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this first novel by a short-story writer and poet whose name is not unfamiliar. The shame and vileness and cruelty and ugliness in this creative book are not Mr. Algren's. Those who feel that one should choose one's books as he chooses one's friends; and those who, like a wealthy and gentle lady of my acquaintance, cannot bear to drive through the "slums"--it upsets her for a whole week--are not required to buy and read it. The place is the Little Poland of North-Side Chicago. The time recent. The people, mostly Polish, are of a congested neighborhood common to all big cities in United States where people of common racial and national strains huddle together. The story tells of how Bruno Bicek, Lefty Biceps, only a kid of 17 but a big fellow, star pitcher of the Warrior's Social Athletic Club, ambitious to be a big fighter--lots of promise, too--shows the yellow streak that is in him, or rather, perhaps, the confused callowness of the young male hunting with the pack, scared to break the rules of fang and claw. He's scared of ridicule, inside. That, I think, is the point. He's also scared physically of what might happen to him if the pack turned on him. So he betrays his girl--and she't not only his girl but even before he thought of her in that way she had been part little sister, part sweetheart, from childhood. That hurts. It hurt at the time, when, out of bitterness become viciousness, he knocks down the Greek and then kicks him in the jaw breaking his neck. It is murder and the gang melts away. Two of the gang take the girl, Steffi, to the barber who has a few cautious fingers in a number of rackets as well as an in with the law. Barber finds a home for her in Mama Tomek's establishment. That hurts. That is Bruno's never-get-over, even after he becomes a mere hanger-around in Mama Tomek's place in the role of bouncer. But before he shows up at Tomek's place he has been picked up by the police for a hold-up, put through police inquisition and served time. That story, the middle section of this novel, was published in abbreviated form in the Southern Review and included in the O. Henry Memorial collection for 1941. That was an extraordinarily powerful but incomplete piece of work there. It is completed here. Every one is bound to compare this with the novels of James T. Farrell. There is as much difference between them as between Little Poland of North Chicago and the rangier spaces of the South Side district where Studs and his gang flourished. His people were all English-speaking, never for a moment thought of themselves as foreigners. Farrell's magnificent realism and documentation, rising through sheer cumulative power to dramatic height, is a study of the ugliness of American city life--little cities as well as big ones. He took the Irish of a Chicago neighborhood because he knew it, because he came out of it. Compared to the people of all of Farrell's books, little Poland is foreign, lost, astray in the Chicago wilderness where perhaps the hand of the potter is most shaky. Algren has forged an effective style; I'm for the style, but by the same token I find the writing often stylized. There's a good deal of self-consciousness in this writing. But it has moments in passages you are not likely to forget. There are scenes--in the prize ring, espeicially in Mama Tomek's law-abiding house--that show an original creative sensibility and quality not to be denied. I question not the verity but the completeness of the story even within its limits. But this is an unusual book and a brilliant book. For those who can take it, it should prove also an exciting story.