the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Elmer L. Rice : The Adding Machine

'But this is specially to thank you for the two books — the"Adding Machine" and "Men and Masses". Modern literature is very queer isn't it, but it's also extremely interesting. One has to get oneself accustomed to entirely new forms — that which they embody is as old as the world because it is variant of the human story. I thought both those books — I can't call them plays — very striking and I'm so grateful because that is just the kind of thing I miss, not knowing about them. Yes, I've read "St Joan", this week. I thought it was wonderful; I wish I had seen it on the stage. It's so clever of him to have made her a bluff — not to say rough — country girl. Of course so she was, with the mysticism threaded separately through her.

I'll tell you a novel I thought extremely clever — "God's Step Children"; have you read it? by Millin. I've been chiefly absorbed however by a new book on Mohammadan architecture by a man I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of, namens Briggs. It's admirable, but unfortunately deals only with Egypt and Syria which is all he knows. So I've written to him and invited him to come here and study our monuments — without which he can't really (but I didn't tell him so) write a history of that kind at all. He makes a lot of mistakes when he alludes to them.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell      Print: Book

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