First Person Singular

Loyal readers of the Atlantic will feel the loss of Dr. Hans Zinsser no less keenly than the editors. He was a scientist par excellence, yet his versatility was proof that those in a laboratory need not be insulated from the world. Unimpeachably an American, he possessed an education that was up to the best European standard: he knew the classics, and kept his knowledge burnished; he was at home in German and French, loved music, wrote poetry, and was a captivating talker. Shortly after his appointment to the Harvard Medical School, a member of the Harvard faculty called at his office at Columbia to extend a greeting. The visitor was directed to the last door on the corridor; as he approached, he heard the sounds of music. In the laboratory, still clad in their stained aprons, were Dr. Zinsser and his assistant, fiddling like mad. It was at the day’s end, research was over — time tor music.

Far more than most men did he give expression to the best that was in him. He gave himself unsparingly to his research, his teaching, and his writing. In his poems, which for many years were published in the Atlantic under the initials ’R. S.,’ he spoke with tenderness and imagery; in Rats, Lice and History he was critic and diagnostician, jocular, pungent, and impudent; and in his recent volume, As I Remember Him: The Biography of R. S., — a book begun in the early stages of his illness and carried forward with a courage and perception sharpened by fate, — he spoke as a philosopher to whom science and the humanities were equally dear, and with ‘that intelligence of the heart which is the essence of a distinguished personality.’

We all know what the rationing of tea has meant to England: it is a major sacrifice. Another war economy has been the rationing of papereach publisher has had his quota and must plan his new books accordingly. But when in addition the new Budget called tor the taxation of books, — that is to say, a Purchase Tax which would have been borne proportionately by the publisher, the reader, and the author, — democracy rose up on its hind legs. It was one thing to withstand Hitler and his bombers, but quite another to be deprived of one’s reading in a time of stress. J. B. Priestley rallied the opposition; his article in the New Statesman and Nation must have made some official ears burn. So must A. P. Herbert’s trenchant remarks in Parliament. The tax was rescinded.

I hope never to lose my appetite for first novels. I like them for their freshness, their unexpected, sometimes undeveloped talent. I like them for the independence and promise which the best of them certainly have. The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (Random House, $2.00), is a first book of marked ability. It tells the lean, he-man story of some cattle rustlers and of the posse which runs them down. The action consumes less than one day in 1885, and we see it all through the eyes of Art Croft, a cowhand, who with his partner has ridden into town after the roundup. They have just settled down to enjoy such fleshpots as Bridget’s Wells affords when they hear the wild-eyed rumor that rustlers have made a killing. Art has no stomach for a lynching, but individual misgivings are submerged as the mob’s temper rises, and led by Tetley, a Confederate veteran, they set out to do rough justice. Rough is the word for it.

From first to last this is a study in male psychology: the women in it matter less than the oil painting in the saloon. Croft and Gil, Tetley the Confederate, Canby the bartender, Smith the drunkard — they have been drawn with vivid, powerful strokes. The talk is tough, the action fast, the writing terse and skillful in its suspense. Only when Mr. Clark overworks his philosopher — Davies, the storekeeper — am I conscious of the author. The beauty of the novel lies in its naturalness and its excitement.

If you want to mark the difference between masculine and feminine writing, read next When the Bough Breaks, by Adeline Rumsey (Simon and Schuster, $2.50). Here, in that subjective style which approximates the stream of consciousness, is the narrative of three sisters, New Yorkers born and bred, who go their separate ways after their mother’s death in 1920. We inhabit their minds, in turn, floating off with them through the different strata of Manhattan with side excursions into those parentheses of feminine intuition. In this first novel the men are a minus quantity: the story is bound together by the affection of the three women and derives its vitality from the honesty of their observation and the range of their feeling. My objection would be that the characters are not sufficiently in contrast — they suffer from too much family resemblance; and as a result no one of the trio is strong enough to keep the story in motion. The parts of this book are better than the whole.

EDWARD WEEKS