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Dramatist and author William Saroyan (1908 – 1981) treated the readers of ’47 MAGAZINE with a number of his anecdotes concerning his close wartime friendship with W.W. II photographer Robert Capa.
They all involve alcohol.
Click here to read an anecdote about Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.
A favorable review of Evelyn Waugh’s (1903 – 1966) triumph Brideshead Revisited
(1945):
Looking up momentarily from our crystal ball, we predict that ‘Brideshead Revisited’ will set sales records and arouse more comment – critical and otherwise – than any book in many a day.
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel: 1904 – 1991) was all of 33 years of age when this one page piece of fiction appeared in The Stage Magazine; that same year his first book went to press, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street
The article is illustrated by one of his delightful drawings that future generations would come to know so well.
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque topped the U.S. bestseller list for all of 1929 and it was due in no small part to enthusiastic book reviews like the one we’ve posted here that must have numbered in the thousands throughout all of North America:
Here is a book about the war of such extraordinary purity and force that, reading it, one seems actually never to have read of the wear before. Numberless books have been written that present the stark, physical horrors of the war in quite as full detail as All Quiet on the Western Front, but their effects have been ified by one’s perception of the intent to shock. Many others have given us a more complete, more literary rendition of war as it strikes full upon the nerves of sensitive and intelligent men. Nothing could be less academic than Herr Remarque’s book; but nothing could be more vivid.
From Amazon: All Quiet on the Western Front
Printed just twelve years before he would receive a National Book Award for his tour de force, The Invisible Man, celebrated wordsmith Ralph Ellison (1914 – 1994) wrote this review of Negro fiction for a short-lived but informed arts magazine in which he rolled out some deep thoughts regarding Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neil Hurston and assorted other ink-slingers of African descent:
It is no accident that the two most advanced Negro writers, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, have been men who have enjoyed freedom of association with advanced white writers; nor is it accidental that they have had the greatest effect upon Negro life.
Click here to read a 1929 book review by Langston Hughes.
CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.
The author of The White Man’s Burden
An article about the Muslim opinion concerning colonialism can be read here…
The Life Magazine review of The Garden Party and Other Stories
by the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923) is attached here for your enjoyment. Mansfield lived a short but productive life before tuberculosis got the best of her in 1923. This was one of any number of favorable reviews that she enjoyed in her lifetime and she is today often considered one of the best short story writers of her period.
One of the first reviews of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned
(1922). The reviewer was impressed:
The Beautiful and the Damned is a real story, but a story greatly damaged by wit.
H.L. Mencken’s (1880 – 1956) short review of Joseph Conrad’s (1882 – 1941) collection of essays, entitled Notes on Life and Letters . The book contained Conrad’s thoughts on such subjects as the sinking of ‘Titanic’ to the writings of Henry James, Guy de Maupassant, Daudet and Ivan Turgenev were all touched upon in this collection of essays.
This very brief column appeared in Vanity Fair Magazine during the winter of 1915 as one element in the publicity campaign supporting the distribution of The Death of Nobody, Jules Romains’ (1885 – 1972) 1911 novel.
Prior to the First World War Romains was primarily known as a poet and founder (along with fellow poet Georges Chennevière) of Unanimisme, a movement that combined concept of international brotherhood with the psychological ideal involving a shared group consciousness. At the time of this printing, the novelist was serving in the French Army.
At the time this profile first appeared in 1919, P.G Wodehouse (1904 – 1975) had recently resigned his post as the drama critic for Vanity Fair in order to realize his ambitions as a novelist and playwright. This article revealed to all Wodehouse’s keen interest in American slang and American comic strips.
In 1944, Karl Jay Shapiro (1913 – 2000) was pulling in the big-bucks as a U.S. Army Private stationed in New Guinea, but unlike most of the khaki-clad Joes in at least a ten mile radius, Shapiro had two volumes of poetry under his belt (Person Place and Thing
A year latter, while he was still in uniform, Shapiro would be awarded the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Rebecca West
(born Regina Miriam Bloch: 1892 – 1983) became a fixture on the literary landscape just prior to the First World War when she was recognized as a young, thought-provoking writer with much to say on many matters. The article serves as an interesting profile of the woman by compiling various remarks made during the course of her early career.
Today, the name of O. Henry (1862 – 1910) has a far stronger association with New York City than with North Carolina, (his birth place) or Texas, where he spent much of his youth; however when you come to read the attached letters, and see his cartoons, you will hear a very distinct Western voice that is far removed from the New York that he wrote about.
In 1932, one of the few English speaking fans of bull-fighting was given the task of reviewing Ernest Hemingway’s (1899 – 1961) Death in the Afternoon
Ernest Hemingway, in the handling of words as an interpretation of life, is not a brilliant and ephemeral novillero, but a matador possessed of solid and even classic virtues.
Click here to read about Hemingway, the war correspondent.
Attached is one of the first American reviews of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, it was penned by literary critic Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970):
In essence The Waste Land says something which is not new: that life has become barren and sterile, that man is withering, impotent, and without assurance that the waters which made the land fruitful will ever rise again.
A review of Christopher Isherwood’s (1906 – 1986) semi-autobiographical novel, Memorial, which was placed in post-World War I Britain:
The plot of Memorial
Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964) had appeared on the literary horizon some fourteen years before this profile was read in the American press and by 1927 all concerned seemed to have decided that she had attained a respectable level of notoriety and was worthy of being labeled famous:
Miss Sitwell is described by THE SKETCH (London) as ‘an author who dislikes simplicity, morris-dancing, a sense of humor, and every kind of sport except reviewer-baiting.’
