... A hint from the first-year’s recognition of a book that was made to
remain in American literature:
_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say
that Comfort’s account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in
literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that
will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur
in _Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort’s gamut is long and he has
raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the
general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well
as the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that
is enjoyed only by the very best of books.
_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its
perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of
god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.
_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young
American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for
the “market” and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on
his own terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing
revelation, _Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on
to a story of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much
farther will he go?
Mary Fanton Roberts in _The Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this
book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You
read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence
and gratitude. There is something strangely touching about words so
candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such
wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink
deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches.
This man’s words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing
into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a
quickened life.
Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation.
The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr.
Comfort’s rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It
is a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.
George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man’s life laid
absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one
has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made
uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more
important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but
others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility
of Mr. Comfort’s frankness.
Edwin Markham in _Hearst’s Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a
novelist of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest,
with passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over
words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he
has known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights.
He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large
meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out
of which we come, to whose great deep we return.
_12mo., Net, $1.25_