. LOOSE END By Neal Harman
As the title . suggests, Loose End (Arthur Barker,.. 7s. 6d.) is the auto- biography of yet another misfit who imagines That his destiny lies in any place but the one he happens to be in. Like many of such autobiographies it rouses in us no particular interest in the author himself, for the incidents never have the quality of true experi- ence : they leave_ him exactly where he was before; at a .self-imposed loose end, not having outgrown his adolescent bewilderment at the seemingly unfair demands of life. He was a dull clodhopping boy whose mind was starved with a longing for something he could not formulate—a very lonely, a very gawky, a very unhappy boy." When ht was seventeen he exchanged a life with comfortable prospects in England for penury in America. He dodges along the -usual road : - through
the underworlds of Kansas City and New York, meeting boxers, hoboes, gangsters and Greenwich village eccen- trics. Mr. Harman writes quite well, and his book would be interesting if ,the life he described Isve not so familiar And so ineffectual.
Previous page
