When Mr. Poole has tempered his fine seriousness with just a little more of the creative artist’s austerity he will produce a greater novel than The Harbor, and one that will fulfill the splendid promise of this first book.
Alfred A. Knopf.
The $10,000 Play
Children of Earth: A Play of New England, by Alice Brown. [The Macmillan Company, New York.]
Frankly, I do not like the spectacle of a collection of New Englanders, well past middle age, splashing about in a puddle of sex. And that is what Children of Earth is. Of course sex is interesting—most of the time; New Englanders are interesting sometimes (especially when as skilfully drawn as Miss Brown draws them); but the combination is rather too much.
In the first place what happens to these people of Miss Brown’s play never seems of any real importance—it isn’t simply that they are unsympathetic. Nor need one believe for a moment in the old idea that in true tragedy the great must suffer. But at least either the great or the typical must, and I cannot feel that these children of earth are either. The play is well enough done; it may be compounded of fact; but I doubt if it exhibits that finer thing by far—truth. How much better work might Winthrop Ames’ money have purchased.
Alfred A. Knopf.
American Thought, by Woodbridge Riley. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
A historical analysis of American philosophical theories, from Puritanism to New Realism, through the stages of Idealism, Deism, Materialism, Realism, Transcendentalism, Evolutionism, and Pragmatism. The work lacks the strict impartiality of a text-book, which it evidently intends to be. The author reveals a tendency to prove that American thought has developed independently of European influences; this appears to be true to a certain extent in regard to Pragmatism, as the philosophy of practicality.