I Remember Christine
$2.50
By KNOPF
ONE Casebolt, a stuffed shirt and literary prostitute, had recently produced an “official biography” of James Horton, a successful and unscrupulous business buccaneer of old-time San Francisco. Reading Casebolt’s sonorous bowdlerizations, Walter Doane, an old friend of the Horton family, decides to explore the history of the late James with an unsparing, if humorous, realism. Casebolt forgot to mention many little incidents of James Horton’s career and had neglected to refer in any way to Horton’s well-known mistress, Christine Winton. But Doane remembered her and loved her.
This rambling, easy, half-cynical, half-romantic book makes hay of Casebolt and Horton, does acid justice to Horton’s daughter Juliet, and paints a most charming and convincing portrait of the delightful, straightforward, amoral Christine.
This is not Mr. Lewis’s most “important” book, but nowhere else has he written with greater ease or with a more incisive irony. His novel, — if it can be called such, - although apparently formless and discursive, has the sure line and the sensitive shades of a good etching, and far more humor than one generally finds in etchings. As for Christine, she will be the favorite character of l942 for many readers. This reviewer backs her against the field for the balance of the year. R. E. D.