Word: marquands
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...restless. As Novelist John Marquand puts it in Melville Goodwin, USA: "He was one of those Samsons ready and waiting for some Delilah to give him a haircut, and Dottie Peale was just the one to do it. Melville A. Goodwin was going to get his hair cut, and medals and stars and clusters would not help...
...Nonstop War. Novelist Marquand doesn't help his hero much either. He lets Goodwin thrash around in the required course the general never studied at West Point: the facts of life. But Marquand is an old hand at arranging the facts so as to get a few things off his own chest, and Goodwin's uniform does not long conceal the fact that he is just a new variant of an old Marquand hero: the successful U.S. male, vaguely but persistently beset by discontent, his existence complicated by a nonstop war between the sexes...
This time Marquand worries the theme too doggedly, all but writes his book twice. For Sidney Skelton, the novel's narrator, is a highly successful newsbroadcaster who also has the taste of ashes in his mouth, and so rates a pretty full Marquand treatment himself. Sid hates his broadcasting job with its phony buildup. A working newspaperman, he has made good too fast on nothing but a pleasant voice. He can't get used to his big new house in Connecticut or to his wife's yearning to make the social grade...
...Women's Cards. In the end, dumpy Muriel Goodwin runs her hero husband just as she has run him since high-school days. And, up in Connecticut, Mrs. Skelton wins too: Sid decides to stick at his job to make his wife and daughter happy. In marriage, Novelist Marquand seems to be saying a little petulantly, the women hold all the cards...
...Melville Goodwin, Novelist Marquand's stock does not plummet, but it passes a dividend. His effort to show that Army folk are somehow different from civilians, and stronger on the simpler virtues, falls flat because his examination of Mel never gets beyond his surface manner. The old Marquand narrative skill is still there, with its painless transitions and smooth flashbacks. The talk is easy and natural, whether the talkers are Pentagon brass or radio tinhorns. But they all seem to be saying the things that better Marquand characters have said before...