Art: Peter B. Kyne He Talks to Rotarians

Peter Bernard Kyne was born in California, but that has not kept him from showing in much of his talk and especially in his bright gray eyes that he is chiefly Celt. His stories of personal experience are many of them quite as dramatic as his novels—that’s a gift these Irishmen have! Mr. Kyne wrote his first story at 13, was a soldier in the Spanish War, engaged in the lumber business and failed at it, tried to start a newspaper and failed at it, then turned to writing and has been more successful at it than most of his fellow “best-sellers.” That fact that The Go-Getter* and its doctrine have made him a good-salesman trade-mark irks him occasionally, for he says that he is forever talking to Rotary Clubs and young men’s organizations on the gospel of success. Why not? He has the recipe.

“The author does much to his public,” he said the other day. ”He hasn’t any right to give them the sort of story they don’t expect from him. He must keep faith with them and do his best to see that his work never bores them. That is the writer’s unforgiveable sin.”

Mr. Kyne’s latest novel is The Enchanted Hill †. He will do a series of travel articles about his recent trip around the world before he attempts an-other long story. Meanwhile, he intends writing more soldier stories; for not only is he a veteran of the Spanish War, but he was an Artillery Captain in France during the late conflict.

“While in China I bumped into a war,” he told me, “and I wanted to see how it felt to be under fire again. They certainly are stupid fighters : I stood behind a temple wall and let a sharpshooter spatter bullets all over it. He never came within a mile of me! “My wife, though, got into more serious difficulties. She went out walking one day and just as she was enjoying the scene, the Chinese thought they’d start their war, and she found herself between the armies. Fortunately a shell that struck three feet from her proved a dud. When she came in she said: ‘Peter, you should have been with me this afternoon. I’ve had such an interesting time !’ ” Apparently the Kyne family likes its walks adventuresome—and that’s how Peter B. Kyne strikes me—a charming adventurer who writes romances with that rarest of all gifts, a sense of humor! J. F.

* THE GO-GETTER—Cosmopolitan Book Corp. ($.75).

†THE ENCHANTED HILL—Cosmopolitan Book Corp. ($2.00).