Word: bolitho
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Overture is the posthumous play of William Bolitho (Ryall), a journalist whose hunger for ideas led him to attempt expression of baffling concepts. He died last June at Avignon, France, of peritonitis following an appendectomy which a War-time injury had made risky. While a lieutenant in the British Army, he and 15 companions were buried alive in a trench after a mine explosion. His companions died, he was unconscious for several weeks, hospitalized for a year. His play is in many ways characteristic of his life: tragic, bursting with inarticulated thought. The scene is laid in post-War Germany...
Died. William Bolitho (Ryall), 39, South African English-Dutchman, one-time fisticuffer, ship's stoker, reporter. Wartime British Army lieutenant (buried alive in a Somme dugout and consequently rendered unconscious for weeks, unhealthy for life), Paris correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, author (Murder for Profit, Leviathan, Twelve Against the Gods, Italy under Mussolini, Cancer of Empire), dramatist (Overture, 1920), recently a vivid, penetrating triweekly colyumist for the New York World: of peritonitis after an appendectomy; at Avignon, France...
TWELVE AGAINST THE GODS-William Bolitho-Simon & Schuster ($4). "In reality, the whole history of human progress from the flint-jabber to standing room in the subway . . . is the result of two forms of effort, the guard and the search, made by the Home-stayer on the one hand, and by the bold affronter of the new on the other; that is, by the citizen and the adventurer." Upon this somewhat labored proposition Author Bolitho presents, en brochette, the characters of Alexander the Great, Catiline, Mahomet, Columbus, Cagliostro and Seraphina, Casanova, Charles XII of Sweden, Lola Montez, Napoleon...
With such abstruse connections, William Bolitho ties his subjects to an arbitrary definition of "adventurer" and a theatrical title. Thus also, with a stretched premise, he gives himself an excuse for an eccentric examination of their behavior, scandals, intentions, tragedies...
...great adventurer; a beautiful addition to our collection." Catiline captained all the gangs in Rome in the enterprise, not of rebuilding his personal fortune, but of leveling all fortunes, murdering all governors, burning a city. He perished "not ingloriously," in "the adventure of death." Because the intelligence of Bolitho is very nearly equal to the purely technical and somewhat Carlylian brilliance of his style as a writer, his individuals bear resemblance to queerly grouped and overstuffed animals in a museum, regarding their audience with dazed and overconfident ferocity. But if the characters are not alive, Author Bolitho's writing...