A Page of American Fiction

THERE was a day when the out-and-out "thriller" novel was a legitimate form of writing, when the author thought he had done his duty fully and well if his reader, upon turning the last grisly page, leapt into bed and pulled the blankets up around his ears, to quiver and quake the rest of the night. "Dracula" and "She" belonged to that school and fulfilled its requirements patly. Probably the fact of our early attachment to those volumes accounts for our disappointment in Mr. Cline's latest novel. "The Dark Chamber."

The potentialities for wholesale excitment which Cline offers are endless--lycanthropy, vampirism, astrology, and an isolated manor on the Hudson. All the paraphernalia are there, and it is irritating, having settled oneself for an evening of keeping hair and scalp connected, to have it descend into the customary muck of sex-repressions and eroticism. Mr. Cline commences by peopling his hall of horrors with supernatural terrors, and ends with a heavy-handed accent on the sexual.

Mordance Hall is owned by Richard Pride, who suffers from a mania for vicarious adventure. Having exhausted all that the modern world can extend in the way of romance, he turns to the dark chamber of his mind, from which he would draw the dark memories of the past. His wife, Miriam, combines the pleasant foibles of satyriasis and astrology, while Janet, her daughter, is a nympholept. Hugh, Pride's secretary and Miriam's lover, and Sally, the West African negress, addicted to voo-doo, complete this attractive menage. But we should mention Tod, the giant police-dog, whose essentially surly nature contributes materially to the plot. The advent of Oscar, the musician,--who tells the story,--with a set of brand-new and, comparatively, healthy passions, precipitates matters. Things move from bad to worse, and the climax is reached with a Saturnalia "a deux," two suicides, and the mutual assassination of Pride and Tod.

Much has been said and written about what is wrong with the modern novel, but "The Dark Chamber" exhibits two of its greatest defects. The irrepressible desire to wallow in the morbidities of sex is one. The other is the continual effort to attain a "precious" style. Cline's efforts run to the use of esoteric words and a "lyric" prose.