Word: blurbs
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Suspicion that Gentle Reader may be just another blurb sheet is allayed by the discovery in its pages of definitely condemnatory book reviews...
This season is no different from any other in the profuseness of the blurb material used to advertise the new books. If the reader were to interpret literally the extravagant claims of the publishers for their wares his life would be a frenzy of rushing from one "most notable contribution of the year" to the next "novel of extraordinary beauty" and so on through the whole gamut of superlatives...
...like Pauline Athens, has an altar ready for the Unknown God. Or it may merely indicate that Anything Goes. But most curious is the fact that Fort has a following of some note, who have formed a Fortean Society to praise his name. Publisher Kendall's jacket blurb is enthusiastically contributed to by Authors Theodore Dreiser, Booth Tarkington, Harry Elmer Barnes, John Cowper Powys, Ben Hecht (who announced himself "the first disciple of Charles Fort"). Manhattan's conservative Herald Tribune is quoted as calling Fort "that amazing genius...
LOVE BY ACCIDENT-Louis Marlow-Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). This book's suggestive jacket (by archly suggestive Peter Arno) and suggestive blurb cover what is superficially a rather naughty farce. It is actually a sermon on post-War youth, morals, manners. Its upshot: that sanity and simplicity are best, wine better than gin, old-fashioned love better than new-fangled neuroses. To Tony Buckram women are attracted as moths to a candle. He himself burns with a cold flame. He likes women and is no pervert, but they seem to him dreadfully rapacious, scarifying. Tony has had a queer, handicapped...
Readers of Liberty, nickel-weekly, last week found "JOYRIDE, A Story of Love ?and Wings," by Alicia Patterson. Opening lines: "Laura Withers was bored. Not the casual brand of boredom that smart women like to wear. But a stifling boredom. . . ." Editor's blurb: "... A young writer with experience as a newspaper reporter, known to readers of Liberty through her articles on hunting, fishing and flying. This time she has turned to fiction." Omitted from blurb: She is the attractive socialite daughter of Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, who divides with his cousin, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, management of Liberty, Chicago...