Chapter M: E. F

_Young Peoples Pride._ By STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT. (Henry Holt & Co.)

There are probably very few men now at Yale who are destined to look back, after an equally short span of years, upon a more enviable literary record than that already possessed by Stephen Vincent Benét. And yet, we had to read a good deal of “Young Peoples Pride” before we began to enjoy it. Perhaps the reason was that we had expected another “serious novel” or “character study” somewhat along the lines of Mr. Benét’s “The Beginning of Wisdom”. The rather affectedly “super smart” illustrations with which the present book is garnished annoyed us, and the occurrence of passages like the following caused us to fear that Mr. Benét, with an eye to the box office, had joined the Fitzgeraldine ranks of tale-tellers-out-of-school.

“‘The trouble with Art is that it doesn’t pay a decent living
wage unless you’re willing to commercialize—’

‘The trouble with Art is that it never did, except for a few
chance lucky people—’

‘The trouble with Art is Women.’

‘The trouble with Women is Art.’

‘The trouble with Art—with women I mean—change signals! What do
I mean?’”

But there is not much of that sort of “cleverism”. In fact, in so far as “We Wild Young People” enter, Mr. Benét holds the mirror very sanely and skillfully up to nature.

However, “Young Peoples Pride” scarcely requires all this analyzing. It is not an “important novel” anyway—simply a rattling good yarn, and must be judged as such. For sheer sustained excitement we have seldom read anything better than the long scene in the apartment of Mrs. Severance and the gentleman whom Mr. Benét so quaintly calls “Mr. Severance”. It is a scene that we shall hope to see on Broadway later, when its author becomes a playwright—if he ever does. Read the book for that, by all means—and you’ll like a good deal of the rest.