DEFIANT SCULPTOR

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22521, 1 October 1938, Page 20

DEFIANT SCULPTOR

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GENIUS

Hie Testament of Caliban. The Autobiography of David Edstrom. Robert Hale. 340 pp. (12/6 net.) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

“I am, of course, a thrill seeker, seeking out crooks’ nests in every big city, following dangerous paths and seldom finding danger or feeling it even when it has been near. ’ Mr Rupert Hughes declares Edstrom’s autobiography to be a rival of Cellini’s as a revelation of himself and the strange people he has met. Edstrom’s record is astonishingly bold and frank. The man is a genius in sculpture—his “Defiant Lucifer” proves that—and he' has a genius, sometimes good, often evil, for living. He was born on a Swedish farm of tempestuous parents, was taken as a child to- America, served in various mean trades, won a kind of general and artistic education by his talents, and began to see the world as a tramp. He worked as a stoker and from that position gained a scholarship which procured him training in sculpture. Then he set out on a career of success and failure which carried, him through most countries of Europe, into courts and homes of squalor, into wild quarrels and wilder loveaffairs, into violent health and miserable illness, into dissipation and into exaltation, and, at. last, after great triumphs and disappointments, to Hollywood. In interest, excitement,. and in curious portraits of eminent people. “The Testament of Caliban” will be the autobiography of the year. It will live longer as an account of the frenzy of artistic creation and of the waywardness which befalls a great creator who cannot come to terms with the world, who fails to find right companions, and who is unable ever to dissemble. It is the proud tragedy of one who cannot avoid conflict and who will not yield till he dies.

The St. Cyrea Lecture on the subgraphy [and] an introduction to the philosophy of farming”: so Sir Daniel Hall describes his book. Our Daily Bread (John Murray. 109 pp. 6s net.), which reviews the sources from which the English people are fed. It is “a geography of production”; it is an attempt to correct widespread and dangerous urban ignorance of the industry without which urban populations would perish. The scope of the book, is wide: from wheat and bread, dairy produce, meat, fruit, coffee and tea, to spices, even. An odd omission is fish. Illustrations, maps, and diagrams are all excellent.