Books: Number 100

When Henry Ford marketed his ten millionth flivver, a musician composed a symphonic poem to celebrate the event (TIME, April 25). Edward Phillips Oppenheim has now published his 100th novel,* and though not one of his creations has been a flivver, somebody should salute Mr. Oppenheim with at least a small trumpet. â€

Never was the Oppenheim genius more clearly displayed than at this century mark. Be it remembered that Mr. Oppenheim long since departed the ranks of writers who must sell books to live. He is now a bunchy, contented, wealthy man of 61 and only writes to live happily. He would be unhappy if made to stop writing, and he can afford to write in any manner he chooses. But he is grateful to the vast public that made him so independent. Observe the manner in which he has aimed to please extra specially with Novel No. 100.

What type of feminine English fiction reader may be calculated to suffer most from “an unprobed spirit of romance”? Why, who but a typist? A pure, attractive, hardworking, intelligent young woman between 25 and 30; the kind Elinor Glyn gushes over and Gilbert Frankau glorifies. She dresses modestly for her work (an “alas, very cheap” fur coat). She discourages the advances of young men on the tops of busses, carries her notes in a neat handbag and would sooner sit home and read in the evenings than gad about at dance places—unless her girl chum is in town. To thousands and thousands of such young women any generous author of light fiction should feel a lasting debt of gratitude. Very well, then, such shall be Mr. Oppenheim’s heroine; her name, just plain Edith Brown.

And what type of man would most attract such a young woman (remember, she is earnest, honest)? Well, how about a mature, reticent, adventure-scarred world traveler. He should be enormously courageous, enormously patriotic; should have passed through incredible (almost) adventures and come out enormously modest—and of course unmarried. Let’s see— the times are getting so Elizabethan—perhaps he ought to be so thoroughly a man of action that he swears occasionally and, yes, has had to know women, very wicked ones, in the course of his thrilling duty. His name could be Dessiter — Colonel Dessiter. It might be a good plan to conceal his first name till the very end.

And finally, what idea, what theme for Novel No. 100 would best please light fiction-readers right now? Why, the menace of Communism, to be sure. The newspapers are full of it every day and the Home Secretary lately held that raid on the Reds’ London headquarters, no end spectacular even if it did not prove much. Typist, world-traveler, Communism — the very thing. Hurrah, we’re off!

The Story. Edith Brown, lost in a fog, sits down on Colonel Dessiter’s steps. He, about to die, asks her in. Is she by chance a typist? Thank goodness! Will she please take down this story, great danger though it will place her in? Yes, yes, Miss Brown fears nothing in life. For the next three hours she lives in a hair-raising world of super-romantic adventure. Colonel Dessiter has possession of the worldwide schemes of the Communists including the Chinese situation, India, Europe, the U. S.—everywhere. Now Miss Brown has possession of them too and since Colonel Dessiter is mortally wounded she must carry out his remaining duties to save the nation, to prevent an instant world war.

Miss Brown says good-by to Colonel Dessiter and proceeds further into her new world. It contains sudden wealth and perpetual excitement—attractive male plotters, vicious female ones; noble Russians and villainous; plentiful bombs, taxicab rides, cocktails, cryptograms. She would never come through safely but for Colonel Dessiter, who does not die after all. Through a special secret Government bureau, X. Y. O., they foil Moscow, save the nation, preserve the world. On the last page, Miss Brown learns that Colonel Dessiter’s name is Geoffrey. “Then, for the first time, Miss Brown was kissed upon the lips.”

The Author. Mr. Oppenheim modestly disclaims credit for his so popular work and pretends that he does not aim to please. He says: “I do not know how a novel will develop when I begin it. I get a vision of about two good characters—the man, he’s the main thing, and the woman, very secondary. These two elements, together with my first chapter, constitute my preparation. Then I live with my characters for a while—eat with them, walk with them, play golf with them. Finally they begin to act according to their own wills; then I let them go, and they work out their own destiny. I simply pull the strings. Soon, the first thing I know, I have another book ready for my publishers. It’s great fun, really.”

But none can believe it is all as simple as that. Mr. Oppenheim has been writing stories ever since he can remember. His father, though he never published anything, was a story-teller before him and used to make the small Oppenheims each write out a story on Christmas Eve. Mr. Oppenheim, the father, wrote one himself. All the stories were read and voted on next day. The father’s story always won the prize, until Edward Phillips Oppenheim was 13.

Five years later, the boy sold a short story and at 20 his first novel came out. His father died and for a while Author Oppenheim had to manage the family leather business in Leicester. Thereafter and down to the present stretched 40 years of turning out at least two novels per annum.

Mr. Oppenheim likes best to write — that is, dictate — in the morning, but, that being his favorite time for golf, he has acquired the artificial habit of writing in the late afternoon until dinner time. He perennially roams European capitals and the U. S. picking up his cosmopolitan types and plots, chiefly in cafés and from hotel managers. His types and plots are everything. The plainest pigments of human nature are sufficient to color up the assorted shapes of the characters and show brightly as they race through skeins of intrigue.

Mr. Oppenheim’s homes are on the French Riviera (Cagnes) and in London. Without professing to be a prophet, he notes that he foretold the Boer War in one novel, the World War in 14 novels. He was said to be on a list of Londoners to be shot at once when the Germans should conquer England, whose Intelligence Service he assisted.

When the World War ended, Mr. Oppenheim’s friends sympathized. He would have nothing further to write about, they feared. But now, a guileless reader of handwriting on walls, a firm insister on plausibility, he finds that “the stage is set for even more tragic happenings.”

Conflicts

CONFLICTS—Stefan Zweig—Viking Press ($2.50). Stefan Zweig, talented globe-trotter and literary dilettante, was shaken by the War out of gay indolence at Vienna into mapping out two series of ambitious literary projects which he has since pursued with a vigor and skill that has brought him high rank, before his 50th year, among the authors of all Europe. One series is biography—spiritual portraits (of the type done by Gamaliel Bradford in the U. S.) of Balzac, Dickens, Dostoievsky, Nietzsche, Tolstoy (so far). The second series, to which the three stories in this volume belong, consists of novelettes written for the sake of studying intense types of men and women under the microscope of psychology, in which Dr. Zweig is a scientific as well as an artistic adept. The five volumes so far completed in this series have sold about 260,000 volumes to date in Europe.

The three cases considered in Conflicts are 1) the actions of a high-minded English widow when she found that the only way she could save a young gambler from suicide was to let him believe her a prostitute; 2) the suppressed tragedy of a wealthy bourgeois whose sufferings from gallstones was eclipsed by circumstantial evidence that his young daughter was promiscuous; 3) the tragedy of sex perversion in a brilliant professor, as climaxed and discovered by his most ardent disciple.

So tightly and smoothly does Dr. Zweig draw the membrane of transparent prose over the tissue of his situations that the science-conscious reader cannot help regarding these cases as studies sooner than stories. Yet excellent stories they remain, of a forcible, clinical reality. Their few faults are where the scientist betrays the craftsman in over-insistence upon data. Elsewhere the craftsman dramatizes the data unforgettably, especially in a long passage where the emotions of a dozen people at a roulette table are followed, as in cinema, by watching the restless activity of their hands.

Romantic Chiropodist

THE SOWER OF THE WIND—Richard Dehan—Little, Brown ($2.50). Much of the reader’s enjoyment of this romantic tale will depend upon his feeling toward the profession of chiropody. The rush of events involves pearls, hurricanes, shipwreck, Catholicism, natives of Australia, primitive rites, a heroine of dusky beauty and high intelligence, and yet, strange as it may seem, the hero is a chiropodist. He made his fortune caring for feet in London and the Australian goldfields, and it was with his knives that he later redeemed imperfect pearls at Droone, the mythical antipode where he became a dark little power.

But whether or not chiropody is charming, Gaspar Barboas was surely its most potent exponent. He rose from it to such might that he earned the curse of the entire Bhingi race in Australia and became the object, in his electrically guarded mansion, of their attacks by totem pole, octopus and many another insidious device. His tragedy was that Safra Ferguson, the Bhingi maiden cultivated to perfection by an eccentric U. S. dowager, could not love him, though she frequently saved his life. From the bold wind that he sowed against the Bhingis and their Catholic teachers, Barboas reaped a whirlwind of remorse. Safra, returning to her people, was slain by them in the arms of a young Briton who, through Barboas’ fault, was late for the rescue.

Never was more melodrama swept between two covers and seldom was it swept so well. Author Dehan’s style is his fortune. Tumultuous, it confuses at first, until the long rhythms of a splendid imagination become apparent. Then, sustained overtones rise above the narrative—the bitter self-sufficiency of a betrayed Jew; the long-suffering humanity of a French monk in the wilderness; the earthy mysticism of aborigines who talk from hill to hill with smoke columns, declare war with muttering drums and ululate for a dying god when the sun is eclipsed.

* Miss BROWN OF X. Y. 0.— ^E. Phillips Oppenheim — Little, Brown ($2).

†The works of Honore de Balzac fill 40 volumes, comprising 116 titles. Anatole France filled 40 volumes. Horatio Alger published 57 full-length stories. Robert Louis Stevenson’s works occupy 32 volumes; the 43 titles by Charles Dickens, 20 volumes.