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MIDNIGHT ON THE DESERT-J. B. Priestley-Harper...
Wintering with his household of nine on an Arizona ranch last year, Novelist Priestley spent an intensely ruminative 20 minutes one midnight in his writing shack analyzing himself, his U. S. travels, his possible travels in the Hereafter. His conclusions, considerably expanded and set down in Midnight on the Desert, show the familiar Priestley discursiveness, less of his easy-going humor than usual and a not-always recognizable U. S. On that night he felt like "a half-starved little coyote . . . howling to the stars...
Singing the glory of Arizona's climate, landscape and cowboys, Author Priestley less resembles a coyote than an oldtime prophet. The prophet's rhapsodies change to a jeremiad when he tackles U. S. women, Manhattan, Hollywood, the stricken man-made landscape between, the profligate waste of natural resources, the "chilly dank hell" of moral decay rising from U. S. indifference to its gangsters, its rich men and their political ineptitudes...
...book has its basis, as the title suggests, in thoughts which passed through the author's mind one night in the desert. Priestley had spent the winter of 1935 in America, and on the eve of his departure, he goes to his shack in the desert to collect his manuscripts and notes. As he passes over the scattered pages, memories of their significance come into his mind. With this as the structure of his book, he goes on with no definite order to give his memoirs and thoughts about various incidents and phases of his travels in this country...
...Midnight on the Desert" stands out as a document of our age. It might well prove a reference book to future theorists who attempt to understand the inner workings of the Twentieth Century mind. Priestley's smoothly flowing style and his calm and unhurried manner make this book more of a friendly chat that a formal discourse on life and contemporary topics. As we turn the last pages, we feel that we have come to know J. B. Priestley better than Dr. Johnson, perhaps better even, than our own friends. This book is more than an "Excursion into Autobiography...