_The Briary-Bush_, less varied than _Moon-Calf_, is decidedly profounder. It hovers over the dark waters of the unconscious on perhaps the surest wings an American novel has ever used. Though it has probed difficult natures and knows them thoroughly it does not flaunt its knowledge but brings it in only when it can throw some revealing light upon the outward perplexities of the lovers. Thus it gives depth and timbre to the story, and yet allows the characters to seem actual persons actually walking the world. At the same time, Mr. Dell does not possess a too vivid sense of externality. In both his novels all facts come through the mist of Felix's habitual confusion, and in that mist they lose dramatic emphasis; muted, they are not able to break up the agreeable monotone in which the narrative is delivered. But underneath these surfaces, seen so poetically, there is a substantial bulk of human life, immemorial folkways powerfully contending with the new rebellion of reason. _F. Scott Fitzgerald_ _Domesday Book_, _Poor White_, _The Anthology of Another Town_, _Main Street_, _Miss Lulu Bett_, _The Age of Innocence_, _The Romantic Woman_, and _Moon-Calf_ would make 1920 remarkable even if that year had not brought forth other novels of equal rank; if it had not brought forth James Branch Cabell's richly symbolical romance _Figures of Earth_ and Upton Sinclair's bitter indictment _100%_. And though most of these seem somber, there came along with them another novel in which were gaiety and high spirits and the fires of youth. F. Scott Fitzgerald in _This Side of Paradise_ also had broken with the village. He wrote of his gilded boys and girls as if average decorum existed only to be shocked. But he made the curious discovery that undergraduates could have brains and still be interesting; that they need not give their lives entirely to games and adolescent politics; that they may have heard of Oscar Wilde as well as of Rudyard Kipling and of Rupert Brooke no less than of Alfred Noyes. Mr. Fitzgerald had indeed his element of scandal to tantalize the majority, who debated whether or not the rising generation could be as promiscuous in its behavior as he made out. It is the brains in the book, however, not the scandal, which finally count. His restless generation sparkles with inquiry and challenge. When its elders have let the world fall into chaos, why, youth questions, should it trust their counsels any longer? Mirth and wine and love are more pleasant than that hollow wisdom, and they may be quite as solid.