Wickford point

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WICKFORD POINT BY JOHN P. MARQUAND BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY All the incidents and characters in this novel ire entirely fictitious, and no reference is in tended to any actual person, living or dead. WICKFORD POINT Sid Sucf s the Gasoline At the top of Allen Southbys letter was engraved MARTIN HOUSE STUDY, and to the left in smaller type DR. SOUTHBY. This re minded everyone who had known him long enough that Allen had assumed this title as soon as he achieved his Ph. D. degree for studies in English and American literature. He first used it tentatively, among groups of undergraduates later the womens clubs where he lectured had employed the prefix also and finally, when the University Press published his volume The Transcendent Curve, his place in the scholastic world was ir revocably established. That this work should have had a sale which pushed it in less than a year to well over a hundred thousand copies is a com mentary on the priggishness of the book-buying public. The mass of information which Southby had gathered concerning early American literary figures was admittedly enormous, but not much of it was calculated to interest a layman. The style was difficult and turgid even after considerable cutting the final draft ran over seven hundred and fifty pages in good solid type. Pub lishers have said that the bulk was what gave it its final success. When one saw it upon the parlor table in its heavy maroon bind ing, one could feel that here was a house of leisure and refinement, whose owner and whose family partook of The Finer Things of Life. There was, authorities explained, a snob value to the book, such as was once an attribute of Will Durants Story of Philosop hy and ofMr. Wellss Outline of History. It possessed the same plus quality, gave forth the mystic promise of doing good and of conveying simply, it would seem, through its appearance the belief that you too might hold your employer, the girl of your choice, and a dinner table spellbound, provided you took a few pleasant moments off each day to dip into the pages. You, too, might achieve that rare distinction of being the man who is just a little different, which comes from reading a thoroughly good book. The reviewers took it up with an enthusiasm symptomatic of group hysteria, but I should like to wager that not one of them read all the way through it. Southby sometimes would quote their best remarks with a deprecating sort of humor designed to show that he knew very well that the critics had been too kind. A glamorous panorama of the history of American thought, moving in a scintillating progress. . . . We defy the reader to put down Dr. Southby s book once he has picked it up. There is a magic in the style which defies analysis it flows in a trenchant stream it is a Thames of style, moving with a deceptive tranquility past the spires of a modern Oxford. It costs five dollars, but its worth five hundred. This means that you and I can read it. This came from one of the lower, less literary journals, which reached the great half-tapped reservoir of the partially enlightened. It would be interesting, I repeat, to know just how many actually did read it. I know I never finished it, and consequently have no real right to discuss it, except in so far as The Transcendent Curve influenced the Doctor as an individual. It was an achievement such as that which Dr. Lowes very nearly brought off in TheRoad to Xanadu it was a book for scholars, read by laymen. There could be no doubt about its scholarship, since it very nearly got its author the presidency of one of the larger Western univer sities very nearly, but not quite. 4 My life is at Harvard Allen told us once. I am a Harvard man...

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Oorspronkelijke releasedatum: 15 maart 2007

Aantal pagina's: 464

Hoofdauteur: John P. Marquand

Hoofduitgeverij: Read Books

Verpakking breedte: 140 mm

Verpakking hoogte: 216 mm

Verpakking lengte: 216 mm

Verpakkingsgewicht: 586 g

EAN: 9781406776201

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