Salt Lake Telegram | 1928-09-02 | Page 4 | Varied Period of Preparation Mellows Style of Young Writer

Varied Period of Preparation I Mellows Style of Young Writer Freedom from material cares and anda a slow period of ripening these the 1 most valuable gifts that fate can bring to a young novelist have I been the tho happy fortune of Robert McClure whoso whose third novel Lady I In Marble has just been published Born in that fertile middle west which Booth an an anIn l Sinclair Sin Sin- In- In clair Lewis delight to consider the typical America young McClure l grew up In Columbus Ohio where his father edited the Ohio State Journal and later removed to o Youngtown when his father became publisher of the Youngstown Iele Ide- gram After tour four years at high school in which h he perpetrated many short stories for the school literary magazine Robert went vent to Yale It was vaa the period of the remarkable remarkable re- re literary renaissance which produced Thornton Wilder Stephen Benet Richmond Barrett and John larrar Farrar McClure felt a strong urge toward literature lie was and extravagantly proud of his Lit triangle and his membership In the Elizabethan club lie He even went so I far during a summers summer's convalescence I cence from an operation as to provide pro pro- vide vido himself with reams of foolscap and a new fountain pen len with the purpose of starting a novel The War Intervened Twenty months of service In France five of them at the University of Nancy and marriage following In q lck left him settled at work on the Youngstown Telegram with the serious Intention of followIng in i his fathers father's footsteps and becoming a publisher I But there was other fortune In store for McClure His release from the necessity of the dailY newspaper stint came In the form of a breakdown In health Moving to Pasadena where he his wife and the two curly haired young oung I daughters lived In the sun McClure was free to pursue his first ambition ambition ambi- ambi tion to become a novelist no That was five years ago Since then he has written three novels The first one The Dominant Blood consumed two years of writing and rewriting mistakes failures and despair and occasional gleams of hopes that he might after at- at ter all all approximate the drama that was in his mind But It was written written writ writ- ten under pleasant conditions and andIn andin In delightful places and was well received The second novel no Some Found Adventure gained In maturity maturity ma- ma and craftsmanship In Lady In Marble he has completed a. a long and arduous apprenticeship It I too has gracious memories of S Santa Barbara Coronado th the Brittany coast the Riviera and Paris Lady In Marble Is the fruit of McClures McClure's sojourns In Paris a plc- plc tUle tuie of the Independent Inscrutable ble elegant suave American girl who goes to Paris to study and remains remains re- re mains to make a life lite ot of her bet beton'S onS on'S that is neither nor American Amer- Amer Ican a lifo o of shining surfaces Mr McClure set out to discover er whether er or not th there ro are depths that the surfaces conceal i