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AMERICAN DREAM.BY MICHAEL FOSTERWilliam Morrow and Co„ New YorkMjINGLISH high church andEnglish chapel; roisterer, renegade, and royalist; Catholic from Ireland, from Spain, Huguenot from France; fugitive and free man; Reformist from Holland; cavalier and puritan; commoner and aristocrat; patriot and self-seeker — each brought to the new land hislittle dream.Freedom, land, avarice, change, adventure, escape,, novelty, forgetfulness, ambition, idealism —each called it by his own name.But here, the dreams were pieced together, and they became one. And the American Dream was born.Shelby Thrall, newspaper reporter, imaginative, dreamer, was covering his last assignment before going with Julie and small Dinny to run a remote print shop on Crucifixion, bay. lonely and isolated, where a man might pon-dcn on those bonds, if any, which weld him to a forgotten and for-getting past. “A white shack amid a huddle of decaying sheds on awharf so old that the North Pacific whalers used to moor there ...the sooty funnels of some purse-seiners clustered under the windows.. .and three or four old windjammers.'’ The last assignment was routine, an old man dead in shabby lodgings, butShelby read there a line in an open book — “—since we have seen, then, that the American dream is one which..The man was old and poor, but the volume, “American Consciousness.” he left behind pointed the vague unrest of many moons in Shelby Thrall. Sitting with his rum-and-butter, when he knew that dinner and Julie were waiting, that queer memory, bringing forward glimpses of a life scarcely conceived, made him one sud-Jam.?*.. .__* fit 4 I 4 •plan, washed out with the inevitable departure.A day later, he came back to the chain of consciousness as he sorted old, yellowed, brittle letters in the attic, preparatory to departure. There Shelby Thrall makes vital his links to the past, and finds his answer to his wonderment on the American dream.Michael Foster has written a book of beautiful prose, stirring, marching forward, enthusing. In spite of the mental confusion and rebellion of the young reporter, it is a gusty volume, mystical only in one brief period, the attachment of the crippled poetess for Jean Francis Thrall, and then poetically rather than spiritually so. Shelby’s mysticism is only that of a man who thinks— or tries to. “American Dream” can keep you by the indoor reading light even in July, the strange seas and strange names, the winter plains of Dakota, the summer plains of Kansas, the restriction that is Boston living vitally on the pages.If one wishes- to be querulous, Mr. Foster had adopted a motion picture method of presentation, a flashback affair with Shelby emerging on occasion from between the tales of Jean Francis and of John. But if the young writers keep an eye on Hollywood, it is only because Hollywood has done very neatly, neatly in monetary returns at least, by their craft. This, rather, is a book to be read for the sheer delight of the pictures it conjures, for the people he forms with his pen. of apt comment.“American Dream” is a story of successively revolting generations. Jean Francis Thrall tossed off the restraints of Boston, after he had escaped one jump ahead of the Irish law, seeking him for gun running, revolted for perfect independence. John Thrall, Harvard graduate, answered some un-understandable urge, to go to Dakota to practice law and start a little newspaper. Injustice there roused his ire, and pointed the way for a life that would find its revolt in upholding the rights of the lesser folk, but showed the fine defeat eventually to be his. Kansas for John Thrall wasMary Parker, who denied' he Puritan heritage to go to Par for a life she never wanted, whe she found her marriage to Mat thew, as illegal; her revolt a pleas ant one from a dutiful life, wit marriage to Jean Thrall its onl charm. In Shelby was the sturdj indifferent, gallant fighters of th Thralls and the futile, resignec accepting strength of the Shelb and Parker inheritance, whic lacked the ability to be the pot ter of life, in spite of the Park ers who ran through the sno% from the Indian - surrounde blockhouse and who came sailin home from the Virginia capr with English prisoners and home made flag carrying thirtee stars.Ireland was suffering from th great famine when Jean Franc: Thrall, listed as Tom Shaugh nessy, made the bitter trip o the “Western Packet.” Form*: master of an opium clipper, th little change in names had bee necessitated by the gun runnin incident, although Jean had th uncomfortable feeling the Britis might be happier to be rid of hir by removal rather than by hang ing. Bold and brave and fooastfi and hostile toward the peasan about him, Jean Francis quelled mutiny, as Mary Parker looke down from the upper deck. Late he married her. and they had child. But not undersfandin people who had left the mothe country because of its traditior sought to inculcate them In thnewer land, he left Mary with a unborn child to go down to th sea again. When she heard agai from him he was a rajah in som oriental spot of languor and eas* and had many sons.John was the son of Mary an Jean Francis. In him was th determination of both parent tempered by the Parker traditio of duty. He married a strang inhibited woman in the Dakot town, who left him with his soi Erik, a couple of weeks old. H never saw her again. Shelby we the son of a second marriage, to woman as odd as had been Cath leen. a woman to whom the worl was not quite real. To them we born Shelby, the questioner.
Newspaper Details
Sunday Journal and Star
Lincoln, Nebraska, US
Sun, Jul 18, 1937
Page 35
Full Page
Clipped by
Adrienne C.
CA, USA 19 Aug 2024
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