SOUND AND FURY

This season is no different from any other in the profuseness of the blurb material used to advertise the new books. If the reader were to interpret literally the extravagant claims of the publishers for their wares his life would be a frenzy of rushing from one "most notable contribution of the year" to the next "novel of extraordinary beauty" and so on through the whole gamut of superlatives.

Perhaps this method is the most effective in baiting the bookbuyer, but it would almost seem that the limits of overstatement had been reached. If the publishers are to be credited with any discriminating taste at all, the place it should be used is in selecting the books of more lasting appeal and concentrating on these instead of casting their adjectives broadside over the landscape.

Of course there are books of an ephemeral nature whose sensational and journalistic qualities make them popular for a time and which are undoubtedly aided by this florid method of advertising. The ranks of these books are growing and already there is a large group of hack writers engaged in producing a steady stream of such material. They can hardly be called literature, however, and can best be likened to the stereotyped products turned out every week by the Hollywood movie mills. But as long as it is possible to keep a book and read it over more than once there will be a demand for a more enduring form of literature which is harmed much more than it is helped by wild claims and overpraise from the publicity office.

Professor Charles H. Herford, one of England's most distinguished students of the history of literature is dead in London. He is best known for his "Age of Wordsworth", "Wordsworth, A Biography" and for his monumental work on Ben Jonson.

Thomas Craven's "Men of Art" recently published by Simon & Schuster, has proved very popular among those men concentrating in Fine Arts who are about to take their Divisionals. The book provides an entertaining if some what biased account of the lives and achievements of the principal figures in the history of painting.