The Hospital

New York: Random House. Near Fine. (c.1939). 3rd printing. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a nice tight clean copy, with just the faintest bit of a dampstain on the bottom edge of the text block adjacent to the spine (no effect to the book's interior at all); embossed ownership stamp of MGM writer/producer Carey Wilson on both endpapers]. The author's first novel, following three books of poetry. Per Wikipedia: "A power outage at a hospital, caused by a drunk janitor, is the central event around which numerous characters' lives are portrayed. Each chapter is devoted to one character's point of view, a style common to all of Fearing's novels." A contemporary critic praised it as "more than a novel, it is a master painting of dynamic tone by a master artist. More important, the book is 100 per cent subjective, and the reader feels, must feel, wants to feel and enjoys feeling that he is the artist who is painting the picture of the hospital, the hospital as it lives and breathes through the sweat and action and thought of the people who run it and the people who are forced to inhabit it. [The author] is successful in carrying the close packed thought and the feeling tone rhythm of poetry into another medium, good prose." (With 25 primary characters, though, it sounds a bit like "Grand Hotel" on steroids -- maybe one reason why nobody ever tried to make a movie out of it.) .