OF TIME AND THE RIVER

An important book, if for no other reason than that it is by the author of look Homeward, Angel, which was hailed as one of the few great books that distinguished American letters in the past ten years. This is first novel since that, though he has been in the public eye through his short stories. Second, the publishers are backing it as their big book of the Spring list, and it is assured extensive advertising and an important press....A novel of epic proportions, ""a legend of man's hunger in his youth"" -- it follows the eternal seeking of the creative artist, in the person of a youth, born in the south, escaping the trammels of an invalid father, a hampering home environment, striving to find in Harvard, in New York, in Paris, in Provincial France, in London, the inspiration, the solution of his emotional problems, the interpretation of the meaning of life, which always escapes him. A panoramic novel, in which the interest centers, not on individuals, on plot, on environment, but -- as in Jules Romains' Mon of Good Will -- on the kaleidoscopic picture of the passing scene. The market, I feel, is very much that market. It is not ""light reading"" -- nor easy reading. If it reaches the ranks of best sellerdom anticipated by the publishers, it will be on ""snob appeal"" as it has none of the earmarks of popular appeal.