Some Books
of the Week MR. kLIAN GREEN is known as an American author who lives in Paris and writes in 'French. What_ is more singular, he ia making a..reputation, amongst French connoisseurs, as !t stylist in their language.. Such .a possibility can .sureiy. have never been foreseen. . Even.had_Gibbon changed his mind and written the 'Decline aid Fall in French, we doubt if it would lia%.,e been greeted across the Channel as the work ofa prose artist. Mr. Green chose well in making France his artistic home, for not only the manner ; but the Matter of his Wnik, is calculated to appeal to the "Gallic mind. the Short story,
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written in English, and here printed in great _luxury by the Blackamore Press at 50s., entitled The Pilgrim on the Earth,. is a study in psychic aberration that reminds one of Edgar-Allan Poe, and also r of the Provost_ of Eton who, wrote the -Ghost Storks of an Antiquary. Like the majority of such work, it creates_ an atmosphere of 'phosphorus and ,sulphni, but the final actuality of demoniac possession is missing. How could it be otherwise unless the author had truly experienced an infernal revelation ? The Blackamore Press has also produced Pushkin's world-famous short story, The Queen 'of Spades, and the translation is good in its attempt to catch the complete objectivity of the Russian: master's style. But in so doing it sometimes falls into baldness, a quality which is a poor substitute for the laconic simplicity of the original. Both the volumes are illustrated with coloured woodcuts, which add to
the decorative artificiality of the tales. - - • . . ....... -
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