The Track. By Arturo Barea. (Faber. has. 6d.) IT may
be his Century but the Common Man seems to get un- commonly little out of it, if his favourite chroniclers are to be believed : limelight shows him more than ever the victim of circum- stances beyond his control, his head bloody and well-bowed. Barea's " hero," like Zoshchenko's and like Strube's, is a " little man," but he invited no Comic Muse to the christening and refuses for him also that portion of tragedy which Koestler knows how to accept as the price of life. However documentary it may be—and in The Track Barea is serving as a sergeant in the Riff wars—a voyage in Hemingway's wake au bout de la boue does not begin to catch up with Caine's au bout de its nuit. Slices of life in the raw do not always get to the bone however much garnished with the blood, excrement and vomit, washed down with Manzanilla. Toreadors turned patient oxen will date quite as much as this sort in Carmen, for the blood is everywhere about except in their veins.
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