The Making of an American
The Return of Hyman Kaplan. By Leo Rosten. (Gollancz, 12s. 6d.) Mom than twenty years ago there appeared under the assumed name of 'Leonard Q. Ross' a book of singular enchantment named The Educa- tion of Hyman Kaplan. In a series of New Yorker sketches a brilliant light was cast on a side of American life which has received little literary attention : the earnest and fantastic efforts made by immigrants to master the complexities of their new language. Mr. Parkhill, the instructor at the night school, had a class of heterogeneous stu- dents, of all ages, both sexes and widely different aptitudes. In structure these little stories belonged to the traditional genre of 'schoolboy howlers,' but their humour was something altogether superior. The protagonist, Hyman Kaplan, bore comparison with the great comic characters of literature. (I never thought the illustrations the least like him.) It was a book which many treasured, like The Diary of a Nobody and The Unlucky Family. It seemed inconceivable that there could ever be a sequel. Now the years have brought a second volume. The author, to whom we have so long been grateful, is revealed as Mr. Leo Rosten. He has supplied a preface which I, for one, could have done without, but the text is as fresh and original as ever. Hyman Kaplan's pride in his new country, his devotion to his teacher, his fierce competition with his fellows in the class are all there quite undimmed by the intervening years. It is delightful to be reminded that 'our cousins across the Atlantic' are, very few of them, Colonial Dames and Daughters of the Revolution, but are Kaplans and Mitnicks, Tarnovas, Plonskys, Matsonkases and • Rod- riguezes. It makes that enigmatic people very much more lovable.
EV ELI N WAUGH
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