I’ve been listing specific reasons why the novel Magnificent Obsession became a bestseller after its publication in 1929. In today’s post I’ll cover one of the most talked-about reasons: in Doctor Hudson’s secret journal, he says he learned “the secret to power” from a sculptor who clipped a passage out of the Bible and carried it around in his wallet. The author, Lloyd Douglas, wrote the story in a way that builds suspense around the question: “What was on that page?” He gives the essence of the answer, but he never tells his audience what page of the Bible it was.
Here is the passage in which he comes the closest to giving the answer:
As Laurine Wanamaker Schwan wrote in the Akron Journal shortly after the book’s release (11/1/1929): “This idea is hidden, indeed, in as much mystery and pomp as you will find anywhere. But it is disclosed in bits with much vivid action in between – in bits just big enough to whet your curiosity and interest. And – here is the master stroke of all – is never entirely revealed!”
There is simply this reference to the biblical admonition not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. For anyone who knows the Bible (or has access to a good concordance), that’s enough of a clue to find the passage Douglas has in mind. But why didn’t Douglas give the answer?
Here’s what he said later, in his “Author’s Preface” to Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal in 1939 (p. ix):
“The theme of the novel had derived from a little handful of verses midway of the Sermon on the Mount, but all references to the enchanted passage were purposely vague, the author feeling that a treasure hunt in Holy Writ would probably do his customers no harm. Within the first twelve months after publication, more than two thousand people had written to inquire, ‘What page of the Bible did the sculptor carry in his wallet?’ We left off counting these queries, but they have continued to come, all through these intervening years.”
Notice that even now he didn’t give chapter and verse. If you don’t know where the Sermon on the Mount can be found, you’re out of luck. If you do, then you’ll find it exactly where he says: at the midway point of it.
Why all the secrecy? First of all, because this was his ingenious way of attracting the attention of people who didn’t go to church and wouldn’t be interested in hearing about the Bible under normal circumstances. Second, because citing chapter and verse would have broken the spell. This is a mainstream novel, not Christian fiction. Third, as he says in the paragraph I just quoted, he was hoping his readers would get their hands on a Bible and go for “a treasure hunt,” just like Bobby Merrick ends up doing in the novel.
Laurine Wanamaker Schwan, whose review in the Akron Journal I mentioned a moment ago, thought there might be a fourth reason: “Those who want to see this philosophy in black and white are given a hint as to where they may find it for themselves. And this again is a master stroke. For those who might say, ‘Ho hum! Now what is important about that?’ will never be able to find it. Only those few who will click with its meaning… will ever actually see that idea in cold print!” This is an intriguing suggestion, for it echoes what some scholars believe to be the reason for the so-called “Messianic Secret” in the gospels: to communicate with those who are receptive while keeping critics in the dark. But Douglas himself never said this was his intention.
At any rate, Douglas’s technique of keeping the Bible verses a secret was effective, as the two thousand inquiries he received shows. But it’s interesting to see how reviewers handled this feature of the book.
One reviewer gave it away, without so much as a Spoiler Alert. This was in an article entitled, “Unknown, Read by 150,000,” in the Chicago Herald Examiner (2/20/1932). After admitting that the book’s popularity was due, in large part, to the “mystery of the message in a secret code to be solved,” the review ends with these words: “The ‘magic page’ is apparently Matthew vi:1-6.” (Yeah, thanks a lot. What a killjoy!)
One columnist teased his readers, pretending he was about to reveal the secret… then didn’t. He wrote in his final paragraph: “The scriptural passage in which Dr. Hudson found the secret of his power and which is transmitted to Dr. Merrick is not revealed. The reader is privileged to guess. My own is – but this is Lloyd Douglas’s book.” (W. F. Hardy, “As I View the Thing,” Decatur (IL) Herald, n.d.)
Ozora Davis, writing to an audience of ministers and biblical scholars in the Chicago Theological Seminary Register must have felt that information was more important than letting his colleagues discover it for themselves: “The Sermon on the Mount is in [this book],” he said, “and it is such a comment on the sixth chapter of Matthew as I have not read in many a day.” In this case, Douglas didn’t mind the spoiler. A recommendation from Ozora Davis was a big deal in those days.
One religious periodical scolded Douglas for keeping the passage a secret. The reviewer in Personal Power (October, 1931) wrote, “For the benefit of those who cannot find the scripture passage upon which Randolph’s secret was based, look up Matt. 6:2-7. As a preacher, Dr. Douglas should not have kept people guessing like that.”
A severe critic from Birmingham, Alabama, however, went in the opposite direction: he believed that Douglas had kept the passage a secret because the actual biblical text did not support Douglas’s interpretation. Dean Gilbert W. Mead of Birmingham-Southern College, wrote in the Birmingham News-Age-Herald (3/26/1933), “From the first I felt, as probably many another reader did, that the author was playing a cheap trick on us by never telling us just what was the exact scriptural reference out of which the whole obsession grew…. [T]here isn’t a single thing I can see hindering Mr. Douglas from telling us right out what the discovery was – citing chapter and verse – except, perhaps, that he didn’t dare chance the flimsiness of his absurd structure by exhibiting the weakness of the foundation.”
Whatever one’s opinion may be of the technique Douglas used, it was effective. It got people talking. It prompted thousands of them to write to him, asking questions about the Bible. It motivated columnists and reviewers to write about the book in newspapers all across the country. It accomplished, in other words, what every novelist tries to do, and most fall short of: it made an impression on the larger culture.
But, for many readers, it did something more – something that novels rarely do: it offered a call to action. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 