Lummox

Miss Hurst Describes a Heavyweight Pippa

The Story. Bertha was a big, blonde, Baltic lummox; one of those inarticulate girls; a strong, hardworking, silent, lonely servant—apparently impassive—regarded by mistress after mistress as just a good plain cook—yet possessed of a certain dumb, unconscious power of understanding. She passed through the lives of many other people, and, somehow, altered them all.

Born in a dark sailors’ boarding house in Front Street, her first place was with the Farleys, rich, etiolated, precise. Rollo Farley, the pallidly esthetic son of the house seduced her—she gave him the inspiration for his one great poem. Then he got engaged to a girl of his own class who had a head like a beautiful egg, and forgot Bertha. Bertha moved on—she was always moving on. She bore a son to Rollo—a son who was adopted at the age of two weeks or so by the Bixbys of Detroit. As soon as she was well, Bertha took service with the Musliners—and, after solving a critical domestic difficulty for them, moved on again—this time to the Wallensteins, whom she found in the throes of another kind of trouble. Old Mrs. Wallenstein, kosher of the kosher, hated her wasteful, Episcopalian daughter-in-law and was cordially hated back, and the life of Wallenstein, fils, was ground to pieces between the two women. Bertha did her best for that family, too, but tragedy overtook them—and she moved once more. Front Street again—saving a gutter-child from horror—scrubwoman’s tasks — discovery that the Bixbys, with her son, had moved to New York—the fantastic adventure of Willy—and Bertha’s anonymous gift of a battered concertina to the son she never spoke to—a gift that put him on the path of music and led him to become a great pianist, later. Passage of years—Bertha at last returned to Front Street—to find the old landmarks changed, the old boarding house gone, herself growing old.

She was still strong, but—”Too old,” said employer after employer. She sank from poverty to poverty—jobs got fewer and fewer. Accident rescued her at last—and put her in charge of the motherless little Meyerbogens—children of an enormous, kindly, widowed baker at Coronation Point. They appreciated her—at last she began to belong to a real family. And there settled, for the time at least, and, fairly content, we leave her.

The Significance. One of the best paid and most popular short story writers in America, here accepts and adapts expressionistic technique for the purpose of telling a simple and moving story. The result is by far the best work Miss Hurst has done—amazingly clever, astonishingly vivid in spite of occasional verbal extravagances, admirably sincere in intent.

The Critics. John Farrar in The Bookman: “An extraordinarily fine achievement.”

Charles Hanson Towne in the International Book Review: “A slash here, a slash there, and we have a perfect picture. Vivid as lightning—and as terrifying. . . .”

The Author. Born in St. Louis in 1889, Miss Hurst received a B. A. degree from Washington University 20 years later. Now she enjoys Manhattan and has a scatter-brained puppy to amuse her. She says that she has sympathy for “the shoulders of charwomen as they scrub at night and the silhouettes of figures who sleep on wharves.” She has tried the stage, and has worked in a Childs restaurant and in a sweat shop “for atmosphere.”

What Sells Books?

Advertising? Good Reviews? Lecturing?

What is it makes you read one book instead of another, gentle readers?

We don’t mean the book that Aunt Ella sent with best Xmas wishes and which you simply have to read before she visits you again. Or the book you read because you liked the previous books by the same author. But the average book—what is it that calls it to your attention—what is it that makes you go into a bookstore or a library and pick one particular volume out of the hundreds for your perusal?

A large fortune awaits the person who can show the average publisher with any definiteness the surest means of bringing a book to public attention. This fortune will doubtless wait unclaimed for years upon years.

“Advertising—nothing but advertising—that’s what sells ’em,” says a salesman in one of the biggest Manhattan bookstores—and others echo his cry. Newspaper advertising, advertising in the various literary supplements, in the magazines. Yet publishers will tell you of overadvertised books—books that do not repay proportionately the cost of their advertising, as others do. “Well, that,” says an advertising man, “merely shows how badly planned and conventional most book advertising is. Advertise books as you advertise shaving cream and see the difference!” Pressed, he frankly admitted he did not know exactly how this was to be accomplished.

“Good reviews sell books,” say one party, including of course the reviewers. Others shout: “No! Re-views have little or no influence!” They cite cases, proffer statistics. “Word-of-mouth advertising’s the only thing that counts. A friend says a book is good, so you try it out on his say so.” But what starts the word-of-mouth advertising? It must start somewhere.

“Personal appearances of the author help—lecture tours and all that.” Perhaps — but A. S. M. Hutchinson never went on a lecture tour before writing If Winter Comes. And Joseph Conrad is as innocent of self-advertising as is E. M. Hull.

And some books sell—and some books do not—and nobody quite knows why. And one man’s prediction is as good as another—and still publishers vainly strive to ferret out the how and wherefore.

Well—what do you think?

S. V. B.

* LUMMOX — Fannie Hurst — Harper ($2.00).