CURRENT LITERATURE
LOUD REPORT By Gibson Cowan
There have been a. lot of picaresque autobiographies lately, and Loud Report (Michael Joseph, 8s. 6d.), the newest of them, can claim to phimb lower depths of humanity than haie ever been touched before. And for frankness" of the sort publishers alWays describe as " not for the squeamish," Mr. Cowan has the others beaten hollow. The sub-human squalor of some of the scenes is enough to turn the stomach even of the in- squeamish, and though some are grossly comic, some are merely revolting. But the book as a whole does one good thing : it knocks out of the life of the road the false-glamour that less truthful accounts put into it. Here we have the real thing : for most, though not for our fortunate author, an endless round of cadging, petty stealing, lying, crude viciousness and pathetic lechery. Mr. Cowan, who-drifted for no real reason from an office-stool and along the well-worn track that leads through places where you can scrounge something for nothing, at last managed to write a play and have it accepted and so escaped. But there is still a bit of mud on his pen, and as he certainly din write, it it to be hoped that in this book hehas got rid of most
of it. .
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