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Our Fortnightly Book Review

CONFESSIONS AND IMPRESSIONS

By

ETHEL

MANNIN

Miss ETHEL MANNIN is out to shock the Philistines in these exceedingly frank revelations’ and impressions of life in general and personalities in particular. This, however, is only one aspect of her versatile talent, for in her thirty odd years she has proved herself a high light on the fictional horizon. "Pilgrims" was an enthralling story of the life of a modern artist; "Sounding Brass" exploited early experience in an advertising office ; "Ragged Banners" and other novels show penetrating experience of the world’s way and a sense of psychology little short of astounding in view of her age and sex. Beginning her meteoric career at fifteen as stenographer in the Charles Highum London organisation, her employer proved himself a good "picker" by promoting the dowdy girl, with her shrinking manners and questing intelligence, to the position of advertisement-writer; and when she was seventeen the astute publicist gave her a free hand in producing a monthly magazine, in which Miss Mannin published her own stories. articles and verses, aud her talent was allowed-full scope. In company with an artist friend, Bohemian as herself, she explored by-ways of London and literature, worshipped at the Shavian shrine, 2nd read voraciously the works of Ingersoll, Kropotkin, Oscar Wilde and the Russians; her first acquaintance with novels being translations from thé French of Gautier, de Maupassant, Pierre Loti, Anatole France and Balzac. Truly a catholic and stimulating mental diet for sweet seventeen, however: precocious. Marriage at nineteen revealed that "in the passionate ’teens one is still in course of mental and emotional evolution," and after a few short years the "house of the willow tree" was abandoned and emotional expansion sought elsewhere, one of the planks of the platform being that "love is the secret of human happiness, because it is the only source of lasting, fundamental satisfaction; there is no continuing delight unless one’s lovelife is right. That surely is very simple and elemental psychology and ‘physiology." During the course of adventurous living and brilliant achievement Miss Mannin has travelled widely and met many notable personalities, her impressions and conclusions being set forth with a wealth of allusion, clarity of expression, and occasional discursiveness admirably calenlated to add to her already large circle of satellites. America she stigmatises as "a country where machines think like human beings and human beings think like machines, Time can but increase, and custom emphasise the vulgarity of this country without a soul." One cannot think, however, that absence of spirituality in nation or individual is any detriment in the opinion of the writer, for later in the book she endeayours to prove the hypothesis that man is entirely physical in all his reactions. Comments on sexual psychology are courageous and entirely unreticenr, intimate personal experiences being narrated with astounding candour aml aplomb. That dark genius, the late D. H. Lawrence, Mr. Aldous Huxley, Mr. Bertrand Russell, and Epstein, the sculptor, -are gods of Miss Mannin’s idolatry, and she sets before us vivacious and passionately partisan. portraits of these and other brilliant stars and comets in the firmament of art. Portrayals of men and women who loom largely in the public consciousness are executed with an audacity, skill in dissection, and literary charm that compel admiration, and, whether one agrees or disagrees with her conclusions, there can be no doubt of the interest and entertainment afforded. hoy ot The much-diseussed "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" Miss Mannin considers "one of the truest and most beautiful and moving books the age has produced," and is convinced, apparently, that if the gospel is followed accordiug to D. H. Lawrence, "there will be no taking truth’s name in vain, and men and women will live and work,and love and beget each other in the sun and wind and rain, cleanly and decently and simply, as the animals do." Covtempt for present-day civilisation is insisted upon: "When I saw R100 roaring against the blue silk of an early springtide sky, I thought of how in its brutal hideousness and terrifying moustrosity, it was a symbol of what we have made of civilisation."

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.I whakaputaina aunoatia ēnei kuputuhi tuhinga, e kitea ai pea ētahi hapa i roto. Tirohia te whārangi katoa kia kitea te āhuatanga taketake o te tuhinga.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/RADREC19311023.2.66.1

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 15, 23 October 1931, Unnumbered Page

Word count
Tapeke kupu
687

Our Fortnightly Book Review Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 15, 23 October 1931, Unnumbered Page

Our Fortnightly Book Review Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 15, 23 October 1931, Unnumbered Page

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