Twentieth Century Writers – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

Willa Cather Gets a Bad Review
(Vanity Fair, 1913)

Writing his review of O Pioneers, DRESS and VANITY FAIR book critic Henry Brinsley wrote:

Miss Willa Cather in O Pioneers! (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist. And yet by the end of the book, something has happened in the readers mind that leaves him grateful…There isn’t a vestige of ‘style’ as such: for page after page one is dazed at the ineptness of the medium and the triviality of the incidents…And the secret of this is the persistence throughout of a single fine quality of the author – her extraordinary sincerity.

William Saroyan on William Saroyan
(Stage Magazine, 1940)

Hundreds of thousands of people regard me, I believe, as something of a success: A well-dressed, well-fed young writer, famous for his ties, who has moved upward and forward in the world of letters with a speed veering on the imperceptible; an Oriental whose name has become a word in the English language.

SAROYAN, n., one with money, a gentleman, a scholar, an artist; v., to slay, butcher, club, strafe, bombard, or cause to spin; adj., pleasing, ill-mannered, gallant; prep., near-by, within, over, under, toward.

What, however, is the inside story? What is the truth? Who is the real Saroyan? Is he a success or a failure? I will go over the entire saga from there to here chronologically…

Click here to read a Saroyan book review.

William Saroyan’s Reminiscence of Combat Photographer Robert Capa
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

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 Review of Brideshead Revisited
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazinet, 1946)

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 Tried His Hand at Grown-Up Fiction
(Stage Magazine, 1937)

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
(The Bookman, 1929)

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.

Is your name Anderson?

From Amazon: All Quiet on the Western Front

Ralph Ellison on Richard Wright Among Others…
(Direction Magazine, 1941)

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.

Rudyard Kipling Condemned
(Current Opinion, 1919)

The author of The White Man’s Burden gets the back-hand for all of his narrow-minded jingoism by Robert Wilson Lynd (1879 – 1949), who penned this angry review of Rudyard Kipling’s (1865 – 1936) body of work, finding the author to be too much the Victorian imperialist.

An article about the Muslim opinion concerning colonialism can be read here…

Reviewed: ‘The Garden Party and Other Stories’
(Life Magazine, 1922)

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.

A Review of ”Beautiful and the Damned”
(The Independent, 1922)

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.

The Tragedy of Eugene O’Neill
(Look Magazine, 1959)

In 1946, a literary statistician ascertained that, in the world of O’Neill plays, there had been 12 murders, eight suicides, 22 other deaths and seven cases of insanity

To read the attached biographical essay is to understand that O’Neill did not become America’s premiere tragedian by simply reading about the disasters in the lives of others; his entire life was a tragedy. In his wake were alcoholic, suicidal children and numerous unloved wives.

The Extraordinary Story of Eugene O’Neill
(The American Magazine, 1922)

A marvelous interview with the thirty-four year old playwright, Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953) -coincidentally published just as it seemed his stock was on the rise.

Click here to read a 1930s article about Eugene O’Neill.

What’s Next for Eugene O’Neill?
(Stage Magazine, 1935)

Stage editor Hiram Motherwell (1888 – 1945) examined the meteoric rise of playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953) and asked, What can he do next?

Eugene O’Neill is now forty-seven. His plays have just been enshrined in the definitive edition, handsome, ingratiating, expensive. They are probably more widely discussed than those of any other living playwright. They have been produced in almost every city from Moscow west to Tokyo. They have been translated into more languages. And yet it is evident that O’Neil, standing on the crest of this superb eminence, has completed a cycle; come to a momentous turning in the path his creative genius has followed. Where will the path lead?

Harsh Words for Eugene O’Neill
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1920)

In celebration of being awarded a Pulitzer Prize for having written the best American play of 1920 (Beyond the Horizon), theater critic Walter Prichard Eaton (1878 – 1957) saw fit to slip playwright Eugene O’Neill his back hand with a double-dose of venomous criticism:

…O’Neill’s work to date remains intellectually and spiritually thin.

‘W. B. Yeats and Those He Has Influenced”
(Vanity Fair,1915)

With the publishing of the first part of his autobiography, Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) got some attention in the American press. This small column first appeared in VANITY FAIR magazine praising his ability as a genuine artist.

W.B. Yeats Gripes About the Theater-Going Bourgeoisie
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1919)

Poet and playwright W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) had his say on the matter of theater-subscriber-book-of-the-month-club types who are more likely to attend performances because they feel they should, rather than attending for their own reasons of personal enjoyment:

And the worst of it is that I could not pay my players, or the seamstresses, or the owner of the building, unless I could draw to my plays those who prefer light amusement, or who have no ear for verse and literature, and fortunately they are all very polite.

William Butler Yeats Interviewed
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1924)

When the writer and editor Montrose J. Moses (1878 – 1934) got some quality time with the fifty-four year old poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) they discussed Irish theater, contemporary poetry, the collective literary merits of their generation and a good deal more. Unlike their visits in earlier days, Yeats was by then a respected icon in the republic of letters (having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a year earlier).

Conrad Reviewed by H.L. Mencken
(The Smart Set, 1921)

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.