THE ESOTERIC SIMPLE

Stuart Sherman has still the faith of many true students of contemporary literature. If he has not guided modern genius completely, if he has not dissuaded all from following false gods, if he has occasionally followed them himself, he has at least maintained a certain aloofness from the ridiculous. And now his eroticism of the book which, unbelieving and unregenerate to the country, has earned a prize of thirteen thousand, five hundred dollars should going precise attention. True, he is not the first to remark the trend toward folklore, toward the saga which is so patent to observing eyes. But in defining as good, as strong. "Wild Geese." Miss good, Miss Martha Ostenso's first novel he professor a firm, belief in the esoteric simple, a belief which will always continue the fundament on which drama must be built.

For, indeed, those writers who are so muddled by the mechanical multiplicity and confusion of existence as to be blind to the simple which is beneath all the confusion will never, can never expect to keep live in literature. The clever, and this is a generation of the clever, are too engrossed with surface delights to sense the bitterness or beauty of the depots. America is apparently devoid of the comic spirit. She must buffoon or burrow herself into the earth of realism. And buffoonery is not lasting. Mr. Sherman has illumined that fact many times with the light of common sense. And if she must bury herself, it must be in real life, exactly as the American saga is doing. That the new saga lacks humor is pathetic but too evident to remain surprising. So Mr. Sherman points the only path to creative heights. It lies among the uncluttered hills, upon the uncluttered plains, in the cluttered hearts of the simple people. In truth, the future of the American novel seems to lie just there--is the esoteric simple.