It’s always good news when someone takes up unfamous novels from the past. So I was looking forward to What America Read (that’s past tense not a typo) by Gordon Hutner, a professor of English at the University of Illinois. I found the book informative and thought-provoking. Hutner has nothing specific to say about California, but he does provide a literary context in which to study (or just read) fiction from the mid-twentieth century. What follows are some preliminary notes on the book.
What America Read is both literary history and literary historiography. It focuses on realistic novels from the death of William Dean Howells in 1920 to the moribundity of the approach, which Hutner puts in 1960. He calls them middle-class novels, both in the sense that their readers were middle-class and in the sense that they spoke to middle-class concerns. (Hutner excludes genre fiction, which also had a mainly middle-class audience, because it had another purpose – escapist entertainment.) Realistic novels dealt with personal responses to modernization. In these books fledgling or established members of the middle class faced ethical conflicts and moral ambiguities in their efforts to deal with family, marriage, sex, work, politics, social mobility, assimilation and similar questions. Sometimes the books were set in the past to show contrasts and continuities with the periods in which they were written. Usually, however, the books aimed directly at contemporary issues by using current settings. Sometimes the books offered lessons that might be applied to their readers’ own problems. Sometimes they depicted what was happening, clarifying or ramifying issues and ultimately giving readers a deeper understanding of social change. For these reasons realistic novels maintained a persistent audience throughout the period.
By studying what Americans were actually reading, Hutner challenges today’s accepted literary history. In the standard narrative Howells’ death symbolized the end of realism as an imaginative force. In the 1920s it was usurped by modernism, as represented by Fitzgerald, Hemingway and especially Faulkner. As far as I understand it, these novels had little interest in social issues and offered readers primarily the pleasures of their form and style. In the 1930s modernist novels were challenged by proletarian fiction, which found middle-class problems irrelevant to the economic upheaval of the Great Depression. Modernism won out after World War II but was losing its creative energy. It then gave way to postmodernism, which was on the rise by 1960. For advocates of this historiographical position (which seems to include nearly all professors of American literature), novels that don’t fit in with this story aren’t worth thinking about. And so, with a few exceptions representing works by women or minorities, they’ve been ignored.
Hutner aims to shine some light on this lost American literary heritage. He’s not so much interested in best-sellers, though he discusses them, as on the totality of realistic novels and the messages they were sending to the middle class. He goes to the books themselves, to contemporary reviews and literary criticism, and to popular non-fiction that took up the same social issues. Hutner thus opens up a vast new territory for literary inquiry. It remains to be seen whether other scholars will follow him out of the quagmire of the canon.
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ORANGE COUNTY NOVELS
I received a query the other day asking if I could come up with some books set in Orange County. I didn’t have a lot of luck. The only books I’m sure are set there (because the authors say so) are The Adversary by H. H. Lynde and The Face of Evil by John McPartland. Probably set there are The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Cress Delahanty by Jessamyn West (largely because she grew up near Yorba Linda). Other possibilities are Hilda Strafford by Beatrice Harraden and The Girl on the Beach by George Sumner Albee. I have reviews for all but the West book. That’s a pretty skimpy collection. I’m guessing that Orange County didn't have much of a literary scene before 1960.
THE LAND THAT TOUCHES MINE
The Land That Touches Mine by John Sanford. Jonathan Cape (1953), 251 pp.
During World War II a twenty-something soldier who calls himself Stan Clarke is hitchhiking his way down the California coast. He has a bandaged hand, a Purple Heart ribbon and no specific destination. He goes inland, finally ending up outside El Centro. There he gets a lift from Jean Bell, a carhop in her early thirties whose husband has been killed in the war. She invites him to spend the night. Their consequent relationship is marked by hard-edged banter in which Jean tries to get Stan to reveal what has made him a “piss-poor proud gent that can’t even get along with himself.” It takes a while, but eventually she learns the truth.
This is one of California’s most self-consciously literary novels. The third-person narrator never calls the main characters by name, referring to them only as “the soldier” and “the woman.” The narrative is often interrupted by Stan’s thoughts, printed in italics and relayed in the second person. These are usually flashbacks to events in which he feels he behaved discreditably. Chapters begin with poems that focus on injustices in American history. Sanford is trying to equate Stan’s personal shortcomings, incessant thoughts of which are making him angry and depressed, and the wrongs and hypocrisies of the United States, with which (it turns out) he is very familiar. Whether the author pulls this off is open to question. Readers who are looking for something unusual (and are not overly annoyed by implausibly pugnacious dialog) might well enjoy the book.
LAZARUS #7
We men are always looking for effective pick-up lines, so I thought I’d pass this one along (from pp. 4-5 of Lazarus #7): “I swore to myself on the way home that I was going to kiss the first decent white woman I met, and you’re she. I’ve had three years of sloe eyes and slant eyes and black teeth and yellow skins, and fever-burnt Christians and dried-up missionaries’ wives and quinine-filled hags.” In the book it works like a charm. Richard Sale (1911-1993) had a fifty-year writing career. He presumably produced many similarly helpful passages in his many novels, short stories and screenplays.
Lazarus #7 by Richard Sale. Simon and Schuster (1942), 299 pp.
Infectious disease specialist Steve Mason has stopped off in Hollywood for a short visit with an old friend, screenwriter Joss Henry. Mason soon meets some of Henry’s coworkers, notably Al Roche, bright young producer-director at Mogul Studios; Emily Wheaton, Roche’s key assistant, with whom Mason instantly falls in love; Gloria Gerard, the studio’s top female star; and Max Lekro, an strange physician who is trying to bring animals back from the dead. Mason is appalled when the group, fearing bad publicity, springs into action to cover up the murder of Roche’s erstwhile girlfriend, starlet Marion Ames. Honest cop Daniel Webster is investigating, but only on his own time. Meanwhile, ramifications of the murder endanger Mason and his new acquaintances.
If this novel had been published ten years later, the story’s narrator, Steve Mason, might have been a cynical tough-guy. Here, however, he’s a paragon of decency and high-mindedness. He’s shocked at Hollywood’s capacity to corrupt, has no interest in sex outside marriage, and never so much as imagines getting into a fist fight. With no qualms about the protagonist, readers can focus their attention on the mystery: why the victim was killed, who else is going to die, and of course who did it. Sale handles these traditional elements adeptly, tossing out clues as the story moves along. The ending is fairly surprising, though the connection between the murder and the title turns out to be tenuous. Fans of this sort of novel are likely to enjoy the book.
A ROMAN HOLIDAY
I’ve been staring at my bookshelf trying to figure out whose writing style Don Ryan reminds me of in his first two novels. It must be someone from after the First World War, when the sedate style of earlier years gave way to more journalistic prose. No one quite fills the bill. I’ll just need to keep thinking, I guess. Don Ryan (1889- ?) was a newspaper columnist in Los Angeles through most of the 1920s. He wrote for the movies from 1925 to 1941 and published his fourth and last novel in 1954. This book, by the way, has nothing to do with the 1953 Billy Wilder film of the same name.
A Roman Holiday by Don Ryan. Macauley (1930), 319 pp.
This novel is divided into two parts of nearly equal length. The first part, which starts before American entry into World War I, focuses on Tom Egan and Diana Hunter. Both are in their twenties. Tom, who still lives with his wealthy family in San Francisco, is trying to find meaning in his life. He worries especially that Nietzschean individuality is disappearing in modern society. Diana, whose real name is Maggie O'Hara, is a dancer at a Tijuana bar. She’s smart, ambitious, independent and uninhibited – qualities that soon lead her to bit parts in the movies. When the United States enters the war, Tom joins the Army. He meets Diana at his training camp near San Diego. It’s not long before the two begin an affair, one which has more staying power than either anticipates. The second part of the book tracks the vicissitudes of Diana’s film career in the 1920s.
Despite some gripping battlefield scenes, A Roman Holiday is essentially a story about the movie industry. The book provides many insider descriptions of movie makers at work and play. It offers some big-picture analysis too. Tom, a devotee of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, believes that Hollywood is purveying schlock to the numbed masses. Diana, on the other hand, eventually (and surprisingly) shows that movies can become a true art. As in Angel’s Flight (1927), Ryan employs a rambunctious style that features snappy dialog, outbursts of one- and two-word sentences, and frequent shifts from past to present tense. Unfortunately, he emulates a major problem of the earlier book by concocting an ending that seems forced and inappropriate. In any case, Diana Hunter emerges as the most complicated and self-sufficient woman in any Hollywood novel of the 1920s and 1930s. The book is must-reading for aficionados of movie fiction and could interest a larger audience as well.
A STIR OF ECHOES
A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson. Lippincott (1958), 220 pp.
Tom Wallace, writer for a Southern California aircraft manufacturer, lives in a suburban tract with his wife Anne and young son Richard. They’re renting a house that until recently was occupied by Helen Driscoll, sister of the owner. One Saturday Tom and his neighbors -- callous Frank and his repressed wife Elizabeth, also pregnant, from across the street; hen-pecked Ron and his would-be voluptuary wife Elsie from next door -- gather for a party. To enliven the festivities Ron allows himself to be hypnotized. Everyone is amused, but later that night Ron can’t get to sleep. Head aching and mind spinning, he enters the livingroom, where he sees the ghostly figure of an unknown woman. More strange happenings are on the way.
This novel has too many problems to work well. The weirdness that assaults Tom lacks a consistent manifestation. Sometimes he has run-ins with the ghost (who comes and goes for no obvious reason), sometimes he reads people’s minds, sometimes he foresees the future. While all the psychical spookiness upsets Tom and Anne, the threat it augurs, if any, remains unclear. Tom, the story’s narrator, tells of his fear at great length but not why he is frightened. Nor does he ever come up with a convincing explanation for his enhanced mental powers. As for the ghost’s tale, it ranges from expected to implausible. Perhaps Matheson intended this story to be a comment on suburbia, with its shallow amiability and deep maladjustments. If that’s the case, he needed a much sharper focus.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Cast of Characters by Al Morgan. Dutton (1957), 251 pp.
The book opens on the premiere of a new movie. Hobey Meadows, emcee of the live television coverage at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, is waiting for the arrival of celebrities connected to the film. As they show up, they become the main characters in a series of flash-back short stories. First up is Otto Freund, a once famous German director turned polisher of aspiring actresses. Others follow: screenwriter Carl Miller, who can’t make himself return to serious drama in New York; small-town movie columnist Mary Harwell, thrilled on her first visit to Hollywood; the assistant of semi-talented actor Buddy Tyler, who is recovering from his decision to own a prize-fighter; inexperienced director Porter Judson and his father, an unhappily retired comedy star of the 1930s; and film editor George Reitman, still trying to live down a gaff he made accepting his last academy award.
Perhaps trying to emulate the deviousness of his characters, Al Morgan (1920- ) originally subtitled the book, “a novel.” Of course, it’s actually a collection of short stories, any of which could stand by itself. The territory is pretty familiar, though the author injects freshness into some of the characters, notably the proud and arrogant film editor. All the characters are looking after their own interests. None (with the exception of the director’s father) is sympathetic. Several are downright nasty. Morgan sometimes lets his cynicism ooze over the top into silliness. He adds to the implausibility of the stories by tacking on O. Henry-style trick endings. The book is nevertheless readable. Those unacquainted with Hollywood exposés might enjoy it.
I COVER THE WATERFRONT
I Cover the Waterfront is unusual in that it’s better known for its title than its contents. The book was surprisingly popular when it came out in 1932. Enough people had heard of it to spur the creation of a movie and a song of the same name in 1933. Neither got to the essence of the book. The film, like the book, is set on the waterfront and features a newspaper reporter. But it also has a plot and an ongoing cast of characters – neither of which appears in the book. The movie has long been forgotten, but not so the song. It has become a jazz standard, recorded by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and others. The sad and lonesome lyrics express longing for a lover across the sea. In contrast, the narrator of the book isn’t sad, doesn’t admit to being lonesome, and has no lover anywhere.
I Cover the Waterfront by Max Miller. Dutton (1932), 204 pp.
Max Miller was a San Diego reporter who did cover the waterfront in the 1920s. The book contains a series of thirty-eight sketches, none more than a dozen pages long, that reflect his experiences. Some of the pieces appear to be straight reporting; others seem to be enhanced renditions of actual events. A few may be made up altogether. Most of the sketches -- I’m not quite ready to call them short stories -- focus on the waterfront. Men who sail small fishing boats receive particular attention, but other characters, flora, and fauna show up as well.
Miller’s treatment of the other elements in the title -- the first-person narrator and the way he goes about providing coverage -- give the book its unique personality. The narrator views himself and journalism with cynical disparagement. Assignments from his editor, to interview visiting celebrities, for example, or write a puff piece about a bogus historical attraction, lead him to feelings of worthlessness. On his own, however, writing the stories he chooses, he is more contented though still doubtful about his future. In the end the narrator, using a simple and direct style, turns out be the most interesting character in the book. Which, it should be added, is back in print.
