+ Outlook. 82: 759. Mr. 31, ’06. 100w.
“In spite of its verbal facility it must be admitted that there is little evidence in Mr. Hopkins’ book of an ability to produce real fiction.”
– Putnam’s. 1: 127. O. ’06. 240w.
Hopper, James. [Caybigan.] †$1.50. McClure.
Out of Mr. Hopper’s experience while teaching in the Philippines with an imagination riotously at work he has woven an impressionist’s group of tales. Among them are the “Failure,” “the story of a human derelict, whom alcohol and the physical and moral miasma of the tropics have done their best to destroy.” (Bookm.); and “A jest of the gods,” a story of a man who, at the height of his manhood strength, is stricken by a baffling disease which leaves him bald, and without brows and lashes.
“There is a strange, exotic, almost morbid strength in these stories. In vividness and tensity they are on a par with the shorter stories of Joseph Conrad, whose style his own often suggests; a few of them have almost the quality of some of Kipling’s. ‘Plain tales from the hills.’” Frederic Taber Cooper.
+ + Bookm. 24: 246. N. ’06. 940w.
“These tales, which Mr. Hopper has frankly offered for hasty perusal, endure very well a second reading.”
+ Nation. 83: 441. N. 22, ’06. 230w.