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Show THE CITIZEN 8 HIIIUIIIIIHIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIUIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUUIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIimilllllllll tunity will never be theirs. He is now lecturer to the great university of seekers ,and his voice carries to every comer where men try to acquire a real culture. Among the writers and crtics of literature today, and there is a growing number of worth, we think there is not one of the thorough understanding and ability of this man. His translations into English of foreign classics alone make the whole world indebted to him, while his editings for the publishing house of Boni and Liveright, as well as his own writings, place him at the top rung of the American critical ladder. It is also a fact that he, born to a foreign tongue, writes today some of the finest English it is our privilege to read. His knowledge of every subject which he attempts is thorough; he would starve rather than turn out slipshod work of any kind. His views of life and the passing show are at times almost too serious; the life which has been forced on him has never permitted him to laugh quite heartily enough for his own good, and then again there are within him the racial instincts formed of thousands of years of persecution. But laughing and the producing of laughter are .after all, not of the highest importance in the work of a man who can produce splendid works of art in a beautiful manner. We come now to another book of autobiography, but in a strangely different style, the Letters of James Gibbons Huneker, published posthumously by Josephine Huneker (Scribners). Little did the genial Huneker realize that his lettters, sent broadcast over the earth, would be brought together and become, with his Steeple Jack, his lifes story. However, the volume is before us, and it helps to shed new light on the daily workings of the mind of one of Americas finest sons. We will here deal only with this one book; his splendid critical works, stories, his novel Painted Veils, and the Steeple Jack, will be taken up shortly in a more comprehensive study. The few letters that are gathered together now in this volume were certainly never written to be printed. To read them is to hear a man talk to his intimate friends, no studied phrases, free-minde- E THINGS BOOKISH niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiuuunaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiii ff Edited By WILUAM C. WINDER, Jr. Up Stream the World War there has OUT of before the public literally thousands of books. A fair guess would be that no less than 95 per cent of these were unadulterated rubbish, to be forgotten within a few days after being published. Even among the remaining 5 per cent, there are very few of exceptional value ,a strange phenomenon indeed when one thinks of the worldwide upheaval , affecting to some extent every human being. Strange as it may seem, too, the writings which will live are not those produced on account of physical suffering of the writer himself, nor are they inspired by the ueath of some one beloved. Rather, the living words are the cries of tortured souls, those who have suffered mentally and spiritually. Quite a number of these war books have come to our notice, some of them of real worth, but we can, at the moment, recall just three written by Americans, which are of high class, and they are astonishingly dissimilar. The three we refer to are The Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, Shall It Be Again by Kenneth Turner, and Up Stream by Ludwig Lewisohn (Boni and Liveright). The last named is without question a great book; in fact, so far as our knowledge is concerned, it is the finest thing literary to come out of the war. Mr. Lewisohn saw nothing of life in the trenches, as did Mr. Dos Passos. He is a man of fine culture and the highest attainments, sensitive and introspective, and when we recall that hysteria which possess- heresy-huntin- g ed us during those years ,and that he is a Jew with a thoroughly German name, it is not difficult to imagine his plight during the war. It is a simple truth, which we think no one will attempt to deny, that every person with a German name, although born in this country, found himself under the sus- picion and surveillance of his neighbors and former friends. However, Up Stream is not a bitter book. Mr. Lewisohn had grown up with many illusions about the possibilities which stood open to him in this, the promised land. His tone now is one of sad disillusionment, as he has seen one opoprtunity after another refused him, in his early years, because he was a Jew and later because his name was German. Although his erudition and ability were never in doubt, he was time and again refused vacant positions in the English departments of the big universities. His worth was never, even for an instant, open to question, yet the authorities at the colleges would suddenly show a decided predilection for blondes when his application was presented. That serpent, c prejudice, was not bom in the office of Mr. Fords Dearborn Indeanti-semiti- pendent. Up Stream is a wonderfully .and candid self-reveali- ng clear from earliest childhood. We know of no other autobiography in which the childhood of the author is portrayed so clearly. and with such intimate charm, not even Mr. W. H. Hudsons Far Away And Long Ago, for in the Hudson book there is a trace of the pathos of distance. The life of the young Ludwig while still in Germany, and after the emigration of the family to South Carolina, is pictured for us as though it were of yesterday. No mind but a highly sensitive one could retain those minute im- pressions and then years later recreate them into living words. There hovers now over the entire book, despite the tragic disappointment expressed in the last half, a lingering fragrance of those Queenshaven days, when the boy was yet a child, a thinking, meditating child, beginning to see and feel the possibilities lying within the attainment of a fine culture. The book then takes us from the boy to the period of hoping, struggling youth; then into young manhood with its ideals and attending trials; onward into full manhood, with still fewer beautiful illusions remaining, but ever with the hope which a young man has that he will be permitted to reach his goal. Privations had always been the lot of this young man, but still he holds out; that iron will has now been refined into steel, and it will never surrender to the common or ordinary. A real blow falls on him, the tragic death of that loving and beloved mother, from whom he had inherited his innate love of a high culture and the splendid brain which permitted him to absorb so much of the best of the world. At this period is noticed the first real bitterness toward the life which the family had been forced to endure. He knew how unnecessary it should have been, the trials and hardships through which this gentle woman had passed. For himself, he could stand it all, but in his heart he must have cursed the system which brought such pain to her. Then came his crowning tragedy in the war, when the crowd suddenly- forgot that the young professor was a Jew in the discovery that his name was German. His former friends now avoided him, his students forsook him, he was spied upon and ostracized. To the sensitive, intelligent Lewisohn this was a tragedy of the first water, but for the benefit of the world it worked a splendid miracle. The man did not surrender, nor did he change his name. He cut the bands which were holding him down, and which would have, at last, made him just another good teacher of English or German. Overnight, a real individual, a great artist was born, and the fine Up Stream was the first fruit of the new tree. Mr. Lewisohn now has no need to ask favors, nor does he, of the people who so willingly harmed him before. His name is made, his future secure. His seducers would gladly welcome him into the fold again, but the oppor - omi-lia- nt English-speakin- d g no fine polish, just the homely intercourse between friendships of long standing. But how exceedingly human these lettters are! They concern nearly every matter under the sun, with occasional flashes of illumination on various artistics subjects. They also tell us much of his struggles in business matters, for Huneker was never more than about three jumps ahead of the fabled wolf. Much of his newspaper work was done to make money and gain the leisure for travel and for his more serious work. But, though he knew what it meant to fight for existence, he never wasted time in a dolorous howling for the moon. The letters, too, show a charming interest and s symapthy in his young who had not yet arrived at success. He always encouraged them to go on; if there was something favorable to say of work they had done, he did not hesitate to say it. To us, his few letters to Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton are of far more than passing interest. Now Eaton is among our most delightful essayists and critics, but at that time he was just beginning and was filled with depressing doubts. Huneker saw the fine promise of his work, and it is not impossible that thes; lettters helped young Eaton up the thorny path to success. In fact, every letter and postcard, no matter what its subject, breathes a rich and vibrant and which ,in turn, personality, changes trivial matters into things of interest and delight. James Huneker was, above all things, a pioneer in the critical world of America. He it was who first introduced into our colorless criticism the Old World standards of judging a work on its merits and not according to outworn, conventional rules. To him there were no schools of art and music, just good and bad artists and good and bad musicians. He was, first of all, a thorough msuician and critic of music. That, however, was but a stepping stone to his inquisitive mind. He mas- tered the other arts one by one, and lived to see himself recognized as the leading critic of America in all the arts, not alone recognized in this country, but with a wide and enthusiastic audience in every intellectual center of Europe. Huneker had no particular illus'ons about life and its meaning. But, even so, he did not go about in mourning; he did his utmost to find the latent charm in everybody and everything. He was a frequenter of the Bohemian cafes of the time; he was, in fact, a right royal good fellow and a wonderful comapnion. Benjamin De Casseres, a friend of long years, reminds us that He was ready for a lark at the drop of a hat, and the hat dropped often. After all, however, this gayety masked a creep and extremely sensitive nature, as is so often the case. He wrote hu friend, E. E. Ziegler, in 1907, Keep up yuur spirits the game is ridiculous but Wd must all pretend that it All of wnich something important. Drings back to our memory the epitaph of the poet, John Gay, in Westminster Abbey: s?it-compos- ed Life is a joke, And all things show it. 1 mougnt so once. But now 1 know u. However, coming back to the letters, they are all intimate, human documents. There is in them none of the brilliance of thought or expression found in his critical studies, but they breathe forth the personality of an intensely interesting individual. We have all lost something, which it is impossible to replace, in the death of James Huneker. Office Phone 1172 Rea. Phone Was. 7638! Rea. 555 Weat let North C. HENDERSON Furniture and Marini Large and Small Auto Vana Piano 167 South Weat Temple Salt Lake City, Utah fellow-worker- I I want you to get a pound of our 50c tea this week. There is noth- ing to equal it in Salt Lake COOK TEA & COFFEE CO. I 14 West First 8outh P 1 i I I |