind—but no blinder than is the mind of the world, these days. The long thin splinter of German steel which struck in behind my eyes did no more to me than the war has done to the vision of humanity.” Larry Hart, who tells the story, begins with his boyhood, describing the happy home life that his Aunt Amelia created for himself and his sister Lucy as well as for her own children in the old Connecticut homestead. After college he goes to New York as a journalist, lives in the slums with his friend, Steve McCrea, a doctor, has a part in the budding reform movements of the nineties, mixes with radicals, interests himself in strikes, writes plays, is swept into the enthusiasm of the Progressive movement and in 1914 goes to Berlin as correspondent. Later he goes to Russia to report the revolution and when America enters the war enlists, and, as the first chapter foretells, is blinded. In its closing chapters the book becomes largely a commentary on America’s part in the war, arriving at no definite point of view or conclusion.
“Little plot, but real people and much earnest seeking after truth.”
+ Booklist 17:73 N ’20
“On the whole, it is newspaper correspondence worked into the shape of a novel. The parts dealing with Russia immediately after the fall of the Czar are especially interesting.”
+ Dial 70:230 F ’21 100w
“The author is more than a seer of social progress; he has the sense for individuality which a novelist must possess. It suffers not because it is, in large part, about the war period, but, like its blind, hard-thinking hero, because of the war. It is like many an ex-soldier, just perceptibly shell-shocked. As a book it should have been restrained, cut down, cooled, simplified. But so should the war.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p4 O 23 ’20 900w
“‘Blind’ is just one more testimonial to the incompatibility as bookmates of art and argument, one more example of their mutually fatal effect upon each other. When ‘the will to convince’ comes in at the door, artistry flies out the window. Some of the descriptive writing in ‘Blind’ is excellent.”