Word: algers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Since 1928, Herbert R. Mayes' Alger; A Biography Without a Hero has served as the standard reference work on Horatio Alger Jr., the 19th century author of 109 novels about poor but honest boys who rise to success. Mayes, then a young journalist, went on to become a successful magazine editor (Good Housekeeping, McCall's). But he did not quite live up to the example of Alger heroes. The book that has been consulted by scholars for decades, Mayes has quietly revealed, is - gads! - a hoax...
...Nobody bothered to do any digging," explains Mayes, who is now 73 and living in London. He says that he wrote the book as a satire and was shocked when reviewers took it seriously. He confesses that the book "literally swarms" with contradictions and absurd fabrications. Mayes has Alger frolicking with a prostitute in Paris when he was actually attending divinity school in Massachusetts. The biographer invented a diary for his subject and even gave Alger a stammer and the fortitude to over come it-all done without possessing the slightest bit of evidence to back up his assertions...
...George Macy, and one of the book's original reviewers, Harry Hansen, who urged his readers not to miss the biography and eventually became a close friend. Mayes finally decided to confess when he was asked to comment on criticisms of his book made in the more recent Alger biography by Ralph Gardner. The Horatio Alger Society, based in Lansing, Mich., and made up of 250 book buffs, provided a happy ending...
WHENEVER I AM TOLD that if only we had the White House tapes or a Liddy confession or a rigorous impeachment trial, we could determine the truth about Watergate and sift the guilty from the innocent, I think of reports of the Alger Hiss case, 25 years ago. I remember his accusers and defenders, his typewriter, his Ford and his Petersboro trip, the apartment he subletted and the carpet he received. I think of the facts and the denials, the interpretations and the reexaminations, the two trials and the endless press speculation. It has been almost a quarter century since...
...year-old blonde girl astonished Nixon by asking what the Alger Hiss case was. Who was that girl...