Word: bolitho
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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TWELVE AGAINST THE GODS-William Bolitho-Simon & Schuster ($4). "In reality, the whole history of human progress from the flint-jabber to standing room in the subway . . . is the result of two forms of effort, the guard and the search, made by the Home-stayer on the one hand, and by the bold affronter of the new on the other; that is, by the citizen and the adventurer." Upon this somewhat labored proposition Author Bolitho presents, en brochette, the characters of Alexander the Great, Catiline, Mahomet, Columbus, Cagliostro and Seraphina, Casanova, Charles XII of Sweden, Lola Montez, Napoleon...
With such abstruse connections, William Bolitho ties his subjects to an arbitrary definition of "adventurer" and a theatrical title. Thus also, with a stretched premise, he gives himself an excuse for an eccentric examination of their behavior, scandals, intentions, tragedies...
...great adventurer; a beautiful addition to our collection." Catiline captained all the gangs in Rome in the enterprise, not of rebuilding his personal fortune, but of leveling all fortunes, murdering all governors, burning a city. He perished "not ingloriously," in "the adventure of death." Because the intelligence of Bolitho is very nearly equal to the purely technical and somewhat Carlylian brilliance of his style as a writer, his individuals bear resemblance to queerly grouped and overstuffed animals in a museum, regarding their audience with dazed and overconfident ferocity. But if the characters are not alive, Author Bolitho's writing...
...Chevalier costume?un smoking (dinner jacket) and straw hat ? is a vestigial remnant of the days before the War when, as Guest Contributor William Bolitho of the New York World says: "Young men dressed like this in the evenings and had fun. . . . Look at Chevalier's queer straw hat with the same shiver as you see the Cap of Liberty stuck up in Tammany Hall, or the Crown of England. There is human history...
LEVIATHAN-William Bolitho-Harp-ers ($2.00). The author has chosen the word Leviathan, meaning something formidably large, as title of a number of essays interpreting "our age"-or what the Germans call Zeitgeist. Mr. Bolitho says the saxophone is our Zeitgeist. He describes the curious cruelty of the English in Mme. Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors-the place where the effigies of famed murders are exhibited before the crime, in the act of the crime, after the crime, at the point of execution, etc. He tells of the great past, moving forward in the same 'dignified...