A witty and engaging history of one of American modernism's great
monuments. Back in the days when magazines were important, few were
devoured more avidly by the cognoscenti than the Smart Set during
the tenure of coeditors H.L. Mencken and noted drama critic George
Jean Nathan, who took over in 1914. Proclaiming that "one civilized
reader was worth a thousand boneheads," Mencken and Nathan engaged
in a full-scale assault on American nativism, naivete, and
knee-jerk puritanism. Their weapons were scorn, sarcasm, and
outright mockery as well as a fierce dedication to high culture and
the avant-garde. F. Scott Fitzgerald was an early discovery, as was
Eugene O'Neill. James Joyce even made his American debut in the
magazine. The two editors were complementary in almost everything,
even their eccentricities. Believing that culture was far above
futile political struggles, they kept all mention of WW I out of
the magazine. As Nathan wrote: "If all the Armenians were to be
killed tomorrow and if half of Russia were to starve to death the
day after, it would not matter to me in the least. . . . Life, as I
see it, is for the fortunate few." This kind of militant,
irreverent aestheticism appalled the "booboisie" but wowed the
cosmopolitans. Finally, after ten successful years, Mencken and
Nathan began to feel that the magazine was running out of steam. To
propound their ideas properly, they needed a completely new forum -
so with the backing of the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, they started
the American Mercury. Stripped of its stars, the Smart Set managed
to struggle on a few more years before finally going under during
the Depression. Curtiss (Von Stroheim, 1971) is every bit as smart
and stylish as his subject. His excellent biographical portrait of
the so often overshadowed Nathan is particularly notable. A
graceful, richly detailed delight. (Kirkus Reviews)
More than any other critic, George Jean Nathan was responsible for
the emergence of Eugene O'Neill to the forefront of the American
theatre. He blew the trumpets for him season after season, badgered
the Broadway producers to do him, shamed the Theatre Guild into
sponsoring him, and then watched the momentum of all these
campaigns culminate in the Pulitzer, and eventually, the Nobel
Prize. It was Nathan who discovered James Joyce's Dubliners and
published it in The Smart Set. F. Scott Fitzgerald was first
recognized by Nathan, who published Fitzgerald's first fiction in
The Smart Set. And when Fitzgerald needed a model for a lively
drama critic in his novel The Beautiful and the Damned, Nathan was
immediately and perfectly cast. Thomas Quinn Curtiss has reunited
Nathan with his cohort, H.L. Mencken, together with the rest of
their set: Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Edmund Wilson, Sean
O'Casey, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alfred Knopf, Jack London, Somerset
Maugham. The magnificent abandon of their enterprise and the hard
drinking Bohemian wisdom of their writing propelled them and fueled
generations of readers with their wit and philosophy. This is a
biography of an era of men whose stories could only be written by
an eyewitness.
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