Dust
by . New York: Brentano’s. 1921. 12mo, vi+251 pp. $1.75.
Not often does a novel excite in a reader both admiration and exasperation, as does this work by Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius. His admiration goes out to them unconditionally for their mastery of their theme and for the artistic compression of their treatment. They are of the new school of Middle-Western realists; they have a sound grasp of the principles of their craft and of the substance of the life which they undertake to represent. Martin Wade’s career, as described by them, illustrates vividly the inflexible purpose of the pioneer of the prairies, and the thrift and patient and intelligent effort by which the pioneer creates prosperous farms and achieves material success. Doubtless the subordination of all other considerations to that of material success, which characterizes Martin Wade, has been characteristic of many pioneers, though one may be of the opinion that the motive has been overworked in fiction, and that the reputation of the pioneer has suffered unjustly in consequence. However that may be, it is impossible to withhold admiration for the writers’ thorough knowledge of the life that they describe and for the vividness of their description.
There is revealed in the book talent of a finer sort than that for picturesque description; and the very fact that it is there makes the sense of exasperation, even of anger, that must be the reader’s predominant reaction to the story all the more blazing. The writers portray with truth and poignancy some of the tenderest human emotions. The characterization of Rose, Martin’s wife, is sympathetic; specially touching is the description of her relations with her little son.
A book in which there is a portrait of such feminine sweetness and charm should not be dedicated to making the spirit of selfishness, inhumanity, and hatred triumphant. The story is the record of Martin Wade’s unceasing, unreasoning persecution of his wife and his child — a record that piles agony and tragedy upon agony and tragedy, and causes to reader to writhe as he reads and to read on animated mainly by a desire to ascertain in what way so hateful a character will ultimately be punished.
Tragedy that is unrelieved, as the tragedy of Dust is, must have majesty and beauty of thought and expression; otherwise it simply exasperates. Strip Tess of the D’Urbervilles of the majesty of thought and expression with which Hardy has clothed the theme, and there would be only a sordid, unwholesome, repulsive chronicle. In Dust we have a sordid, unwholesome, repulsive chronicle, with convincing indications of ability on the part of the writers to produce something of the larger and better sort. A. S. PIER.