Twentieth Century Writers – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

A 1947 Review of THE BUTTERFLY by James M. Cain
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Appearing in the Beverly Hills literary rag, Rob Wagner’s Script was the 1947 review of The Butterfly by James M. Cain (1892 – 1977):

I have not read Cain’s older books to confirm this impression, but offhand I would say that ‘The Butterfly’ is second to ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, among his longer things, as an exhibition of his peculiar talents…This work concerns itself with incest. Technically, no incest is committed, but a marriage is made and consummated between two people, one of whom supposes that she is the other’s daughter…

From Amazon: The Butterfly

COMMAND DECISION Book Review
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

Command Decision, the World War II novel by William Wister Haines (1908 – 1989), was written from the point of view of a general officer and the Allied effort to destroy the Nazi jet fighters before the Luftwaffe could muster the initiative and get the upper hand; the novel was based upon the author’s own wartime experiences serving with the American 8th Air Force in Europe during the Second World War. Haines enjoyed much critical and popular success when the book was released; a 1947 Broadway production ran for 409 performances and a film adaptation premiered in 1948 starring Clark Gable (who also served in the 8th Air Force).

Click here to read the 1947 book review of a William Saroyan war novel.

Reviewed: The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill
(Literary Digest,1913)

The 1913 book review of The Inside of the Cup by Winston Churchill (the other one) was so fraught with questions concerning the revolt of the Suffragettes and their disillusion with Christianity that the review was printed on the Religion Page of THE LITERARY DIGEST.

Those Who Inspired Mark Twain
(American Review of Reviews, 1910)

This is a brief look at the up-bringing of Mark Twain (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910), accompanied by two 1910 magazine photographs of the people who inspired the writer to create Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn. Also interviewed was the the man who instructed the author in the skills required to pilot the Mississippi River.

The historian Henry Steele Commager chose to rank Mark Twain at number 4 insofar as his impact on the American mind was concerned – click here to understand his reasoning (does this still hold true?)…

In Defense of Literary Rebels
(Vanity Fair, 1920)

Literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895 – 1972) was a big part of the intellectual world that existed in New York throughout much of the Twenties through the Fifties. His reviews could be found in a number of magazines such as VANITY FAIR, THE DIAL and THE NEW REPUBLIC. Wilson is remembered for championing many of the younger poets that we still read to this day and in this review, Bunny Wilson celebrated the new poetic form that the modern era had created: free verse. Good words can be read on behalf of the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell.

E.E. Cummings on T.S. Eliot
(The Dial Magazine, 1920)

A review of T.S. Eliot‘s (1888 – 1965) second collection, Poems (1919), as reviewed by E.E. Cummings (1894 – 1962) in the well respected magazine of the arts, THE DIAL. It was in this volume that Eliot’s well remembered series of quatrains first appeared: Sweeney Among the Nightingales, Sweeney Erect The Hippopotamus and Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service.

Cummings at that time was living in Paris and writing his first book, The Enormous Room, which would be published in 1922. The review of that work can be read here.

‘The Attack of the Super Novelists”
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

In this article, P.G. Wodehouse (1904 – 1975) sounded-off on a new type of novelist that had surfaced in 1919 – and has yet to decamp. He breaks the novelizing classes into two groups:

…the ordinary novelist, the straightforward, horny-handed dealer in narrative, who is perfectly contented to turn out two books a year, on the understanding – a gentleman’s agreement between himself and his public – that he reserves movie rights and is allowed an occasional photograph in the papers..

Virginia Woolf Reviews E.M. Forster
(Atlantic Monthly, 1927)

Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) had her say regarding the novels of E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970):

There are a many reasons which should prevent one from criticizing the work of contemporaries… With a novelist like E.M. Forster this is specially true, for he is in any case an author about whom there is considerable disagreement. There is something baffling and evasive in the very nature of his gifts.

T.E. Lawrence: Tiresome Literary Celebrity
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Hannen Swaffer (1879 – 1962), long-time dead British journalist who once presided as the Grand Pooh-Bah of Fleet Street’s chattering classes declared in this editorial that one by one the war heroes of the past are being debunked and now it is Lawrence’s turn…

Read these various accounts that serve as proof that there is a life after this one.

T.E. Lawrence and the Literary Coup of 1935
(Literary Digest, 1935)

The accidental death of T.E. Lawrence (1888 – 1935) triggered an event within the publishing world that was much discussed in all quarters:

THE SATURDAY REVIEW of LITERATURE, weekly guide-post for the literati, last week scooped the world with an air-tight exclusive story that was scheduled to be front page news fourteen years hence. The editorial coup was a review of Thomas Edward Lawrence’s (Lawrence of Arabia) final book, The Mint, which by the terms of his will was not to be made known to the world until 1950.

Henry Miller
(Pageant Magazine, 1958)

One of the First Reviews of ‘Sons and Lovers’
(Vanity Fair, 1913)

Later in the century there would be many ink-slingers to gush over the talents of D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930); but in 1913, the writer would simply have to bide his time and suffer the reviews that were printed in the society pages.

It emphatically is not a book for the ‘young person’, and it is certainly a book that will make the older conservative wince a bit…nevertheless it is a study that was worth doing, and D.H. Lawrence has done it well. He has dealt with very real things in a way that leaves a distinctness of impression unequaled by nine books out of ten one picks up nowadays.

The Rosettis
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Shortly after the death of William Michael Rossetti
(1829 – 1919), Welsh poet and essayist Arthur Symons
(1865 – 1945) wrote this essay remembering the man, his brother (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) and the friendship that the two shared with poets George Meredith and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Carl Sandburg at 70
(’48 Magazine)

Here is a salute to the poet Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) written by Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1977) marking the occasion of Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln:

At 70 Sandburg is the voice of the common man, and it is only natural that his biography of Abraham Lincoln should express for all time the spirit of that uncommon man who was the common denominator of humanity.

Dashiel Hammett Fights the Fascists
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Dashiel Hammett (1894 – 1961) had a pretty swell resume by the time World War Two came along. He had a number of celebrated novels and short stories published as well as a few well-paying gigs writing in Hollywood. It was during this period, in the Thirties, that he had created some of the wonderful characters that are still remembered to this day, such as Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man). During the war, it was rare but not unheard of, for an older man with such accomplishments to enlist in the army -and that is just what he did. This one page article clearly spells out Hammett’s period serving on an Alaskan army base; his slow climb from Buck Private to Sergeant; his difficulty with officers and the enjoyment of being anonymous.

Accompanying the article is a black and white image of the writer wearing Uncle Sam’s olive drab, herringbone twill -rather than the tell-tale tweed he was so often photographed wearing.

Sean O’Casey: Laborer, Playwright, Poet
(Stage Magazine, 1934)

Drama critic Ruth Woodbury Sedgwick interviewed Irish playwright Seán O’Casey
(1880 – 1964) for the November, 1934, issue of STAGE MAGAZINE and wrote this piece which clearly illustrated his art and politics.

Harold Nicolson on Paul Verlaine
(Current Opinion, 1921)

A review of Harold Nicolson’s 1921 biography, Paul Verlaine. Numerous aspects of Verlaine’s life and poetry are discussed as are the roots of French Symbolism.

A Profile of Guillaume Apollinaire
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

An appreciative essay celebrating the work of Guillaume Apollinaire (born Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky: 1880 – 1918) by the high-brow art critic Paul Rosenfed (1890 – 1946).

For Apollinaire possessed the perfect adjustibility of the born poet. He would have found himself much at home in any environment into which he would have been born, whether it would have been one of pampas and herds and lonely hamlets, or one of concrete, newspapers, war and steel.