[Rarebooks] FA:Sinclair Lewis on Dos Passos 'Manhattan Transfer'

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

Ending this evening on Ebay-

<http://tinyurl.com/nlnlx>

"JOHN DOS PASSOS' MANHATTAN TRANSFER" by Sinclair Lewis.

Published by Harper & Brothers in 1926. Edition limited to 975 copies.

Sinclair Lewis's review of John Dos Passos famous novel first appeared in 
the Saturday Review of Literature and "aroused immediate and wide comment." 
However, the Review had to cut Lewis's comments by a third in order to make 
it fit the available space. Harper was pleased enough with the review to 
want to reprint it in its entirety and make it available, hence this 
booklet. Lewis liked the novel-

"I didn't want to review the book; I was off for a vacation in Bermuda. Now 
that I've read it, still less do I want to review it.

"But it is not because I am writing at the amiable Hotel Frascati, with a 
turquoise channel inviting me to swim, a road among cedars and cocoanut 
palms calling me to tramp. My disinclination is because I am afraid that 
Mr. Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer may veritably be a great book. And I have 
come to hate all the superlatives of book-boosting; such daily hysteria as 
'This colorful and delectable tale by Mr. Zuglitz is the greatest adventure 
story since Treasure Island', or 'With this grim and striking chronicle of 
pelican farming in Arkansas, Miss Mudd establishes herself as an authentic 
genius...'

"It is gloomy enough for a novelist to have to do murder on a contemporary. 
The professional executioners, like Mr. Canby, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Mencken- it 
is their official duty to jerk all the esthetic criminals off into 
eternity...Yet violent strike duty is really less risky than being 
benevolent. All respectable persons nod with delight when you suggest that 
So-and-so is a swine; but when you maintain that So-and-so is a gentleman 
and an authority on raising before the draw, then you are in danger of 
calling out that snicker which is the most destructive of human weapons.

"Yet I am going to take the risk.

"I wonder whether it may be that 'Manhattan Transfer' is a novel of the 
very first importance...It may be the foundation of a whole new school of 
novel-writing... This is really dangerous. I shall have to remain in 
Bermuda. Oh well, it's not a bad fate."

...and so on-

No reserve.

Ebay ID: joslinhall
<http://tinyurl.com/nlnlx>

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