Ellen Rogers
ELLEN ROGERS $2.50 By VANGUARD
MR. FARRELL no doubt had his reasons for naming his novel after his heroine, but she comes near boring the reader, at least until, after fifty pages or so, she meets Ed Lanson. From that point on the story becomes one of Greek meets Greek, and that always makes good drama and does so here. The female egotist who steals her friends’ lovers mainly for purposes of torture is, however, too simple a creature to put up a good fight against the male egoist who does everything she does and much more merely for the sake of art. Ed is an artist without any art except the gift of gab. He is always going to write a great book but never does it. He unites an Irish pugnacity and ability to talk down or round anybody with a French clarity and simplicity oft reason and an artist’s faculty for thinking like both a man and a woman. He is not so much immoral as beyond good and evil; and one can take him as either a satirical portrait of a little superman or a serious demonstration of how dangerous philosophy may be in an undisciplined mind. It is really a masterly portrayal; for his creator has succeeded in making a creature that might easily have been preposterous so amusing, exciting, and real that we can only pray that we shall never know anybody like him. R. M. G.