I was just at the
place where Leslie Patrick Abercrombie wins the prize "for laying
out Prestatyn," some local wrestler, presumably, who had
challenged the crowd at a country fair. After laying him out,
Abercrombie returns to his books and becomes editor of the Town
Planning Review. A wonderfully drawn character.
The plot of this oddly named novel is too complicated to describe
at length. It opens with the conferment of the C.M.G. on Kuli
Khan Abbas in 1903, an incident of which the anonymous author
might have made a good deal more, and closes with a brief
description of the Rev. Samuel Marinus Zwemer's home in New York
City; but much has happened in the meanwhile. Thousands of
characters have made their brief appearance on the stage, and
have been hustled off to make room for others, but so unerringly
are they drawn that we feel that we are in the presence of living
people. Take Colette Willy, for example, who comes in on page
2656 at a time when the denouement is clearly at hand. The
author, who is working up to his great scene --the appointment of
Dr. Norman Wilsmore to the International Commission for the
Publication of Annual Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants--
draws her for us in a few lightning touches. She is "authoress,
actress." She has written two little books: Dialogue de Betes and
La Retraite Sentimentale. That is all. But is it not enough? Has
he not made Colette Willy live before us? A lesser writer might
have plunged into elaborate details about her telephone number
and her permanent address, but, like the true artist that he is,
our author leaves all those things unsaid.
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