Cline's Review of "Tales of Intrigue and Revenge" by Stephen McKenna

Here is Cline's review of Tales of Intrigue and Revenge (1925), by Stephen McKenna, as published in the Books section of The New York Herald Tribune for 27 September 1925.  It is an artfully backhanded review, wherein Cline basically says that only six of the sixteen stories published in this collection are worth reading.

“A Brilliant Residuum”

Tales of Intrigue and Revenge.

By Stephen McKenna.

Boston: Little, Brown and Company. $2.50

Here is the first collection of short stories by the deft Mr. McKenna, who, after “Sonia” and some others, is now flowing dulcifluently on toward his twentieth volume.

Mr. McKenna is a virtuoso of exceeding brilliance. What a delight it is to follow him through his deftly turned sentences! I like the language, I like a man who can use it, just as I like to listen to a nimble pianist playing aimlessly with the keys; that is, of course, for not too long at a time. The first story is “The Acid Test.” Here is a burlesque in the form of a monologue by a very silly woman of the smart type. It is done with glitter and will stand reading aloud. Entirely amusing.

One is now at page 23: “Local Rules.” Get out your paste pot and brush all around the edge, and then press page 23 against page 22 until they firmly adhere. Page 25 is then likewise welded to page 24; and so on. . . .

At page 89 one may lay aside the brush. “Poetic Justice,” the story of a hectored rhymester who enjoys free lodging for weeks at the expense of the shrewd business men who chuckle between themselves over his helplessness, is pleasant. Leonard Merrick did the thing more divertingly.

Paste . . . to page 127.

“The Payton Tradition.” A husband and four boys did Mrs. Payton lose in Flanders, the last of them reported killed only after the jubilation of Armistice Day. Yet, choking down her tears, she wishes better luck to her housemaid. . . . It is really a moving story of wartime, with an impressive picture of the madness in London when the firing ceased. One wipes one’s eyes.

And “Barnzo”? “Barnzo” is excellent humor. The poor old fellow got run down by an automobile, and when they ran to his rescue they found him all hunched up. They tried desperately to straighten him out, and finally they did it, thereby killing him. For he was indeed “barn zo,” as he had been trying to tell them all through, but it was by parturition and not by baptism. He was a hunchback.

Paste . . . to page 181.

“Myrtle” is, I am prone to maintain, a thoughtful and well realized story. Desmond, Irish rebel, is captured and sentenced to be shot. Through a night of grisly expectancy he waits, musing on his love, his cause, his every dear thing; and he sees in the passion of that revery how inconsequently all desires and aspirations can be. When word of reprieve comes in the morning he . . . yawns.

And then, “A Mister Blenkinsop, a Diarist”! Ah, but what a title! Here is satire that one who likes Max Beerbohm will enjoy, and written no less sensitively than Beerbohm would have written it.

Paste . . . to the end.

The paste pot may now be covered for the night and the book put by the bedside for occasional rereading. Much mawkishness, much snappy story triviality and much John Bull snobbishness will have been pasted out. What is left is worth reading. And Mr. McKenna is a most brilliant writer.

Cline's Review of "The Red Cord"

When Cline visited his sister in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the autumn of 1925, he gave to his twelve year old nephew a book, The Red Cord: A Romance of China (1925), by Thomas Grant Springer,  Cline inscribed it as follows:  "Nov. 3, 1925. For Jack Wierengo . . . not because it is a perfect book; but because, reading it, you may learn something about a beautiful people; and wishing to know more, may buy and read and keep the two books of poems by Arthur Waley. Then you will have more to talk about, when next we go walking in the country, with Leonard."

Cline's review of the book was published in the 1 November 1925 issue of Books section of The New York Herald Tribune. It is not one of Cline's better reviews, as one can sense him struggling to find nice things to say. The Red Cord is an odd production. It was the first novel by Thomas Grant Springer (1873-1943), a hugely prolific contributor in the 1910s and 1920s to magazines like Snappy Stories and Telling Tales, among many others. It is the second book illustrated by the Chinese American artist Sun Yow Pang (the first being The Chinese Book of Etiquette and Conduct for Women and Girls, published in 1900). Perhaps its most distinguishing feature is the publisher's marketing idea of binding in a red cord tied to a Chinese coin as a bookmark. The Chinese-American community did not react favorably to the book. In a review headed "A Noose for the Author!" The Chinese Students' Monthly for April 1926 descried the book as "spreading chaos of misinterpretations": "To anyone that is familiar with China at all, it carries with it no Chinese atmosphere whatsoever. Of course, it has a few Chinese names labelled upon its characters; but these anybody can plagiarize if he cares to, from windows of laundry shops. . . . there is in the book naught, absolutely naught, that may be remotely called Chinese." 

Cline's review is reprinted below. I sent a copy of it to Jack Wierengo sixty-eight years after his uncle had given him the book.

“Drouth Flower”

The Red Cord.

By Thomas Grant Springer.

New York: Brentano. $2.

“An oriental romance should not be read on the run,” counsels John Luther Long in his preface to Mr. Springer’s tale of a coolie girl and the lovers who struggle for possession of her in a village in the interior of China. As who should say, one should not start walking from Fifty-ninth Street at 6:30 and get to the Brevoort for an early dinner. It is a cluttered ave­nue, that down which Mr. Springer masquerades in mandarin finery. It has taken me a fortnight of earnest plodding to follow him through at the pace he sets. But he wears his costume with an air, his gestures are convincingly authentic, and it is pleasurable in a degree to accompany him.

So Wo Loie, prettily dubbed Drouth Flower by Ho Fah Lee, captain of a Formosan junk, when he first sees her by her father’s rice paddy, lovely in spite of her privation in time of famine, is the coolie. So Wo Loie has tea rose checks, she wears lotus buds shamelessly in her hair, she has turbulent blood that provokes her to vivid coquetries. Her father and parents-in-law are continually, and with reason, chiding her for con­duct becoming only a sing-song girl. With many a pitfall Mr. Springer besets the path of his creature, and he leads her, eager and not at all deceived, many a time to the very brink. But, with a sense of obligation on his part that most creators do not seem to feel, he saves her every time. Thanks to his dependable miracles, she is delivered at the last intact into the sturdy arms of Ho Fah Lee.

Not in So Wo Loie and her non-­intoxicating amours does the book’s appeal lie. It is rather in the color of a provincial Chinese hamlet, not yet penetrated by our missionaries. It is in the affairs of So Ling Gee’s prosperous hong, and the temple of Kwan Yam, goddess of an austere sort of mercy, and the stall where Wang Ho, amiable charlatan, sits be­neath his tattered umbrella hung with devil charms and squints at the stars. Quite real does Mr. Springer make the village: the pro­cessional of the chanting populace, flogging the squat effigy of the Rain God to make him more attentive to their parched prayers; the clustering of the crowd in front of the temple where So Wo Loie prepares to join her dead husband by voluntary stran­gulation with the ritualistic red cord; the amusing struggle of the celestials to gratify their lush desires and nevertheless preserve their “face.”

Mr. Springer handles the town bet­ter than the individual, now and then with a touch of true lyric elan. His difficulty is his manner of explaining what So Ling Gee, or Wo Fat, or Ho Fah Lee is going to say, and then making him say it. The book in consequence is approximately twice as long as it should be. It is, indeed, a twice-told tale—once in the first person and once in the third. One should skip every other paragraph.

Thus in the end one will remember of it many lovely passages and no little entertainment. The book itself is decoratively bound, with real Chinese coin on a real red cord for bookmark.

The front flap of the dust-wrapper tells very little about the book itself, playing up the sillier aspects of the coin bookmark. The review in The Chinese Students' Monthly attacked this as complete nonsense: "And this coin, according to advertisement, is one that has been placed upon the altar of the Chinese Goddess of Mercy and is thus for ever an emblem of bliss and a talisman of everything that is happy and desirable. Of course, every Chinese reader knows that this is mere rubbish and has not a shred of truth in it. And what is more, every intelligent reader knows that the book is not worth even the copper coin that the red cord carries, be it true or false."

 And here is Sun Yow Pang's illustration of the Goddess of Mercy.