Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 99

9 PAUL HNGLE RliVHiWS "AUTIF, GREENGROIN Pfc," BY HARRY BROWN KELSEY GUILFOIL REVIEWS TWO COLLECTIONS OP SHORT STORIES SUMMER FARE IN SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS CHICAGO SUNDAY TRIBUNE: JULY 15, 1945. 2 Good Bills of "Literary Vaudeville Italia ''jJt Devilish Tales Are Cleverly Introduced by Two Editors "SPEAK OF Til Bm DEVIL," edited by Sterling North and C. JS. Boutcll; jacket by Salvador DalL (Doublcdau, Doran, Reviewed by Edward Wagenlnecht Twenty-five years ago Maximilian J. Rudwin projected a series of anthologies of diabolical literature thru Alfred A.

Knopf. "Devil Stories' was published I bought a copy, which I still treasure, at Fanny Butcher's shop in East Adams st. but the promised Essays, Plays, rooms, did not appear. Evidently the public was less interested in the Devil than from Its general conduct- one miht have been led to expect. The new Noith-Boutell anthology will have, one hopes, a better fate.

Its range Is somewhat wider than that of the Rudwin book. There ar biief selections from "The Divine Comedy." "Paradise Lost." and Tennyson's Interesting piece of juvenilia, "The Devil and the Lady." plus mite? hi it Harry Brown, whose new book, "Artie Greengroin Pfc," is reviewed on this page by Paul Engle. much longer selection from the Priest translation of Goethe's ''Faust" and the whole of Marlowe's "Dr. Faust us." the shoit story predominates, and rightly so. There are pieces as standard as Scott's incomparable "Wandering Willie's Tale" and as foreign as Gogol's "Saint John's as traditional as Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker," as impudent as Anatole Fi ance's Revolt of the Angels" the last chapter, and as recent as "The Screw tape Letters' of C.

S. Lewis and "The Devil and Daniel Webster," by Stephen Vincent Benet. It is good to have Carleton's "The Three Wishes" made accessible again, and to have such unhackneyed tales as those of F. O. Mann, John Collier three selections.

Chapman J. Milling, and Robert Arthur brought to our attention. And it is good to meet Max Beer-bohm's Incomparable "Enoch Soanies oiu'c more, on any terms or at any time! (Hawthorne's The Devil in Manuscript" is not. of course, properly speaking, a devil story. The editors have presented their 31 selections under seven headings, one of which is further subdivided by nationalities; and each section of the book is "introduced." At their best, these introductions are very good indeed.

Sometimes clarity and precision are sacrificed to "cleverness." Some rather curious critical notions are expressed about famous writers -Scott. Dante. Tennyson. And when the editors get their present day political convictions and prejudices mixed up with their historical scholarship, the results are as wonderful as they were in Sterling North review of an innocent book known as "Grimm's Fairy Tales." which he, for some reason, seemed to have confused with "Mein Kampf." "COBB'S CAVALCADE," a setec tiofi from the writings of Irvin S. Cobb, edited by B.

D. Zevin. VWorld, "MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORIES," edited by Bennett Cerf. $1.1 Reviewed by Kelsey Guilfoil These two books provide more pleasurable reading for little money than many more costly volumes. Like all slory collections, they can be compared, as ft form of entertainment, to the old time vaudeville bill.

You will recall, if you are old enough, that if you didn't like the acrobats and trained seals, maybe you found the song and dance team clever or the magician was tops. Hardly ever did you leave the theater feeling the evening was a total failure. "Cobb's Cavalcade" was planned With Cobb before his death by Mr. Zevin, publisher and friend of the writer. It is divided into three parts, "Gay, stories and essays of humorous slant; Grim," stories of a macabre or horrifying intent, and "Old Judge Priest," a selection of tales about the elderly Kentucky judge whom Cobb made so real to his readers that many believed in his actual existence.

The "funny" pieces that won Cobb his reputation as a great humorist now reveal the truth: that Cobb's humor was distinctly second rate when he was deliberately trying to be funny, and merited distinction only when woven into fiction of more serious intent, as ia some of the old Judge Priest stories. "Speaking of Operations," which, had the United States in stitches a generation ago, seems a bit heavy handed today. But as whole, Cobb's writing wears well. No one could tell a story better, and when he had a story to tell, he told it to the hilt. Reading his stories again, one can only wish that he had one truly great story to place him among the masters of fiction.

But as pure entertainment, his work is untouchable. In his introduction to "Modern American Short Stories," Bennett Cerf confesses that one of the reasons for compiling an anthology is to make a little money. At the modest price of one dollar, there can't be a fortune in this one, but it is money well earned. Every one of the writers represented is a headliner, and nearly every one of the stories is representative of its writer's best work. The list of authors is impressive: Sarah Orne Jewett, O.

Henry, Willa Cather, Jack London, Damon Run-yon, Ring Lardner, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Bessie Breuer, Dorothy Parker, Helen R. Hull, James Thur-ber, Kalherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Vincent Benet, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, Albert Maltz, Richard Wright, William Saroyan, Eudora Welty, Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Most of the selections from these writers are fairly well known, having appeared in other anthologies some of them too often or in collections of individual writers' works. But there are two stories, "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt," by Mary McCarthy, and The Girls in Their Summer Dresses," by Irwin Shaw, which are unfamiliar even to short story devotees like myself. They are the last two In the book, and what a finale! Worth the price of admission alone, Pvt.

Artie Opens His Yap; Spills Prose on Army Life "ARTIE GREENGROIN PFC," by Harry Brown. Knopf, Reviewed By Paul Engle Artie Greengroin had tangled with the American language all his short life in "Berklyn," but when he went overseas as a Tfc. and met the English language, it was really a brawl. His opinion was very simple: "Jess because Englishmen spealc English don't mean they own the gawdam language. I was brought up to speak in a beautiful prose style I can always spot a cultured man the minnit he opens his yap." Artie opens his yap all thru this'book, and it's enough to make any sober man open the book from beginning to end.

Artie in love: "She don't speak English too good. But her face and form are unconstitutional." 2 Vital Boohs on Problems Facing China CHINA'S CRISIS," by Lawrenee K. Rosinger. Knopf, $. "ASIA FOR THE ASIATICS," the Techniques of Japanese Occupation, by Robert S.

IV'cird. University of Chicago Press, Reviewed by Phllo M. Bud Jr. The Chinese successes in recent weeks, tho none major, have heartened us not a little and strengthened our faith in our ally. It was a faith that had suffered some shocks.

It was not her will, to resistance that we questioned, but her apparent inability to go all out. in a democratic manner. In a war for democracy. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Rosinger's book: "In fact it is the tradegy of China's resistance that internal political cooperation has been loose, unsatisfactory, and at the mercy of shifting events." Does China desire or understand democracy? Who are right in the tragic contest for power, Chungking with its one party government, or the Communists? Mr.

Rosinger's carefully documented 250 pages offer many insights and helps toward an understanding. One must remember that the Chinese national government was in process of formation when Japan struck. One must understand that Chinese democracy has had, and will have a different flavor from ours. It will look buck to Confucius. Mencius and the other sages who never di earned of eiiualttai ianism, and who thought of the state as an extended family and not as a oli-tical compromise.

Mr. Rosinger misses a point here. One must remember, too, that China in all her history neer before waged a national war like this one. Above all one must not forget that all Chinese intellectuals know that only a democratic China can expect aid from the foreign powers in a postwar world. But the question that interests us most Is will the new Chinese democracy lean, as does Chungking, toward America and Great Britain, or will it fall into the orbit of Russia? There is yet another question, touched by Mr.

Rosinger, but raised most significantly by Mr. Ward in his careful study of what Japan has done at Hongkong has Japan with her loud propaganda of Asia for the Asiatics, even in the regions that have been under her heel, made future cooperation between Europe or America and Asia a thing of suspicion and veiled hatred? Have Malaya, the Indies, Singapore, and the other places been prepared by Japan for the seeds of future distrust? An interesting question and au inlcicalinf book. Artie on peeling potatoes: "Affer the war I'm going to take me a little trip to Maine or Idaho, maybe, and knock off a few pertater farmers." Artie on the danger of feeding an army potatoes: "Does a tiger eat peitaters? Naw, he don't. He spits on peitaters. 'Peitaters is for he says, and then he goes off somewheres and eats a rabbit.

And why doesn't he eat peitaters? Because they got starch in them. Now, you take a shoit collar. You put starch in a shoit collar and what happens? What happens is that the shoit collar gets stiff. Well, a tiger knows that if he eats starch his jernts is going to get all stiff and then he won't be able to run any more and some heathen or other will come along with a blowgun or something and knock him off." You feed an army potatoes and it gets stiff joints and loses the war. So Greengroin oughtn't to peel potatoes.

For Artie, it's wrong to speak of a theatre of operations," because it sounds as if the war was being fought in the moom pitchas." And if you drop an orange too many times it gets soft. If Greengroin is dropped on his gut too many times during extended order drill he gets soft. Moral: The only way Greengroin can keep tough is to lie care-lully oa his cot. Xou caa't whip Greengroin. But it's a reckless life lie leads, always threatening to throw his rank around, as tang as he's still a Pfc.

Harry Brown wrote the best book about the war by an American soldier, "A Walk in the Sun," the description of a day in the invasion of Italy. It was clean prose and rapid action and superb dialog. In "Artie Greengroin Pfc," he gives you the gripes and the miseries of the common soldier in camp. For Artie, life in the guardhouse. It's as funny a book as you're going to get this summer.

Tales of 18 Winners of Congress Medal "MEDALS FOR MARINES," by Rolfa BosweU. ICiou i tl, $2.1 Hidden beneath Mr. Boswell's rather flowery phrases are the stories of 18 marines who won the congressional medal of honor in the early stages of this war. Their deeds will make interesting reading. The tales range from that of "Sunny Jim" Vandegrift, commandant of the marines, who led the 1st marine division at Guadalcanal, to "Manila John" Basilone, gunnery sergeant, who won his medal at Guadalcanal and later died on Iwo Jiau.

Ward Walkiuu Rich U. S. Folklore from 'Down Jersey "JERSEY GENESIS." by Henry Charlton Beck. Rutgers University Press, ijr0. Not far from the center of a triangle formed by Atlantic City.

New York, and Philadelphia lies Down Jersey an ancient segment of America in which legend, history, and outspoken reality blend Into a rich pattern of folklore. Along the Mul-lica river you'll find the Schneiders and the Leeks lor Leaks and the Roses to tell you about the fabulous past of this isolated country. Much of America's earliest history was spawned here, and the hulks of British warships still lie under 150 years of mud along its banks. In "Jersey Genesis" Henry Beck spreads out for us a rich and satisfying collection of nuggets. He doesn't overlook the wilder legends, such as that of the Jersey devil or the Aser-daten murder, but better yet he has rediscovered the homely stories of the men and women who first settled this river bottom.

Will Davidson.