A Fifties Mystery Novel: The April Robin Murders, by Craig Rice and Ed McBain

The April Robin Murders, by Craig Rice and Ed McBain

a review by Rich Horton

A little break from old bestsellers this week. Instead I'm writing about a detective novel from the '50s.

Craig Rice was born Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig in 1908. Her parents did not want an infant messing with their world traveling, and basically abandoned the child to a string of relatives. Eventually she settled with an aunt and uncle, the Rices. Hence her penname, derived from her surname and her adoptive parents' surname. She was married four times and had three children, had numerous affairs, became an alcoholic, and died fairly young in 1957.

Ed McBain, best known by far for his 87th Precinct novels, was born Salvatore Lombino in 1926 and legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in 1952. (He always said Hunter was the most innocuous "white-bread" name he could come up with, but the name also echoes a couple of schools he attended.) Ed McBain was his usual pseudonym, but he also often published as Hunter, and early in his career published as S. A. Lombino. Though best known for his mysteries, he published a number of SF stories, mostly as Lombino or Hunter but also under a few more pseudonyms. (I have read a couple of the Lombino stories, his earliest, and wasn't impressed, but he got better.) He died in 2005.

Craig Rice's most successful series featured a detective named John Joseph Malone. But The April Robin Murders is from her second series, which featured Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak, a pair of small-time photographers who keep getting into trouble and needing to solve mysteries to get out of it. The April Robin Murders was left unfinished at Rice's death in 1957, and McBain finished it and it was published in 1958. The back cover copy of my edition (a book club edition, which I found in an antique store in Union, MO) says that the book was 3/4 finished, but, according to Wikipedia, McBain, that is, Hunter, claimed it was only half-finished and he had to solve the mystery before finishing it. Based on style and pace, I would have guessed Rice wrote rather more than half the book, though I certainly believe McBain came up with the solution.

Bingo is the main POV character. He and Handsome have come to Hollywood to make their fortunes. (They started in New York.) They call their company The International Foto, Motion Picture, and Television Corporation of America, but basically they are street photographers -- taking pictures of tourists and offering to develop the prints for a price.

In Hollywood they go looking for office space and a home; and they seem to succeed easily ... though to the reader it's obvious that they are being taken in by a con man when they "buy" their house. The house, they are told, was once the home of the legendary movie star April Robin. But now it is abandoned except for a rather sinister caretaker. The previous owner, Julien Lattimer, died in mysterious circumstances. But, they learn soon enough, a body was never found, and moreover there are two wives, his fourth and fifth, disputing the matter. The fourth thinks Lattimer is dead (we assume murdered by the fifth wife), and so she should get the inheritance, while the fifth claims Lattimer is alive and so she still gets the property.

In good time there are a couple of further murders, and Bingo and Handsome are in a bit of a pinch, between the importunings of a couple of different conmen, the interests of agents and producers and neighbors, and the suspicions of two policeman, a classic good cop/bad cop pair. The solution is a bit intricate, maybe a bit of a stretch, but not a bad one -- involving (as it should) the mystery of April Robin's brief career along with the stories of Julien Lattimer, his wives, and a couple of other people Bingo and Handsome bump into.

For the first two thirds or so of the book things meander along. The main interest is in the characters of Bingo and Handsome -- neither terribly intelligent, both quite likable, Handsome with maybe better instincts but Bingo a bit more agressive and hopeful. Really all this is very fun -- funny in a rather understated way, a bit sad in that you really like Bingo and Handsome but you can see that they're not at all in control of their lives. Then towards the end there is a distinct acceleration, and a slight change in style, and the characters, though not inconsistent with themselves, seem to change focus a bit. I assume that's McBain taking over, but you could argue that it's more a case of the writer, whoever it was by then, realizing that it's about time to get things moving and finish the story.

Anyway, the novel was enjoyable enough that I'll probably be reading another of Rice's novels sometime in the future, assuming I run across a copy, but not enjoyable enough that I'll eagerly search such books out.

Old Bestsellers: Beau Sabreur, by P. C. Wren

Beau Sabreur, by P. C. Wren

a review by Rich Horton

Long ago, when I was a teenager, I read P. C. Wren's most famous book, Beau Geste, a story of some English brothers in the French Foreign Legion. I remember enjoying it, don't remember much else ... it was a well-known book (and has been filmed several times, perhaps most famously in 1939 starring Gary Cooper) but I frankly had no idea there were any others.



It turns out there were several sequels (of sorts) to Beau Geste, and some related short stories. I found copies of Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal cheap, and I decided to read Beau Sabreur, because I saw it referred to as the second of the "Beau Geste Trilogy". This turns out to be inaccurate in a sense, because the story of the Geste brothers ultimately filled (one way or another) 5 volumes (4 novels and a collection). And, as I found out, Beau Sabreur is only a very indirect sequel.

P. C. Wren was an Englishman, born 1875, died 1941. He spent some time in India, mostly as a schoolteacher, though he did serve in the military briefly. He claimed that he spent 5 years in the French Foreign Legion after the deaths of his wife and daughter, but there are no records confirming this, and the balance of opinion seems to be that he made that story up. Apparently the details of Foreign Legion life in his novels are quite accurate, however.

His early books are mostly textbooks for use in Indian schools, and one collection of stories set in India. But he began to produce adventure stories in about 1914. Beau Geste appeared in 1924, and was a great success. Beau Sabreur appeared in 1926. My copy appears to be a US first edition (no dust jacket), published by Frederick Stokes.

The novel opens (after a brief preface in which Wren avers that despite the critical complaints that some of the events in his books are implausible, they all actually happened) with what is represented to be the "unfinished memoirs of Major Henri de Beaujolais". De Beajolais begins, confusingly, with him in disgrace in the brig, punished for going AWOL (to help a woman in a fix) ... this turns out to not be important to the story at all. He jumps back to his enlistment as a buck private in the French Army (a Hussar regiment) -- his Uncle, an ambitious General, insisted he enlist after he left Eton -- apparently to teach him how real soldiers live. After a year he can use his Uncle's influence to get a commission as an officer. And so several chapters go by, mostly humorous in tone, describing his early time in the army, during which two important things happen: he meets a regular soldier who becomes his long-time servant, and he forces out a treasonous fellow soldier.

Then the action jumps forward a couple of decades, and South to North Africa. (This action appears to be set in perhaps the first decade of the 20th Century). De Beajolais, now a Major, is an important figure in the Intelligence branch. His previous two decades of service are briefly described (the reader of Beau Geste may recognize one significant event he was involved with -- I did not remember it, though).  He is in North Africa, assigned to deal with the problem of the sudden rise of a dangerous Emir among the tribes of the Sahara. While in Zaguig, a "holy" city that is on the brink of exploding, he meets a beautiful American woman, Mary Vanbrugh, along with her maid Maudie Atkinson. As the city erupts in violence, his duty requires him to slink away, to try to find the mysterious Emir and negotiate a treaty with France. Mary Vanbrugh is disgusted with him -- he deserts the French garrison there (including a fellow intelligence officer, his closest friend), who face certain death. Mary's brother stays in Zaguig to die as well, but de Beaujolais and a couple of guides, along with the two women, escape to the desert, where Mary is disguested again when de Beaujolais chooses duty overy loyalty and leaves Dufour and his Arab servant to die in order cover his (and the women's) escape, after which they are captured by the Emir's people.

Here de Beaujolais attempts to negotiate his treaty with the Emir, but there is a rival in camp, representing another power. And it seems that the Emir is infatuated with Maudie, while his Wazir desires Mary. Will de Beajolais sacrifice the women's virtue for a treaty with France? Or will he sacrifice his own life to save the women? His memoir ends abruptly, apparently revealing the answer to that question.

Then the novel transitions to an account from the point of view of "two bad men" -- the Emir and the Wazir. This rapidly (if implausibly (sorry, Mr. Wren!)) unravels a whole series of mysteries, brings things to a neat conclusion, and also reveals at last the link between this novel and Beau Geste. (Which, again, may have been clear already to readers with fresher memories than me of Beau Geste.)

What to say on the whole? The heart of the novel is a pretty fair adventure story. It begins too slowly, and parts of it are uneven. And, yes, much of it is implausible, but acceptably so for its genre. That said, the attitudes towards Africans are, frankly, racist, if in that sort of fawning "acknowledging their strengths" manner. And it is, after all, a story of colonialism from the point of the colonizers, and it's hard for a contemporary reader not to think, "Hey, these Africans resisting French control? They've got a point!" I suppose, in that sense, the novel is "of its time", which probably contributes to it being rather forgotten today.

Old Bestsellers: The Changed Brides, by Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

The Changed Brides, by Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

a review by Rich Horton

Here we go back a bit farther in time. Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth (1819-1899) was perhaps the single most popular American author of the last half of the 19th Century (almost exactly -- her first novel was published in 1849, and she was still working when she died). It would be fair to say that she is all but forgotten now -- but not quite. Her books are not uncommonly found in antique shops and the like, and I even found a paper written at my alma mater, the University of Illinois, about her most successful novel, The Hidden Hand (1859), in which it is averred that a recent development in women's literature courses is the inclusion of popular novels of the 19th Century.

Mrs. Southworth was born Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, in Washington D.C. (in fact in a house built by George Washington). She became a schoolteacher, but moved to Wisconsin, living in a log cabin, upon her marriage. She had two children, but after only a few years of marriage, her husband deserted her, and she returned to Washington, where she lived most of the rest of her life. She returned to teaching, but began to write stories, and fairly soon became a very popular writer.

She was most associated with the New York Ledger, the most popular "Story Paper" of the day. This was a weekly newspaper devoted to fiction (and some features), published by Robert Bonner. By the late 50s Southworth had a contract with the Ledger for $10,000 a year, in return for which most of her novels were serialized in the paper (sometimes multiple times). Most of her novels also were published as books, but her publication history is complicated, and no one seems sure how many novels she actually published. (The accepted number is "about 60".) For a time she wrote two serials per year.

The book I have is The Changed Brides, which as far as I can find out first appeared in 1869. My copy is an A. L. Burt reprint. No date is given for this edition, but I'd guess turn of the 20th Century, roughly. This book seems to be slightly less melodramatic than some of her others, which isn't to say it totally lacks melodrama.

It opens with three curious arrivals, in driving rain, at a tollgate on the road to Old Lyon Hall, in Western Virginia. The Scotch (as Mrs. Southworth would have it) couple tending the gate recognize one of them: Alexander Lyon, who they know is to be married that night to Miss Anna Lyon, the daughter of General Lyon, the master of Lyon Hall. Another is a woman on foot, a slight dark woman who is apparently pregnant. She is desperate to get to the Hall ... for, she says, she is "Anna Lyon". But how can that be? Anna Lyon is a tall blond woman ... The third is a mysterious man.

Before long the young woman has encountered Miss Anna Lyon ... and then we get an extended (very extended) flashback to the history of these four people. Miss Anna has been engaged to Alexander Lyon, her first cousin (once removed) since childhood. They get along well enough, but they are clearly not in love. Back to childhood ... Alexander's mother engages a housekeeper, a devout Baptist woman, widow of a preacher, who has a 6 year old daughter. The housekeeper keeps the daughter (quite literally) penned up in her quarters for fear of disturbing the Lyon family. Then at Christmas Alexander (called "Alick") comes home (he is perhaps a decade or more older) and takes a fancy to the little girl, and takes pity on her isolation, and before long this girl -- whose name is Anna Drusilla Sterling -- is a pet, almost, of Alick's mother. She fixates on Alick, as the agent of her renewed happiness.

Time goes by. Alick, a generally rather selfish and shallow young man, continues to cosset Drusilla (as she is called), eventually paying for her education. Anna has fallen in love with another cousin, Dick Hammond. But nothing is to be done -- for after all Anna and Alick are engaged. Then, just before the wedding, Alick's father dies ... the wedding must be postponed. Just as the wedding is again scheduled, both Alick's mother, and Drusilla's mother, die in short succession. The wedding is put off again -- and now, what to do about Drusilla? Alick, not happy with the prospect of marrying Anna, whom he doesn't love, and somewhat infatuated with the now quite beautiful, and wholly worshipful, Drusilla, decides on the mad course of a secret marriage to her.

Drusilla is installed in a pretty little house on the DC suburbs, and again is kept isolated, as Alick can't let their marriage become known. Before long he is neglecting her (though he does manage to get her in a "delicate condition", as they said), and, on his Uncle's orders, paying court to Anna. Anna is now a supreme beauty, and out of pride in her beauty and jealousy of Cousin Dick, whom Anna truly loves, Alick begins to hope that something somehow will solve his Drusilla problem ...

Well ... after the requisite delays etc, we are back to Drusilla (who technically is named "Anna Lyon") coming to Old Lyon Hall to try to prevent her still-beloved but unfaithful husband from committing the mortal sin of bigamy.  Miss Anna is only to happy to escape her marriage -- but how? (And how, I wondered, did nobody but the Scotch wife at the tollgate notice that Drusilla was some 8 1/2 months pregnant?)

So ... things work out, of course, though only partially -- because there is a sequel! This is called The Bride's Fate, and it appeared, I believe, hard on the heels of The Changed Brides. I haven't read it, but I did peek at the ending of the online version, and I wasn't surprised to learn that -- after even more melodrama -- all works out nicely for the characters.

One thing that bothered me a bit about the novel was pinning down the timeframe. It was published in 1869, but it is surely set before the Civil War. But when? Old General Lyon is said to be 80, and there is a brief mention that suggests he fought in the Revolutionary War. That implies he was born no later than, say, 1760 -- which would put the action (the final action) in 1840. But there is mention of railroad service between Richmond and Washington. I had thought widespread rail use in the US began about 1850, but perhaps there was some earlier? Or perhaps Southworth simply wasn't that careful about the exact time of her book.

What to say about Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth? Certainly she deserved her reputation as a writer of potboilers. She had some of the flaws of the prolific serial writer -- she was very very wordy, and very insistent on close description of dresses and rooms and so on. She tells a lot, instead of showing, especially as to explicating the characters. The prose itself is a bit spotty in quality. Her attitudes are certainly of her time -- Drusilla, who is really the protagonist of this novel, is almost sickeningly submissive to Alick, though he is a weak and at times quite bad man. (That said, in general, I have read, her villains are men, and her women are virtuous -- and for her time, while not a feminist in 20th Century terms, she did argue for more independence and agency for women. One would think her personal situation -- abandoned by her husband with two young children -- shaped those views.) The attitudes towards African Americans are hard to read -- there are three significant Black characters, and all are sympathetic, but they are portrayed as occasionally childish, and certainly there is no hint that their lower class position is inappropriate. (That said, this is Virginia, pre-Civil War (I think), and these characters are all apparently free, and paid salaries, and fairly independent.) Mrs. Southworth was, I have read, a friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and while there is no trace of abolitionist fervor in this novel, I get the feeling she was sympathetic to the Northern position.) As for readability -- well, I ended up reading with a continued desire to know what happens. It did hold the interest. But, yes, it could have easily been resolved in about half the page count.

In sum, I don't think she's a writer much in need of a revival. But it's not hard to see that she could have been very popular in her time. (And I confess The Hidden Hand does look worth a try perhaps.) I was amused to read that Louisa May Alcott lampooned Southworth in Little Women -- Jo March reads a writer called S.L.A.N.G. Northbury, and despite her evident failings decides to imitate her, until the Professor (who she later married) advised her to stop writing such pulpy trash. I confess my sympathies here lie with Southworth -- for one thing, Alcott herself wrote some pulpy novels under pseudonyms. (And, yes, I did read Little Women (and Little Men, and Jo's Boys) as a teen, but I had no context to recognize the S.L.A.N.G Northbury target, and I don't recall that incident at all.)

Old Bestsellers: Eben Holden, by Irving Bacheller

Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country, by Irving Bacheller

A review by Rich Horton

Eben Holden is a novel from right at the turn of the 20th Century: it was published in 1900, and was (according to Wikipedia) the fourth best selling novel of 1900 and the fifth best selling novel of 1901. My copy, found as usual in an antique shop, was the 12th printing of the first edition, and was issued March 2, 1901. Lots of detail on that page -- apparently also there were 250,000 copies as of this printing. The publisher is Lothrop, out of Boston -- they also indicate what I assume is the printing shop, Norwood Press, Berwick and Smith, in Norwood, MA.

Irving Bacheller was born in 1859 in Pierrepont, NY, and lived to the age of 90, dying in 1950 in White Plains, NY. Pierrepont is in St. Lawrence County, in the far north of the state, and many of Bacheller's stories were set in the "North Country" of New York state.

Bacheller became a journalist and founded the Bacheller Syndicate, one of the first newspaper syndicates in the US. Through this syndicate he played a role in bringing work by writers like Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, and Arthur Conan Doyle to the US. He also worked with Stephen Crane. He resigned as Sunday Editor of the New York World to concentrate on his fiction about the time of Eben Holden, and the rest of his life was spent writing and supporting his alma mater, St. Lawrence College, and a college in Florida, Rollins.

Eben Holden is subtitled A Tale of the North Country. The book is not terribly long -- perhaps 80,000 words. It's the story, told late in his life, of William Brower, an orphan from Vermont who ends up adopted by a couple in a small village, Faraway, in St. Lawrence County. (This, or the nearby town called Hillsborough, is presumably modelled on Pierrepont. The only city name I recognized in the North Country parts of the book is Ogdensburg, which is a port on the St. Lawrence Seaway, so in Northwestern St. Lawrence County.) The title character, Eben Holden, is a hired hand on William's parents' farm who kidnaps the boy after his parents drown, to save him from being taken in by a dissolute uncle. The book opens (in about 1845) with the story of Holden ("Uncle Eb") and young Willie trekking from Vermont and across Lake Champlain and much of the top of New York to the home, more or less randomly encountered, of David and Elizabeth Brower. The Browers have a daughter, Hope, just a bit older than Willie, and an infant son, as well as an older son who ran off to sea and was lost off the coast of Van Diemen's Land.

The rest of the book is the story of Willie's childhood, his falling in love with words thanks to a local poet, and also his falling in love with his adopted sister Hope, followed by a spell in college and then a move to New York City to get a job with Horace Greeley. The Civil War intervenes ... there are roadblocks, mostly self-inflicted, to his romance with Hope ... but for the most part it's a pretty straight path of triumph.

That bald description doesn't really do the book justice. It's true that there isn't much of a constructed plot (there are a couple of twisty little bits and a closing climactic revelation). And the book is a bit discursive and episodic. The infant brother is forgotten until he turns 11, when he apppears apparently just to get sick and die. And so on ... But, the book still holds the interest. The characters are presented quite well, if they are a bit romanticized. Indeed, one of the best things about the books is the occasional thumbnail descriptions, as it were, of local people. (There are a couple of famous people depicted as well, most notably and at greatest length Horace Greeley, but for example there is also a quick meeting with Abraham Lincoln.) Bacheller's writing is plain and straightforward, but in a good way. The conversations are in the local dialect, and for once I found it convincing and effective.

It is at heart a story of the forming of America, and the American character as it was seen in those days (or perhaps more precisely the Yankee character). Eben Holden, to the plot, is an important secondary character, but to the theme he is central: he is fond of homespun philosophizing, and his stories and morals are nicely told, often funny, sometimes sharp (and sometimes a bit trite). This isn't a great novel, and there is a definite strain of overidealization, of oversentimentalism, to some of it. But it is a decent novel, and those shortcomings are balanced by a bit of -- not cynicism but realism -- that takes his characters down a peg on occasion. Bacheller is also capable of gentle comedy that doesn't seem forced or corny. And the depiction of the landscape, the way of life, and the general run of people in rural northern New England (or New York) seems spot on.

It does not seem to be a novel much-remembered these days, but it has been reprinted fairly recently, 1998, by Wordsworth Editions in a line they call Classics Library. I've seen these trade paperback sized books at remainder stores. So it's not completely forgotten. I was interested in what the original dust jacket looked like, and I found one entry with a picture at Abebooks (the book is for sale for $225!). Eben Holden Dust Jacket

Old Bestsellers: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos

A review by Rich Horton

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is certainly not forgotten, but I think it's fair to say that much of its fame nowadays rests on the 1953 movie version starring Marilyn Monroe, and perhaps on one song from that movie (and originally from the 1949 Broadway musical the movie was based on): "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend". The novel that the musical (and then the movie) was based on, by Anita Loos, is not out of print, but until a very recent (February 2014) new edition it had not been reprinted since 1998. Which to be sure is still not bad going for a 1925 book.

This was the bestselling (or perhaps second bestselling) American novel of 1925/1926 (the same year The Great Gatsby appeared). It was based on a series of sketches for Harper's Bazaar. The author, Anita Loos, was primarily a writer for films, and a very successful one. She was born in California in 1889, and grew up in a performing family -- she was on stage from an early age, but apparently always wanted to write instead. She began writing for the movies in 1911 -- her first scenario to be produced starred Mary Pickford and was directed by D. W. Griffith. She wrote the subtitles for Griffith's second most famous movie, Intolerance. Perhaps her most famous credit was for The Women, the 1938 George Cukor film starring Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and Norma Shearer.

Her personal life was a bit fraught, mainly because of her second husband, John Emerson, who collaborated with her on many of her screenplays. It seems that he began as a full collaborator, but that in later years largely simply took credit for Loos' work. He was also constantly unfaithful, and mishandled their money. Eventually he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He died in 1956. Loos had more or less retired from film writing by then, and spent the last few decades or her life (she died aged 92 in 1981) writing for magazines, and producing a couple of memoirs, and serving as a conspicuous light of New York society.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is subtitled "The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady", though the dust jacket to the first edition reads "The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady". It is the story, told in diary form, of a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, who calls herself Lorelei. (Her last name is given as Lee in the  movie -- I confess I don't recall seeing it specified in the novel but I may have missed it.) She left Little Rock, we learn later, partly because she killed a man (she was acquitted, either because the Judge and jury were smitten by her or because the guy deserved it, or more probably both). She has spent some time as an actress in films, but these days she mainly spends time with rich men such as Gus Eisman, "the Button King of Chicago". Sex is never directly mentioned in the novel, but the reader certainly assumes that that is her "profession".

She and a friend, Dorothy, who is a bit more intelligent (at least overtly) and conventionally moral than Lorelei, travel to Europe, where they meet a variety of men of weakish character but plenty of money. We see London, Paris, and Vienna (where she meets a certain "Dr. Froyd"). Eventually of course they return to the States, where the two women, after a certain amount of suspense, end up married, if not necessarily terribly romantically -- Lorelei's interest, anyway, remains as described in the famous quote: "Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever".

The plot of course is not the point -- the point is Lorelei Lee's voice, at once naive and very knowing indeed -- it's hard to pin down whether she is as ignorant as she seems or whether some of that is an act. The novel is quite funny -- the voice really is intriguing, if perhaps wearing read at too much length. (Possibly the original magazine form was the best way to read it.) Lorelei, while not exactly an admirable character, is likable and often unexpectedly acute. The novel was very well received when it came out -- not just in terms of sales (supposedly the first edition sold out in a single day), but critically. Famously, Edith Wharton called it "The Great American Novel", though in context it's obvious that Wharton, though she doubtless admired the book, was not entirely serious in that comment. James Joyce was also apparently an admirer.

The copy I have is a very early edition: the Fourteenth Printing (from June 1926) of the First Edition, published by Boni and Liveright. (Liveright are still the publishers, at least of the latest edition.) The dust jacket is gone from my copy, but otherwise it's in very good condition. This edition is illustrated in a very 1920s fashion by Ralph Barton.

Old Bestsellers: Sylvia Cary, by Frances Parkinson Keyes

Sylvia Cary (The Old Gray Homestead) by Frances Parkinson Keyes

by Rich Horton


Back to a novel of a certain age (first published in 1919), that if not a bestseller was certainly a good seller for a long time, by a writer who had bestsellers, and which is pretty much forgotten by now, as, increasingly, is its once popular author.

It seems to me that you can find novels by Frances Parkinson Keyes at just about any larger used book sale. I've noticed them for a long time, never really been much tempted by them. It seems her favorite subject was New Orleans. I had thought she wrote mainly romantic historical novels, but in fact she wrote a wider variety: contemporary novels, at least one murder mystery, novels of political dealing in Washington, D.C., and yes, romantic historical novels. I looked her up on Wikipedia, and she turns out to have a rather interesting biography.

She was born in 1885 in Virginia, and got married at the age of 18 to a 40 year old man, Henry W. Keyes (pronounced to rhyme with "skies"). Keyes was a farmer, banker and state legislator in New Hampshire -- I'm not sure how they met. Keyes later became Governor of New Hampshire and then a three-term U. S. Senator.

Before her marriage Frances Parkinson Wheeler had wanted to go to college and to write, but apparently her husband was not willing to countenance either ambition. (Apparently she did extract a promise that any daughters they had would be given the opportunity to attend college -- in the event, they had three sons but no daughters.) According to the introduction to my edition of Sylvia Cary, she stole time to write privately, but did nothing with her stories until their finances became a little pinched -- apparently at the same time Henry Keyes was Governor (which I suppose implies something good about him!). She decided to submit a novel to a publisher -- in person! -- and he rejected it, but liked it enough to ask for the next thing she wrote. That book was The Old Gray Homestead (which Keyes retitled Sylvia Cary much later), and it was accepted and published in 1919. Some 50 further books followed, mostly novels but some nonfiction including a couple of memoirs, a collection of columns she wrote for Good Housekeeping when her husband was first a Senator, called Letters from a Senator's Wife, and a book about writing called The Cost of a Best Seller.

I have to say I find the bald facts of that marriage interesting -- the age difference is unusual, the geographical separation seems odd, and phrases (from the introduction again) like: "the suggestion that I would like to go to college and major in English was sternly opposed, both by my mother and the man to whom I was already engaged; the further suggestion that I wanted to be a professional writer met with not only rebuke but derision" do not really seem to support the notion of a love match. Though who knows?

Not surprisingly, her husband predeceased her by many years, after which she moved to New Orleans, where she eventually lived in a house in the French Quarter formerly occupied by the great chess player Paul Morphy and also the Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. That house is now a museum, called the Beauregard-Keyes House. At some time she became a Catholic, and some of her novels are on Catholic themes. (She grew up Congregationalist, and joked that it was the long Congregationalist sermons that started her on the road to Catholicism.)

So what about the book? As noted, Sylvia Cary was Keyes' first novel, originally called The Old Gray Homestead, and published in 1919. My edition is a Paperback Library mass market reprint from 1965 (the first Paperback Library edition was in 1962, which is presumably when it became Sylvia Cary and when Keyes wrote the introduction).

It is set in Vermont, on the New Hampshire border, presumably close to where Keyes and her husband had lived before moving to Washington, D. C. (also in 1919). (Henry Keyes was buried in North Haverhill, on the Connecticut River which forms the border with Vermont -- I suspect it (or actually Haverhill) is the original of Wallacetown, the "big city" for the characters in Sylvia Cary.) The Grays are a large family living on a once prosperous, now struggling, farm. There are nine children in the family, seven still at home, all high school age and up. We meet Sally and Austin, two of the eldest, and we learn that Sally, a schoolteacher engaged to a local man, is nice, but her brother is disaffected and terribly cynical, for example suggesting that Sally should have instead married her fiance's unpleasant and alcoholic cousin, on the grounds that he has more money.  They are on their way home when they encounter a somewhat desperate young woman who is looking for a place to stay in the country.

This woman, of course, is Sylvia Cary, a very young widow (about 22). Her husband has recently died, and she has miscarried, and her mental state has been fragile, so she wants to get away from New York. The Grays take her in, and before you know it she is helping them out -- she is both very rich, so pays a rather generous rent, but she also has ideas on improving the farm -- mainly she more or less shames Austin and his father into putting the work into it that is needed, and shortly later she is helping in more direct ways: paying for the younger children to go to school, sending Austin overseas for a sort of "finishing" trip, where he also gets some good ideas for farming improvements, and so on.

Indeed she seems quite the paragon, even if her emotional state is still a bit ragged. So, naturally, cynical Austin takes against her. It is quite clear to the reader, of course, that Austin is actually in love with her from the start, but unable to declare himself for shame at his family's poverty and concern over her widowed position, and the reasons she was widowed. But this all develops quickly -- we learn the story of Sylvia's rather unpleasant marriage (it is clear that she was raped by her husband, and also beaten, though of course the former crime would not have drawn notice at that time). Soon the two are secretly close -- though no hanky panky takes place! -- even as Thomas, a younger brother, is also infatuated.

And so it goes ... with no real surprise as to the conclusion of the central story. A lot more goes on, though, including a controversial episode involving the youngest daughter and premarital sex, and some interludes with the somewhat unpleasant but quite funny gossipy neighbor, and a general rapid upward trend in the Gray fortunes.

The story reads nicely enough -- Keyes was an effective writer. The two main characters are, it must be said, implausible paragons (Austin's early disaffection and cynicism is rapidly discarded). The attitudes about men and women are more or less what you expect in a popular novel from 1919. Wikipedia says that Keyes' portrayals of African-Americans in her other books is, er, "of its time", but there are no Black characters in this book, and the one major foreign character is sympathetically enough portrayed.

I was a bit puzzled by the time frame of the book. It was published in 1919, no doubt written a few years before that (Keyes says in her introduction that she had "unearthed" and retyped it when the publisher asked her for something else after rejecting her first submission). There is absolutely no hint of World War I, even when the characters travel to Europe. So I suppose it should be thought of as set perhaps around 1910-1912. And perhaps that's right, but I was struck that motor cars seem semi-common, though certainly not ubiquitous. Was that true in rural Vermont by then? I guess perhaps it was. Anyway, given all that, the shadow of the War seems necessarily to hang over the end of the novel, at least in the reader's mind -- and surely that would have applied in spades in 1919.

I have to say that while this was an enjoyable enough read, it didn't really make me want to go get any further Keyes novels. Her books seem mostly out of print now, though some are available from what seems a very small press in a series called "Louisiana Heritage".

Not a Bestseller, not that Old, not really Forgotten: A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter

A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter

This series of reviews is intended to cover books that were bestsellers back in roughly the first half of the 20th Century (let's say 1880 to just after 1950 maybe), but which are (usually) largely forgotten now. But this time I'm writing about the book I just finished, which is not all that old (it was published in 1967), which was presumably not a true bestseller (though it probably sold well enough, and has kept selling for decades), and which is surely not forgotten ... though at the same time it is in a sense not all that widely known. (I say that perhaps because I had not heard of it before a profile of the author appeared last year in the New Yorker.)

So, sorry. But what the heck. James Salter was born in 1925 into a wealthy family as James Arnold Horowitz. He attended West Point during the War and graduated more or less as it ended. He became a pilot and flew fighters in Korea, then wrote a successful novel, The Hunters, based on that experience. This became a well-received film starring Robert Mitchum. He published the novel under the pseudonym James Salter, and then another Air Force-based novel, The Arm of Flesh, in 1961. After the success of The Hunters, he left active duty and joined the Reserve, then resigned his commission entirely shortly after The Arm of Flesh came out. Not much later he legally changed his name to James Salter. All this seems a purposeful bifurcation of a life -- the first part as a reasonably successful Air Force pilot, then a reinvention as a writer. Later he even largely repudiated his first two novels, calling them products of youth and "not meriting much attention". (Or so says Wikipedia.)

Once he became a full-time writer he spent much of his time writing for films, and presumably that's how he made a regular living. (Perhaps most notable among his film work is the Robert Redford vehicle Downhill Racer.) But he has also written quite a number of short stories and four additional novels, the latest being All That Is, which appeared in 2013, when he turned 88. His work is in general very highly regarded, particularly for his prose. But it is his first novel published after leaving the Air Force that remains his masterpiece, the work upon which his reputation continues to rest (and apparently his own favorite).

A Sport and a Pastime is a fairly short novel, less than 60,000 words I would think. It is told by an unnamed narrator, an American in his mid-30s, who borrows a house in provincial France from a friend. The novel opens with the man's train journey from Paris to Autun, to take this house in this sleepy town. Notable from the beginning, I would think, is the "male gaze" ... his view is constantly of women -- on the train, waiting for the train, in the town. He is soon obsessed with a neighbor named Madame Picquet, clearly with no hope of progress on that front. Then a chance-met young man named Philip Dean, a dropout from Yale, shows up to share his house.

One had wondered when the real action of the book would start, and here it is: for the novel is primarily about Philip Dean's affair with a 19 year old girl, Anne Marie. Dean is a bit of a sponge, relying on the narrator for his lodging, and on his father and sister for what little money he has. He spends several months with Anne Marie, mostly driving from hotel to hotel in various provicial towns. The novel is frankly and quite explicitly erotic ... their lovemaking is described in detail, again and again. (The introduction, by Reynolds Price, points out that this is a product of the liberation writers felt after the Lady Chatterly's Lover suit, as a result of which Grove Press was allowed to sell their edition of that novel in the US.) Their relationship is curious and sad and unequal, but which is the weaker person is hard to discern. Its ultimate end seems clear from the start, though even so Salter allows us some ambiguity.

And yet ... and yet ... this is all told from the point of view of the narrator, who was obviously not present for much of the action. He warns us, as readers, that most of what he tells us is fantasy. So what does it really mean? Is he recounting his own fantasies of the relation of Philip and Anne Marie (and I don't think it would be wrong to say that the book hints that he is attracted to both of them)? Does he have access to some more explicit account from Philip (say) of what went on? Is he to be taken as a sort of metafictional representation of the "novelist"? Is the novel really about his own sterility, his own frustrations in love? Perhaps some of all of that ... I dare say you could find critical works by better readers than I looking into that question.

The basic story is itself involving enough, and the characters are quite perfectly portrayed. But what makes the novel is the prose -- what makes Salter special, really, is the prose. As Richard Ford is quoted on the cover of my edition (a Farrar, Straus and Giroux trade paperback currently in print): "Sentence for sentence, Salter is the master." Recently in the Guardian a blogger wondered about great sentences in genre fiction, then complained that most of the most famous seemed aphoristic, then quoted two counter-examples from "literary" fiction, of which one (from Samuel Beckett) was as aphoristic (perhaps more so) than any of the genre quotes, and the other, from James Joyce, was Joyce at his most annoyingly pretentious (but don't get me wrong, some of Joyce (just not the sentence quoted) is really really remarkable). Salter is different -- the sentences are mostly short (Hemingway is one cited model) -- sometimes they are fragments. The rhythm is exquisite. Cliche is almost non-existent. (Though he slips once or twice.) Rarely he tries for something grander, and when he does I think it works: "The lights grow fainter now, the sound, and finally all of France, invisible now, silent, the France of all seasons deep in the silence of night, is left behind." The observation is precise and surprising. Other examples: "Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit." "Canals, rich as jade, pass between us, canals in which wide barges lie. The water is green with scum. One could almost write on the surface." "Over France a great summer rain, battering the trees, making the foliage ring like tin." But in reality it all runs together -- the images, the rhythm, the music.

So -- not forgotten, but still worth being more widely known.