+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p248 Ap 22 ’20 900w
CURLE, JAMES HERBERT. Shadow-show. new ed il *$2.50 (6c) Doran 910
20–19281
The world, to the author, is the shadow-show. Men are the puppets doomed to play their part by inexorable law with but an illusory show of free-will. The author’s part was that of traveler. Before he was forty he had seen the world from end to end and in writing this, his life’s history, he looked back on a “great and splendid phantasmagoria,” of which the book unrolls picture after picture. The pictures are: A showman in the making; In South Africa; The tortoise’s head; “Life’s liquor”; Women; Glimpses of the East; The dream city of Samarkand; Wanderings in South America; “By the waters of Babylon”; A grave in Samoa; Mine own people; “Through the seventh gate.”
“It is all very fascinating, with none of the dreariness of the traveler who talks and says little.”
+ Boston Transcript p6 Jl 28 ’20 170w + N Y Times p24 Ag 22 ’20 650w
“One feels that it all might have been much better done than it is, and that it probably would be much better indeed, if one might forget the book and sit down for a chat with the author.”
+ − Review 3:350 O 20 ’20 320w
“The showman is always interesting, though not always to be believed implicity, especially when he forgets the pictures and goes to moralizing.”