The Iron Door*

Harold Bell Wright Turns out Another Novel

The Story. The Canon of Gold was the meeting place of one of the most oddly assorted groups of characters in all fictional Arizona. There the two obtrusively quaint old “pardners,” Thad Grove and Bob Hill, kept house with their adopted child, Marta Hillgrove, found in somebody or other’s cabbage-patch in the past, and at the time the story opens just budding into radiant womanhood. There also lived the foul Lizard, Villain Number One —and Saint Jimmy, who was just Tiny Tim grown up and wild about doing good to everybody. There also came Hugh Edwards—man of mystery—fleeing from the shadow of a crime—and, of course, Sonora Jack, the outlaw, dropped in occasionally—and Natachee, a philosophic Indian, was always monologuing his way about the crags—in fact, now and then, the good old canon got so cluttered up with characters there wasn’t room enough left to swing a mountain lion in.

Marta and Edwards fell in love. And Sonora Jack and the Lizard did their best to raise H—1—but, H—1, what could they do against the forces of Virtue? The mysteries of Marta’s parentage and Hugh’s suspected crime were all wiped up—the Mine with the Iron Door discovered — Natachee had an opportunity for several symbolic orations—and “in the blue depth of the sky a wheeling eagle screamed . . . Natachee . . . smiled.” So did Mr. Wright. Also D. Appleton and Co. Likewise, every bookseller and train-news-agent in these United States when they heard the good news, for here, once more, was that rara avis, a novel that sells itself.

The author knows the country of which he Wrights. It is to be presumed that he knows the people also. Taking all of which into account it is really extraordinary that he should so completely evade transferring any impression of reality to the reader. If it were not for the picture of Mr. Wright among the mesquite on the book-jacket one would be tempted to suppose that he had never been West at all.

The Significance. The novels of Mr. Wright, his publishers state, average a sale of 1,268,000 copies per book. Or perhaps it’s 12,680,000. Anyhow, Mr. Wright can justly claim that he is America’s favorite author. As a literary phenomenon, he is astounding. Why has he succeeded so vastly? In the first place, he tells a story, and nearly always an old enough one so as not to unduly tax the public brain. His books are clean, his heroines beautiful and virtuous, his villains black as sin. Each of his books contains a moral idea. He writes badly, but directly. He is sincere—he uses his cliches as if no one had used them before. And he is completely and happily impervious to criticism.

The Critics. Practically every critic of importance has, in his time, taken a crack or so at Mr. Wright. With no apparent result except to boost Mr. Wright’s sales!

The Author. Harold Bell Wright is ” a real man, a hard worker, a man of intense convictions and a compelling love for humanity” (Hildegarde Hawthorne). He lives in Arizona, likes the outdoors, plans his novels with great care, and is the only American Author to have a hotel named after one of his fictional characters (The Barbara Worth). His other books include: That Printer of Udell’s, The Winning of Barbara Worth, When a Man’s a Man, Helen of the Old House.

Born in Rome, N. Y., in 1872, Mr. Wright was for two years a student in the preparatory department of Hiram College, Ohio. He functioned for ten years as a landscape painter. Later he became a pastor (in Kansas, Missouri, California). He retired from the ministry in 1908.

Good Books

SNAKE DOCTOR—Irvin S. Cobb— Doran ($2.00). A collection of short stories by one of the prominent American exponents of magazine fiction. The title story received the 0. Henry Memorial Prize as the best short story of 1922. Lengthy, discursive narratives for the most part, one of which, Red-Handed, deserves attention for a certain ingenuity of mechanism. The others seem dully garrulous at best—but Mr. Cobb has a large and faithful public and, it is to be supposed, knows exactly how to please them.

THE RIDDLE—Walter De La Mare —Knopf ($2.50). Fifteen short tales and sketches, many elvish with true magic, all beautifully expressed by one of the most distinguished artists in prose and verse now alive. A book to put on the shelves by Lady Into Fox and The Memoirs of a Midget and the other too-too-few books of the last few years that have in them something naive, fanciful and enduring.

ESCAPADE — Evelyn Scott—Seltzer ($3.00). In this autobiography very much in the modern manner, the author records some three years’ experiences—poverty—squalor—illness—painצstracism—undergone in Brazil, until, when the persons of the narrative were almost down and out, Chance rescued them. There is a little beauty in the book, some fine and some vigorous writing, but for the most part the author keeps her eyes firmly fixed upon the unpleasant side of existence as much and as long as possible. The self-revelation of an oversexed and coprophagistic intelligence, the book contains much interesting and valuable material, if the reader has the patience to dig for it, but in the main it takes its place among the increasing number of literary experiments of more interest to the psychoanalyst than the general public.

ANTHONY JOHN — Jerome K. Jerome—Dodd Mead ($2.00). Anthony John was a dreamer like his father, but since father had been a failure in material affairs, son suppressed his dreaminess as much as possible, except when he married. But idealism crushed to earth will always rise again—in fiction—so when Anthony John found himself at last a great financial success, happily married, owner of a large estate, he suddenly decided the game wasn’t worth the candle. Fortunately his wife agreed with him, so the end of the novel finds them about to sacrifice great possessions to a spiritual thirst. A mild easy-going little romance— weak tea with a dash of morality to stiffen it.

Alexander Woollcott

He Is Prominent in the Rotary Club of Literary New YorkAlexander Woollcott has added a species of small tippet to his facial equipment. What does one call such a beard when it rests on the under reaches of the lower lip? At any rate, the dramatic critic of The New York Herald, after illness, a trip abroad and a sojourn in Vermont, has acquired a new beard with which to astonish early first night audiences in New York City.

Mr. Woollcott is not only a dramatic critic, he is an essayist of marked abilities. In addition to these facts, his person is engaging enough to have jumped bodily from the pages of Charles Dickens, an author whom, by the way, he greatly admires. In the first place he is short, rotund, jovial, given to elaborate and biting statements punctuated by gestures which are often as grotesque as they are incisive. Then, he was born in Phalanx, New Jersey. That, in itself, is Dickensian. Woollcott, to me, is the most interesting of our dramatic critics, for he not only seems to have a knowledge of the theatre but he occasionally permits himself rare and unreasoning enthusiasms off the track of popular approval. This is good. Any critic worth his salt, it seems to me, must have the entire world disagreeing with him at least once in a season.

The first time I ever saw Alexander Woollcott was in Heywood Broun’s Paris studio, on New Year’s Eve, 1918. He was then a private in the United States Medical Corps, and his O. D.’s made him look more like Bairnsfather than Dickens.

With his enthusiasm for Dickens, which gave birth to a delightful volume, Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play, is linked his enthusiasm for the Army and the doughboy, which occasioned The Command is Forward, and his unqualified admiration of Mrs. Fiske, which gave the world Mrs. Fiske—Her Views on Acting, Actors and the Problems of the Stage. To these three volumes we may add a recent collection of essays, Shouts and Murmurs.

I have already spoken too often of the so-called Algonquin group. Not having eaten lunch in that much publicized hostelry for over five months, so far as I know the group may be actually a myth by now, as it always tended to be. Still, Richard Barthelmess, a most serious-minded young man, spoke of it with awed accents not long ago; so probably the effervescent Mr. Woollcott is still its gayest respected member and it has probably become the Rotary Club of literary New York.

He is often cordially hated by those who cannot stand frankness when it is mixed with wit; but his underlying mood of fairness and understanding has won him, according to Mr. Babbitt, ” a host of friends.” J. F.

Fall Lists

Now is the Season of Hope and Despair for Publishers

What will be the six or the ten best sellers for the coming year? Nobody knows and everyone seems to care. Only two seem almost certain of the widest popularity—The Mine with the Iron Door (Harold Bell Wright) and The White Flag (Eleanor H. Porter). Both authors sell by the carload rather than the volume; their publishers are always sittin’ pretty financially. And then there is The Bover by Joseph Conrad, now running serially in the Pictorial Eeview, to be published probably this Winter—and Charles G. Norris, addicted to monosyllabic titles, will produce this month a little thing called Bread —and there are others—oh, yus— many old familiar faces will be with us again in the Fall. But what of the unexpected—the unforeseen ? Will the season of 1923-24 see a new If Winter Comes, a new Main Street, by an author heretofore not in the best seller class leap _ to instant, overpowering popularity? And if so what, which, how, who?

Is the wave of realism ebbing or isn’t it? Are we in for a tremendous revival of Romance or are we not? Poor publishers—they see a book that ten years ago might have been a knockout from the point of view of sales stick on their shelves like fly paper—another which they thought would hardly pay for its binding bound to dazzling success. The publishing of fiction is a tremendous, enthralling gamble—a continual laying of bets as to which way that nervous and feline creature, Popular Taste, is going to jump. And, generally, it jumps the other way. For the average novel hardly recoups its publisher for his initial expenses—if that. Or so they tell the author. But the exceptional novel—Gosh, how the money rolls in!

Though it is undoubtedly unwise to try to make any prophecies as to 100,000-sellers for the Fall, it is sane enough perhaps to attempt to point the modest finger of discrimination at some few novels which seem worth recommending to the judicious reader, sight unseen. Imprimis, The Rover, by Conrad. And The Blind Bow-Boy which Carl Van Vechten, its author, describes as ” a cartoon for a stained glass window,” whatever that means. Jennifer Larne, a sedate extravaganza by Elinor Wylie. And the new Hergesheimer if it’s the one we think it is. Meanwhile, the literary roulette-wheel spins.

“Messieurs—Mesdames—faites vos jeux!” S. V. B.

* THE MINE WITH THE IRON DOOE—Harold Bell Wright—Appleton ($2.00).