NOTES

Evening Star, Issue 23681, 14 September 1940, Page 4

NOTES

“ I notice a very cheap edition of ‘ Mein Kampf ’ is on sale in England. The profits are to be given to the Red Cross. Well, it certainly adds to. one’s pride in the broad-mindedness of our race, that at the very time when we are fighting this new prophet, we also offer his ideas in cheap form to our own. population.’—Mr H. Wright, in the ‘ Torquay Herald.’

Edgar Lee Masters, William Ross Benet, and Richard Aldington, are among those who have agreed to record specimens of their verse for a New York Phonographic Library of Contemporary Poets. The collection will include selections from Yeats and Synge, read by the Irish Players, and a recording of T. S. Elliot’s ‘ Murder in the Cathedral.’

A major poet, according to Richard Church, is one who brings into a language and its poetry a new element of thought and experience and a new twist of phraseology. He puts a thumbmark upon his verse. Just as von recognise immediately a house by Adam or a sonata by Beethoven, _so yom recognise a poem by a major poet# It doesn’t need to he signed.

The first of France’s refugee writer, to he reported killed by the Nazis hd Herr Franz Werfel, who escaped from Austria in 1938. He had an international reputation ns a poet, playwright, and novelist. Some of his plays have been given in London (where he was an occasional visitor) and only a few week* ago Hamish Hamilton published a new novel, ‘ Embezzled Heaven.’

Richard Wright, the negro _ author of ‘ Native Son,’ found that its rush; to best-seller status had consequences which interfered with work on his new, book; so he went to Cuernavaca, in Mexico, to settle down to it. But a letter to his publishers shows that at first his luck was out: “ I began work at once, but I had to quit. My' wife was bitten by a deadly insect and had to have a powerful injection against lockjaw. Then she had to,have another injection to counteract that one, then six more to overcome the effects of the first ones. These insects crawl into tha house from a river which was in back of us, so we had to move to a house further from the river. My typewriter broke down. I lost my fountain penBut things look all right now.”

Hervey Allen talked about the new, historical novel on which he is working, his first large-sized book since ‘ Anthony Adverse.’ The new book is well under way, he said, with some 600 pages written and the lines well drawn for the rest of the plot. Outlining the general thought of _the new book, which will be called * Richfield Springs,’ Mr Allen described it broadly as an attempt to capture the change of feeling and of life in America _aa the'colonial era passed. The period from the middle eighteenth to the middle nineteenth century will be covered, the early chapters dealing with frontier life beyond the Big Sfhokies, the scene shifting later to upper New York State. Mr Allen expects to finish ‘ Richfield Springe, by the end of the year.

Details have reached us of the Canadian literary prize which has been awarded to Franklin M’Dowell s _ novel ‘The Champlain Road.’ This* is the first time the award has been made* Its official title is “ The Governor-Gene-ral’s Annual Literary Award.’ It was established by Lord Tweedsmuir in 1936, as a permanent system of recognition for literary merit. The name or Lord Tweedsmuir’s office, that of th» Governor-General, was given in perpetuity, without, however, associating his own name with it. The awards taka the form of bronze medals. They are presented to the authors of the best book in respective classes published in each calendar year. Authors must b» residents of Canada. At present there are three classes of Canadian hooka eligible for award —poetry, fiction, and general literature. In the 1940 group there is likely to be a fourth class for, scholarly work, such as histories, leaving “ general literature ’* free for belles-lettres. The Canadian Authors*' Association, which bears all costs, is entrusted with the necessary arrangement, including the selection of judges and making of rules. This is the only, system of literary prizes in Canada except the Lome Pierce Gold Medal.

In the second volume of Sir Charles Petrie’s ‘ Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain,’ recently published, one of Sir Austen’s last letters expresses grave anxiety over German rearmament and the extent to which the British. Government had allowed itself to be deceived. Sir Austen could see only one leader who might retrieve the situation. Hia words have a prophetic note; “In my view there is only one man who by his studies and his special abilities and aptitudes is marked out for it, and that man is Winston Churchill. I don’t suppose that S[tanley] B[aldwin] will offer it to him, and 1 don’t think that Neville would wish to have him back, but they are both wrong. He is the right man for that post, and _in such dangerous times that consideration ought to be decisive.” Louis Bromfield, the latest of whose novels is ‘ Night in Bombay,’ is the owner of Malabar Farm in Ohio. Here he lately started a game conservation area, in conjunction with the Government programme. Mr Bromfield’s farm is one of a hundred model farms m Ohio working with the United States Government to solve problems of soil erosion and flood prevention, Sinclair Lewis, so his American publishers state, has contributed to the support of Britain’s dollar exchange by refraining from lifting the advance royalties on ‘ Bethel Merriday."

The autobiography of Richard Halh--burton, who is believed to have perished in a typhoon which swept across tha Western Pacific in March, 1939. is to be published by the Bobbs-Mernll Company, of New York. It is quite possible that Halliburton died without knowing that the material for this book was in existence. After all hope of hut rescue had been given up,, his parents disclosed that over a period of moro than 20 years he had written them long, intimate, detailed letters which they had preserved., The task of compressing and arranging these letters for publication occupied almost a year, and the result will be the largest of allHalliburton books, titled ‘ Richard Halliburton ; His Story of His Life .s Adventure. ’ The letters tell of many episode* not mentioned in Halliburton a other books. The story of the buildimr of the Sea Dragon, the iunk which was to have taken, him from Hongkong to, San Francisco, but which never reached port, i« told for the first time, the story of that last voyage is told in a_ seriea of radiograms despatched from the Seas Dragon at sea. The last of these reports the Sea Dragon fighting a raging storm with decks awash. [Articles from the pen of Mr Halliburton, relating his experiences on the Sea Dragon after her departure from Hongkong, appeared in the columns of the Dunedin ‘ Evening Star.’}