Word: doored
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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WILLIAM March will inevitably be much compared to Faulkner, not only because the scene of his new novel, "Come in at the Door," is laid in the Delta country of the Mississippi, but also because a dark and forbidding pessimism is the net result of a somewhat unreal tale in which death, crime, and violence play their full part. To consider March a mental step-child of Faulkner is, however, extremely unjust. "Come in at the Door" is March's second novel, and, obviously an experiment in form, it likewise leaves a strong impression of being all experiment in subject...
...substance of "Come in at the Door: is woven around the effect, on the life of a sensitive and intelligent man, of witnessing as a child the horrible execution of a negro who in a fit of madness had beaten out the brains of a helpless dwarf. That the negro nurse of the child, Choster Hurry, is the mistress of his father and mother of his six dusky half-brothers and half-sisters, that the uncle with whom Chostor goes to live is tattooed all over his body and married to a syphilitic harlot who haggles with her husband nightly...
...reason for satisfaction with the experiment in subject matter and attitude. The more or less petered-out Faulknerian school of pessimism does not provide a very fertile field for the labors of a young novelist with the undeniable talent of William March. The author of "Come in at the Door" might very easily build a reputation as a writer of clever novels on morbid themes for the delectation of the sophisticated, as Black Mask horror stories are for the unsophisticated. He might also do far more; he might go beyond negation, beyond futilitarianism, beyond disgust with life...
...recent questionable left on the undergraduate door-sill by the Harvard Critic reminds us that that defunct publication is stirring within its whited sepulchre. With what rosy promises they beguiled the eager freshmen into the wolf-tended folds of their subscribers; with what lurid phrases they depicted the Alpine peaks of journalism which they were about to scale! Tenacious memoirs will recollect that toy booklet which appeared last fall, so scholarly in its denatured, so anxiously emulous of its elder brethren. A column of humor painted the Lampoon's lily an article on Harvard indifference fairly stole Mother Advocate...
...novel, shows New England apple snatchers scratching at their arid meadows, bravely but without much recompense. One full year with the Shaw family and their neighbors makes rural life seem as lively as a cycle on Broadway. In the winter the Polish Janowskis move into the barn next door, Brother George Shaw's cow dies and Step-daughter Doris, who wants to go to Boston, yowls when told to stay at home. In the spring, young Jen Shaw (Jean Muir) falls in love with Stan Janowski (Donald Woods) and Brother George's wife prepares to run away...