Anything Can Happen
By
$2.50
HARCOURT, BRACE
A PRODIGAL book. Thirty-one chapters describe in hard, concise idiom events in the lives of onetime schoolmates of the class of 1929 in a New York public school. Each of these narrative vignettes contains the germ of a novel. Never, it would seem, was there such deliberate wastage of material; but as a matter of fact nothing is wasted. The impact of the book is solid and crushing. Erom so many examples, from such varied materials, one gets a single, indelible impression of depression life in the United States for the young and hopeful. Many of these sketches appeared in the New Yorker and elsewhere. Each one stood on its own merits; some were better than others, but, combined as they are in this volume, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Like the fasces of a Roman magistrate, the bound rods gather strength and solidity one from another. This is a book of genuine significance as a picture of youth in these times. It is also a work of art. And it is, in some ways, infinitely depressing.
R. E. D.
W. H. C. WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN
R. E. D. RICHARD ELY DANIELSON
E. D. ELIZABETH DREW
W. F. WILSON FOLLETT
R. M. G. ROBERT M. GAY
R. S. H. ROBERT S. HILLYER