SOUTH

Here's a book that just misses being a big book. It seems to me not important enough in the last analysis to warrant its discursiveness, its padding, its length. A totally different ""South"" from that of Stbling, Stark Young, Faulkner,Caldwell, -- closer perhaps to the ""South"" of Hamilton Basse in his In Their Own Image. The actual south as we conceive it in our imaginations is overlaid with a surface covering of the new rich and the new poor, of the New Deal in the midst of strikes and floods and disruption, of life kept on the surface -- cocktails, highballs, old and new ""corn"", of ""affairs"" interlocking family with family. Into the midst of this comes an artist with his eighteen months bride. And the atmosphere proves contagious. She succumbs, first to her host, then to a poverty striken bachelor. Various women fling themselves at the husband, with small success. The marriage heads for the rocks, and only is saved by the blackness of the future, if it breaks. And yet, throughout, one gets no sense of deep undercurrents of emotion, of real feeling.... However, the book is slated for a big push -- the anniversary date of Anthony Adverse, worthily celebrated last year by the publication of Stars Fall on Alabama, has been selected for this title, and the publishers are pinning their faith on its making a fitting member of the trio. Perhaps the date is shot with luck. It certainly is a publicity stunt -- so be prepared.