A Fine Novel By Stella Benson By "John Lofting.
THe Poor Man.—By Stella Benson. The Macmillan Ca.
The novel, the post war novel, has undergone. a distinct change. Tlow far the war's effect upon the human outlook may be responsible, who can say? Probably the tendency, the natural evolution of the art was in the direction that the reaction of the war has precipitate ed. The present stage would have been reached by a slower process if the war had not intervened and shaken up our valuations, gripped our heads and held our eyes focused upon realities that might, under the old comfortable conditions, have been too stark for us a little while longer. The germ of it was in the writings of such men as Bennett, Swinnerton, and even Wells, though Well's humanity nuust still cherish some of the old illusions. The war and its aftereffects has brought it all to a head. And by a strange psychologica} phenomenon, possibly explainable by_the very fact, the country that suffered least in the war has been foremost in the new realism as expressed in the post-war novel. Whatever one missed of beauty in the novels of Sinclair Lewis ("Main Street" and' "Babbitt"') and of Joseph Hergesheimer ("Cytherea'' eic.,) one had to admit that they were faithful portraits of life, teryiply faithful. Still they left us with that lack, struggling to retain our grasp on old" faith that "Truth is Beauty."
While we still struggle and wonder if we shall have to let it go, that old faith, comes Stella Lyenson with "Thie Poor Man"—and sets our feet securely on the rock again. For her work is the same stark realism, if anything more ruthless, but it is like leaving a posed photograph to gaze on a picture of the same subject painted by Whistler.. So it shows us not only the. beauty of the artist's vision, but also illumines the ugly, hopeless photographs of those others. Imagination, of course, is the key. There is not a direct word of sympathy in the whole this book for the sordid life of failure that it presents. Yet behind it all the time one feels an understanding, a compassion which is beautiful. Stella Benson's art is probably unique among novelists. One wonders whether the novel is her truest form of expression. Every chapter begins with a poem which explains her more clearly than her tale and in fact, explains
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.