From photograph, copyright by Pach Brothers, N. Y.
IRVING BACHELLER
Despite a career of literary activity that goes back twenty years, it is almost entirely to the books of the past four or five years that Rupert Hughes owes his present position as a popular novelist. In this later work, in such books as “What Will People Say?” “Empty Pockets” and “We Can’t Have Everything,” he has found his theme in modern Gotham: New York in the grip of the latest follies, the insensate, all-day and all-night pursuit of pleasure, the dance, the eating and drinking, and the squandering. Mr. Hughes’ novels reveal a range of knowledge of even the remote corners of the great city that has been painstakingly[Pg 20] acquired, and that is used with the sense of selection of the accomplished story-teller. Only a few months beyond undergraduate life Owen Johnson published “Arrows of the Almighty” and “In the Name of Liberty.” They were read by a limited audience, mildly applauded, and then forgotten. Later, showing the Balzacian influence, came “Max Fargus,” dealing with the seamy side of New York law offices. In the point of material success, it could hardly be considered an improvement on the earlier books. Then, one day, in a whimsical mood, the author turned back to memories of his schoolboy years in Lawrenceville. The road that led to success and recognition had been found. From one end of the land to the other, growing boys, and boys that had grown up, and boys with gray beards laughed over every fresh exploit of “The Prodigious Hickey,” and “Dink Stover,” and “Doc McNooder,” and “The Tennessee Shad,” and “The Triumphant Egghead,” and “Brian de Boru Finnegan.” Motor parties traveling between New York and Philadelphia acquired the habit of breaking the journey at Lawrenceville for the purpose of visiting “The Jigger Shop,” where Hungry Smeed established the Great Pancake record. Then Mr. Johnson took one of his heroes from the school to the university, and “Stover of Yale” was the most talked-of book of a month. Turning to a broader field, the author found, in the turbulent life of twentieth-century New York, the background for “The Sixty-first Second,” “The Salamander,” “Making Money,” “The Woman Gives,” and “Virtuous Wives.”
Courtesy Charles Scribner’s Sons
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
It is no disparagement of Edwin Lefevre as a workman to say that one short story, written at a single sitting before breakfast, is of more permanent importance than all the rest of his production combined. For that story is “The Woman and Her Bonds,” which, without any hesitation, is to be ranked among the really big short tales of American fiction. It is the first of the collection known as “Wall Street Stories,” a book which brought to Mr. Lefevre quick recognition. Wall Street is the author’s particular field, and many of his characters are easily recognized by those in intimate touch with the money mart of the Western world. Besides “Wall Street Stories,” Mr. Lefevre has written “Samson Rock of Wall Street,” “The Golden Flood,” and “To the Last Penny.”
Dreiser and Dixon
