ex-husband

JOHN RIDDELL

another of those thinly disguised broadway novels that mention you and you and you

Novel-writing in America seems to have struck a windfall. For years our lesser fiction-writers struggled in vain to create so much as one real person in our native literature; and then one day, glancing about them in despair, these harassed writers suddenly made the unique discovery that there were something like 150,000,000 real persons about them here in America and all they needed to do was to mention an actual name and presto! they would have a real life-like character for their novels, all ready-made, thus saving tremendous wear and tear on their literary imaginations, as well as insuring their novels at least one ardent reader.

From this beginning the idea has swept literary America like new brooms. Each day the presses turn out more and more novels of New York and Chicago and Hollywood which include all the current Broadway celebrities (either by name or by reputation), list some anonymous scandals, tell over (and over) the sacred beads of the Algonquin Rosary, mention with nice tact each literary critic, and name Walter Winchell at least four times. And these real persons in turn, far from being offended at being thus rudely conscripted to furnish local color for their friends' novels, have rushed out themselves to gather this literary hay while the sun shines and have written still more novels mentioning their contemporaries, until the whole literary life in New York has come to resemble a vast happy (if vicious) circle, marching around and around in lockstep with hands on shoulders, like a Rotary picnic, all humming to themselves that old, old chant: "Merrily we roll a log, roll a log, roll a log. ..."

Therefore, encouraged by the critical murmurs of "How lifelike!" which have arisen, as the New York reviewers, one by one, have recognized their own names in print, as well as by the increasing public curiosity in identifying the thinly-disguised characters in these novels, our own staff novelist, Mr. Riddell, has prepared here in these pages his own Big Confession Novel of New York, wherein, according to the custom, he hints at several ambiguous affairs with disguised celebrities, mentions all the critics, and includes enough other New York names to assure him of a sale of at least ten editions. This book, to be even more mysterious, is dedicated to "J. R."

* Don't let on that I told you about it though.

Solutions to the identity of the characters in this novel must be in the offices of Vanity Fair not later than Friday.

CHAPTER ONE: Never shall I forget the fatal day that K., my wife, decided to leave me. One moment I was living in a world of happiness, my career, my home, my future all assured; the next my dreams were crashing about my ears. To be sure, my wife had once been the mistress of a prominent New York publisher in the Upper Forties with a wen on his left thigh, a blonde moustache, and a slight but noticeable lisp, as well as having had an affair with a certain well-known Broadway producer wearing a striped blue suit, yellow shoes, light grey felt hat, and answering to the name of Harry; but that had all been before I married her. I had never thought that K.—my K.— could cease to love me!

At the time that she broke the news to me, I had been blissfully reading the newspapers in our cozy little apartment. One moment I was enjoying the entertaining columns of Broun, Sullivan, F. P. A., Hope, Winchell, Crouse, Phillips, Hellinger, Johnson, Sobol, McIntyre, O'Hara, F. P. Dunne, Jr. (Note to Printer: Check up on newspaper columnists and add any names I may have omitted.) The next I was plunged in despair.

"I am leaving you," K. announced casually.

"You cannot leave me," I gasped. "What shall I do without you? Who will support me?"

"Support yourself," she replied callously. "Get a job as a dramatic critic like Kelcey Allen, John Anderson, J. Brooks Atkinson, Whitney Bolton, Robert Benchley, John Mason Brown, Charles Darnton, Rowland Field, Gilbert Gabriel, Robert Garland, Percy Hammond, Robert Littell, Burns Mantle, George Jean Nathan, Arthur Pollock, Gilbert Seldes, Alison Smith, Walter Winchell, Richard Watts, Alexander Woollcott (Note to Printer: Add any others that you can think of). Get a job as a literary critic like Harry Hansen, Carl Van Doren, Isabel Paterson, Joseph Wood Krutch, Henry Seidel Canby, Burton Rascoe, William Soskin, Mary Rennels, Jonathan Edwards, William Benét, Christopher Morley, Agnes Smith, William Allen White, George Currie, William Lyon Phelps, Bob Sherwood, David Cort, H. L. Mencken, Kerry Scott, Laurence Stallings, Harry Salpeter, Ward Marsh, Elrick Davis, Nat Ferber, Ted Shane, Baird Leonard, John Neihardt, Lincoln Colcord (Note to Printer: Do you think of any others?). Get a job as a motion-picture critic (Note to Printer: Fill these in yourself). I buried my head in my hands. When I raised it again she had finished.

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"You are leaving me for someone else," I accused her bitterly. "You are going to live with a certain notorious newspaper columnist on a New York tabloid, short, thick-set, thirty-three years of age, with a deep baritone voice and a luxurious apartment in Greenwich Village where he throws elaborate orgies."

"On the contrary," she denied hotly, "I am leaving because of your affair with a well-known Broadway model, blonde, vivacious, of immigrant extraction, the curves of whose soft body excite male appetites to unholy passion and the letters of whose name, if rearranged, would spell 'Obelisk'."

I looked her accusingly in the eye. "That is not true," I said slowly. "I have heard on authentic source that you love another—a prominent motion picture actor from Hollywood—who is it? John Gilbert? Lionel Barrymore? Victor McLaglen? Buddy Rogers? Richard Arlen? Louis Wolheim? Karl Dane? William Haines? Bull Montana? Eddie Quillan? William Boyd? Douglas Fairbanks? Jr.? Bob Armstrong? Ronald Colman? Emil Jannings? Charles Chaplin? Raymond Griffith? William Powell? George O'Brien? William S. Hart? Walter Winched? Lon Chaney?—"

"Stop!" she interrupted. (Note to Printer: Inasmuch as she interrupts me here, we don't have to finish the above list.) "Do you suppose I am ignorant of your own scandalous behavior? What tongue on Broadway has failed to link your name with Lenore Ulric, Ethel Barrymore, Helen Morgan, Florence Nash, Mary Nash, Clare Eames, Mrs. Fiske, Margalo Gillmore, Pauline Lord, Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes, Lynn Fontanne, Beatrice Lillie, Marilyn Miller, Esther Howard, Ann Harding, Zita Johann, Libby Holman, Violet Homing, Francine Larrimore, Elsie Ferguson, Helen Westley, Walter Winched, Queenie Smith, Mrs. Thomas Whiffen (Note to Printer: And the rest of Equity's list.)"

We faced each other defiantly.

"Then it is—good-bye?" I asked.

The slam of the door in my face was her only answer.

CHAPTER TWO: She was gone! K. was gone! I was alone—terribly, horribly alone. Where should I go? Where should I eat? To whom could I turn? Disconsolately I seized my hat and stick, descended to the street, hailed a cab. Life was closing in on me. Alone!

"To the Algonquin," I told the driver.

For a moment I stood in the familiar lobby and gazed half-heartedly at the well-known faces crowded about the famous Round Table: George Kaufman, Marc Connolly, Harold Ross, Dorothy Parker, Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Charles Brackett, Frank Sullivan, John Peter Toohey, Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, Neysa McMein, Brock Pemberton. Peter Arno, George Abbott, Percy Crosby, Sidney Howard, George Chappell, Rollin Kirby, Jack Shuttleworth, Deems Taylor, Theodore Dreiser, Ruth Hale, Sherwood Anderson, Norman Anthony, John Held, Ralph Barton, Donald Ogden Stewart, Katherine Ursula Parrott, Lindsay Parrott, Hugh O'Connor, Alice Hughes, Walter Winchell, Reinald Werrenrath, Robert Bridges, George Palmer Putnam, John Farrar, Ray Long, H. N. Swanson, William Seabrook, William McFee, Joan Lowell, Guy Holt, Katherine Brush, Don Marquis, Russell Patterson, Jefferson Machamer, Eugene O'Neill (Note to Printer: That should be enough to give you the general idea.)

I turned sadly and went out the door again.

CHAPTER THREE: Fifth Avenue!

On all sides as I strolled north a procession of familiar faces streamed past me one by one, faces from all walks of life. Henry Ford. Mayor Walker. Jack Dempsey. Clarence Darrow. Herbert Bayard Swope. Thomas A. Edison. Clarence Chamberlain. John D. Rockefeller. Ida M. Tarbell. Babe Ruth. President Hoover. Lee Shubert. Walter Winchell. Bishop Cannon. Harry Sinclair. George Gershwin. [Note to Printer: Add here the entirelist of names from Who's Who.)

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I felt so utterly alone.

CHAPTER FOUR: In desperation I hurried into the crowded lobby of the Plaza, nodding briefly to Secretary of State Stimson, John Coolidge, the Dolly Sisters, and Colonel Lindbergh. I must speak to someone. I must fill the gaping wound in my heart. I must discover one sympathetic soul who would fill K.'s place. Oh, K.!

In an agony of loneliness I lifted the nearest copy of the New York Telephone Directory, and my eye wandered listlessly down the file of names: A.A.A.A.l Real Estate, A.A. Aaron Charcoal Company, A.A.A. Safe Moving Company, A.B.C. Nurse Registry, A.B.C. Stable Manure Company, Aabac Company, Aagenas Arthur, Aalbue Raymond P., Aalholm Rosalie Miss, Aalto Anna Miss, Aan Peter, Aarcher Cabot and Cartier Inc chems & engrs (Note to Printer: Just keep on writing down all the names until you reach Zzyzz R. Cantarrana, then count up the number of people mentioned, and print exactly that many copies.

(THE END)

Ex-Wife, anonymous. (Cape & Smith) Broadway Interlude, by Faith Baldwin, and Achmed Abdullah (Payson & Clarke)

New York, by Nat J. Ferber (CoviciFriede)

Fanfare, by Richard Halliday (Putnam)

Hangover, by Max Lief (Liveright) American Colony, by Charles Brackett Broadivay Murders, by Charles Dougherty

Park Avenue, by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. (Macauley)

Born to Be, by Taylor Gordon (CoviciFriede)

BALANCING THE BOOKS

Last month, in a childish burst of confidence, we concluded this department with a paragraph stating that for the first time in history we were actually up to date at last in our book-reviewing ("date" being then the middle of August) ; whereupon the make-up department slyly removed the entire body of our article in one neat stroke, leaving us only the title and the above-mentioned last paragraph for consolation, and setting our date-line back, roughly, to the time of Charlemagne.

Starting from Charlemagne, therefore, and brushing rapidly over Paradise Lost, Pendennis, and the Holy Bible, we start this department once more in the vague hope that if we review enough books very rapidly this month, we may perhaps recreate the illusion that we are an up-to-date book-reviewer who keeps abreast of the times. Of course, as far as any serious pretentions toward a comprehensive summary of contemporary literature are concerned, we have long since abandoned that field to the Sunday Book Review Section of the New York Times. What we attempt to give here each month (the make-up department willing) is merely a statement of some of our likes and some of our dislikes, selected at random from the current publications; and the value of this section, if it has any value at all, is to communicate to those of our readers whose taste happens to coincide with ours a little of our own enthusiasm for certain latter-day books we have liked.

And in order to divorce this section from the monthly parody-criticism that precedes it, we shall list it hereafter under the separate head "Balancing the Books," and hold Mr. Riddell strictly irresponsible for any judgments, heresies, or hysteria contained herein.

Now, let's see where are we.

Books we have enjoyed especially this past month or two have included Ends of the Earth by Roy Chapman Andrews (Putnam), The Son of Perdition by James Gould Cozzens (Mor- row), Dumas, the Incredible Marquis by Herbert Gorman (Farrar and Rinehart), How to Be a Hermit by Will Cuppy (Doubleday Doran), Dear Sooky by Percy Crosby (Putnam), Arthur Schnitzler's Little Novels (Simon and Schuster) and The Beautiful Years by Henry Williamson (Dutton).

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Ends of the Earth by Roy Chapman Andrews is a book in a million. We have already oversaid our say on the School of Nancy Travel-Literature; even William Beebe, the Alexander Woollcott of travel-writers, sometimes gives the faint suspicion of wearing spats over his diving-shoes; but Mr. Andrews is always thoroughly straightforward and simple and sincere, his stuff is there, he writes a decent, masculine, modest narrative of his experiences, and it is utterly fascinating reading. To be sure, Andrews' prose is not great prose; it does not match, for example, the beautiful and sensuous descriptions of Eugene Wright, who is beyond doubt the most talented of our travel-writers. But I should rather read Andrews, all the same; he writes with his boots on; and I recommend Ends of the Earth wholeheartedly as a grand, grand book of excitement and romance and adventure that you will not lay down till you have gobbled it from cover to cover.

James Gould Cozzens showed his stuff somewhat in The Cockpit; now in The Son of Perdition he displays even more conclusively that he is an individual and important novelist, with a unique fire, with all the passionate intensity of the early Hergesheimer, a creator of living and individual characters that you do not forget, a dramatist, and above all an ironist. The Son of Perdition is a novel of Cuba, colorful and bizarre and climactic in its pace; under Cozzens' powerful sense of drive it comes to life with its first page, and it does not die with the last. Here is a novel that you must not miss.

I have always felt that Booth Tarkington's Penrod was one of the most over-rated characters in American fiction; but it required this sequel entitled Penrod Jashber (Doubleday Doran) to convince me what a twodimensional, shallow, and, in a strict sense, wholly humourless creation he really is. Penrod is not a small boy at all; he is a collection of newspaper gags about small boys, a little cheap and a little cruel, written (like that offensive companion-novel Seventeen) as a superficial farce for adults and not in any sense as a true or sympathetic interpretation of childhood. So it is of extraordinary interest at this time to contrast Penrod with Percy Crosby's Dear Sooky, the fragile and beautiful sequel to Skippy, a collection of random letters of a small boy which, in philosophy and pathos, represent to my mind the very height of contemporary American humour. Crosby is a great humorist because he is a greater poet. And perhaps that is the true explanation of why Skippy is great and Penrod is merely cheap: because Crosby had a sense of real humour and Tarkington, I suspect, has none. I have no doubt that the dear American public will rush out to buy Penrod Jashber in large quantities; but I have even less doubt as to which book will be remembered fifty years from now.

Will Cuppy's How to Be a Hermit is just simply swell. It is next to impossible to describe this remarkable volume; suffice it to say that it rollicks from cover to cover, twinkling continuously with Will Cuppy's inimitable humour, viewing (from a hermit's dispassionate point of vantage) clams, Frederick Barbarossa and the perils of being President—altogether one of the most thoroughly enjoyable, merry, mad compendiums of jolly good fun we have seen in a dog's age.

Dumas; The Incredible Marquis by Herbert Gorman is a magnificent, and almost entirely successful, attempt to capture between covers the whole tempestuous life and times of Alexandre Dumas. Written in galloping, high-hearted, half-mocking prose, with a sweep like the swath of a sword, this novel—or so it reads—presents in brilliant pageant the incredible vanities, the sufferings, the madcap gestures, the childishness, the eternal good-nature of this gross genius. And, be it ever to Mr. Gorman's credit, he is in love with his subject. You see Dumas; you see this Paris where he reigned; it is vivid, happy, spicy reading.

Henry Williamson writes with rare and subtle music; it was the exquisite grace of his prose that made The Pathway a work of art; and in The Beautiful Years he has produced another book of sympathetic and enduring beauty.

There are others. Du Bose Heyward's The Half Pint Flask is a Bierce thriller, conveying in fifty-odd short pages the haunting magic of voodooism that Mr. Seabrook described in The Magic Island. Mississippi by Ben Lucien Burman is a romantic and colorful story of the Father of Waters (if I may coin a phrase), written by an artist who knows his locale and who can preserve the authentic flavour of life among his characters in a thoroughly readable novel. I Thought of Daisy by Edmund Wilson is an uneven and brilliant and provocative novel, which I found thoroughly interesting.

The Lady Is Cold by E. B. White is a book of verse that is rare good fun. White is more lyric and less raucously bitter than other poets of the ironic school; often his last-line snapper, at the tail of a lovely piece of verse, shouts "Only fooling!" in a slightly self-conscious key. And speaking of verse, there is Buck Fever by H. M. Robinson, a volume of poems displaying real vigour.

And, in conclusion, there is the most irritating advertisement of the month, wherein Dutton's introduces Willy Pogany's Alice in Wonderland with the bland statement that "a new illustrator has long been needed for Alice in Wonderland." If any proof of the asininity of this statement were need'ed, one glance at Pogany's watered Tenniel should be sufficient.

Which brings us up, roughly, to January 13, 1863, and if the impish make-up department does not cut any more of our copy we should be able to start next month's section with a sizzling up-to-date review of Uncle Tom's Cabin.