Reading California Fiction

THE CHINESE PARROT

    Charlie Chan is, I’m guessing, the most famous Asian American in literature. But he’s known mostly from his movies. Between 1926 and 1949 some forty-five films featured the perspicacious detective from Honolulu. The number of Chan novels, however, is only six. Biggers began writing them in 1925, after a fairly successful career as a critic, playwright and mainstream novelist. He probably would have written more, but he died of a heart attack in 1933 at the age of forty-eight. Only one other Chan novel, Behind That Curtain (1928), is set primarily in California.

    The Chinese Parrot by Earl Derr Biggers. Bobbs-Merrill (1926), 316 pp.
    Sally Jordan has left Hawaii to sell the Phillimore pearls, the last valuable piece of the family fortune. She turns to an old friend, San Francisco jeweler Alexander Eden, to negotiate the sale to a wealthy New York businessman, P. J. Madden. The deal can’t be closed because pearls are still en route. Sally has entrusted them to a former houseboy and present Honolulu police officer, Charlie Chan. Madden unexpectedly demands that they be delivered to him at his ranch near Barstow. When Chan arrives, Eden sends his son Bob south to complete the transaction. For security reasons, the jewels remain with Chan, who makes the trip disguised as an itinerant house servant. When the two show up at the ranch, their suspicions about Madden grow.
    The main interest of the book, of course, lies in its portrayal of Charlie Chan, one of the world’s most famous literary detectives. He’s on his first trip to the mainland and is none too pleased with what he finds. The desert is uninviting, but it’s the racial discrimination that galls. Chan solves the crimes -- the first murder occurs almost as soon as he gets to the ranch -- with the sagacity that readers might expect. But he’s not the novel’s main character. The story revolves around Bob Eden, a more traditional literary protagonist, and is largely told from his point of view. As mysteries go, this one seems to have too many characters and not enough clues. Even so, fans of the genre are likely to enjoy it.

THE PICAROONS

    Now here’s a surprising passage: “I reckon you don’t guess a colored person can hate white folks as much as white folks hate niggers, but they do sometimes, and I despise a white man more than if I were a sure-enough black woman. I’m a quadroon, but I’m a heap prouder of the quarter black blood in my veins than I am of the three parts white. The black comes from the kindest, gentlest race that ever lived, and the white streak is from the vilest people I ever knew. If I had my way, I’d be all African.” She might sound like an overwrought Chicago Congregationalist but is actually a fictional drug smuggler from the turn of the last century. The Picaroons is available online. The quote is from p. 167 of the English edition.

    The Picaroons by Gelett Burgess and Will Irwin. McClure, Phillips and Co. (1904), 284 pp.
    Three customers of Coffee John’s Barbary Coast restaurant in San Francisco, all way down on their luck, are in for an unexpected treat. The proprietor lays before them a feast worthy of Delmonico’s. They enjoy the meal, then demand an explanation. Coffee John tells the story behind what is an annual banquet for unsuspecting customers. The three follow with stories of their own, each focusing on why the narrator has fallen into straitened conditions. They finally go their separate ways and soon meet various other Barbary Coast inhabitants. The new acquaintances also have tales to tell.
    In this follow-up to The Reign of Queen Isyl, Burgess and Irwin turn their attention to San Francisco’s underclass. Picaroons, they explain in an opening note, are petty rascals of the sort featured in Spanish literature’s Romance of Roguery. Among the rogues in their gallery are an unscrupulous reporter, an intermittently successful gambler, a bogus psychic, a phony war hero, and a tattoo artist involved in a kidnapping scheme. All the misdeeds are presented with a light touch. Even hatchet-murders are not taken very seriously. The writing style relies on sardonic embellishment and may seem old-fashioned to modern readers. Those interested in the evolution of the English language, however, will probably appreciate the abundant use of slang. All in all, the book offers a mildly amusing look at life in San Francisco a century ago.

HOLLYWOOD DYNASTY

    Two points about “Hollywood Dynasty” were intriguing. First, it was written by a well known author of popular fiction whose female characters often operated on the edges of conventional morality. And second, it was long enough for a book but never appeared in book form. The subject was attractive, too, since Viña Delmar had been in Hollywood long enough to know what she was writing about. As it turned out, the novel, which appeared as a serial over five monthly issues of Cosmopolitan, was quite a disappointment.

    “Hollywood Dynasty” by Viña Delmar. Cosmopolitan, May - September 1939, 52 pp.
    Cory Galvin is a successful vaudeville performer whose rigid and moralistic wife, Judith, and young daughter, Corinne, have become comfortable in a life on the road. When the touring company gets to Los Angeles, Cory catches the eye of a silent film producer. Against the wishes of his wife, he abandons vaudeville and signs a movie contract. Cory quickly becomes a star. Judith doesn't appreciate his accomplishments, however, and is appalled by his dissolute friends. Prominent among them is hard-drinking actress Delora Leslie, who soon poses a threat to the marriage. Meanwhile, daughter Corinne is growing into a plain and untalented girl who is having her own troubles finding a place in Hollywood.
    This piece of fiction is just bad. It moves slowly and gets nowhere of interest. Incidents in the story do nothing to carry the plot forward. The characters lack depth and offer no reason for readers to care about them. The dialogue runs from limp to trite. There’s nothing like titillation here -- extramarital sex isn’t so much as hinted at, for example. Even behind-the-scenes glimpses of movie-making are missing. Thus little can be said for this novel, although the Cosmo blurb writer who called it “a sweeping saga of the motion picture industry” might deserve points for hyperbole.

AN INVASION OF PRIVACY

     Because I liked Remember Valerie March quite a bit, I wanted to read another novel by Katherine Albert. But I figured I was out of luck because that’s the only book she ever published. When I came across her novella “An Invasion of Privacy” in listings for American Magazine, I was hopeful that I would encounter another interesting piece of fiction. It didn’t happen, and (worse) I fear she wasn’t even trying to produce her best writing. Although it runs only nineteen pages, the novella still contains about 23,000 words -- plenty of room for first-rate fiction.

    “An Invasion of Privacy” by Katherine Albert. American Magazine, November 1948, 19 pp.
    Sally Belfort can’t shake the idea that she’s somehow responsible for the break-up of her relationship with her ex-boyfriend. Seeking a change of scenery, she leaves her job in a New York an advertising agency and moves west to stay with her aunt Willie in Los Angeles. No sooner does Sally arrive in town than she meets and falls in love with Bill Pruett, a friend of her aunt. He proposes on the fifth date, and they marry soon after. Sally wants to exult in her new love, but she worries that whatever she did wrong in her previous relationship will unravel in the marriage as well.
    This is a small story aimed at giving advice to women in struggling relationships. Don’t expect too much, it says. Don’t push too hard. Give your man some space. Trust that he loves you even if he’s not acting as you want. Maybe women after World War II needed to learn these lessons before the era of togetherness could begin. Or maybe it’s welcome advice anytime. In any case, Albert could have given her readers more -- a well-rounded central character, for example. Her failure to do that probably lies less in a lack of imagination and more in an estimate of the literary tastes of her audience.