Bottoms Up: An Application of the Slapstick to Satire

by George Jean Nathan

LII

WHY DRAMATIZED NOVELS OFTEN FAIL THE HEROINE

(In the book)

“As nineteen-year-old Faith Draycourt stood there, she seemed for all the world like some breathing, living young goddess come down to earth in a chariot of cloud chiffon tinted orange-pink by the setting sun. Her slender body whispered its allure from out the thin folds of silk that, like some fugitive mist, clung about her. Her hair, a tangle of spun copper, fell upon her dimpled shoulders and tumbled off them, a stormy bronze cascade, to the ground. Her eyes, like twin melodies of Saint-Saens imbedded in Bermuda’s blue woodland pools; her voice, soft as the haunt of a distant guitar——.”