The Lloyd C Douglas Page

The Religion of a Collegian, Part 2

Portrait of Lloyd C Douglas in his 1918 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“[Y]outh is by nature in a state of revolt. That is as it should be…. It is in the interest of progress that each new generation shall have its moments when father is fine, but a fogy, and mother is well-meaning, but obsolete.”

Lloyd Douglas is preaching at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, adjacent to the University of Michigan. The date is October 12, 1919. (I’m quoting from Douglas’s typed script in Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“An occasional pioneer may go out into a new and unknown country, led by the lure of strange adventures, gambling on finding a more enjoyable and prosperous life. But most pioneers go out because they have found their old conditions intolerable.

“Youth does not often announce that it proposes to pursue a new course of thought for the sheer love of adventure with the untried. He can offer a much better reason than this for his pilgrimage. He is dissatisfied with things and thoughts as they are. He is not an immigrant, but an emigrant. He is not searching for anything; he is discarding something. He wants to shake himself free of the restrictions which fetter his spirit. No sooner has he escaped his parental prison than he begins to rebel against the old authorities, and at a very tender age, sets up his will in defiance to the will of those who have custody of his childhood. In school, he considers it part of his life program to annoy his teachers and break their rules….

“Much of the scheming and plotting indulged in by college students, to deceive their instructors and slight their academic duties, does not indicate a desire on their own part to deny themselves the mental training which they have sacrificed many a pleasure to secure, so much as an inherent passion to escape the conventional restrictions imposed upon them by their elders.

“Frequently we deplore the overemphasis placed upon athletics and social diversions by students who, in the natural course of things, should be giving the best of their energy and ingenuity to their studies…. Perhaps it would be a pleasant experiment to devise a college course made up on athletics all forenoon, dances all afternoon, and compulsory movie-shows at night. It would be of great interest – would it not? – to see some people you know, possibly including yourself, begging an honest man to answer your name at roll-call at the hop, in order that you might steal to your room and snatch a few pages of economics.”

(Eyewitnesses say that the congregation often laughed out loud at some of the things Douglas said from the pulpit. Perhaps this was one of those times.)

“But we may as well be honest with each other,” he continues. “You have your duty to perform, and that duty demands that you shake yourselves free, so far as possible, from any restrictions which fetter the full development of your life. And we have our duty to perform as elders, also in obedience to an instinct over which we have little control, to see to it, with might and main, that you do not go too far or too fast in your revolt. Your generation constitutes the main-spring, and our generation constitutes the escapement-wheel. If it weren’t for you, there would be no more power promised; and if it weren’t for us, you would dissipate your energy to no purpose.”

To what purpose, then, should the students in this auditorium devote their lives? Yes, they must launch out in their own way, leaving the past behind, but to what specific purpose? That would be for each of them to decide for themselves, but whatever quest they choose, they must ask themselves what role religion will play in it.

“Not only is it laid upon the potential leader of the day that he shall approach this subject [of religion] with becoming seriousness, but that he shall be able to contribute certain constructive opinions as to what type of religious thought may best answer the needs proposed by the peculiar conditions at work in modern times.

“It is extremely doubtful if the professional clergy, enmeshed in their ecclesiastical traditions, and under the duress imposed upon them by the denominational authorities to whom they feel themselves obligated, can ever hope to do for religion what you may accomplish who, as influential laymen, will be in a position to contribute your thought, independent as you are of these restrictions and constraints.

“All this deepens the collegian’s responsibility to inform himself concerning the history of religion in the world, awake to its blunders and delinquencies as well as to its benefits and achievements, with the hope that it may repeat its triumphs and avoid the repetition of its failures.”

Douglas has been saying that the inherent rebelliousness of youth should be put to good use, studying the history of religion in order to help guide it in the immediate future. In the last part of his sermon, he will challenge the students in the balcony to take this responsibility seriously.

The Religion of a Collegian, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of “The Religion of a Collegian,” Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Copyright University of Michigan.

Over the next few posts, I will be sharing a sermon preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on October 12, 1919, entitled, “The Religion of a Collegian.”

It is the beginning of the 1919-1920 school year at the University of Michigan. After talking briefly about higher education and its goals, Douglas sets out to answer the question, “What manner of religion, then, may expect to find favor and acceptance with the average normal type of collegian mind?” His short answer is: a religion in which “the real elements of Christianity, as taught and exemplified by the matchless Teacher of Nazareth in Galilee shall be revivified and energized in modern life.” In other words, a religion based on the teachings of Jesus and applied to daily life in the twentieth century.

To summarize: He starts out, however, with the claim that religion in general is an important part of the cultural bequest that students should grapple with by the time they graduate. Next, he talks about how natural it is for young people to rebel. But today, with so many things to rebel against, where should thoughtful young rebels focus their efforts? If the church is to improve, he says, the laity rather than the clergy must take leadership – and he explains why. In the face of this great need, both on the part of the church and of the larger world, college students are called to respond, if they will accept the challenge.

Over the next few posts, I’ll go back over these points in more detail.

First, then: Why should college students pay attention to religion?

Because “the religious instinct is the oldest recorded interest and hope of mankind – coeval, so far as we can discover, with humanity’s earliest strivings…”

Because “this religious instinct is inseparably linked with human history, as far back as that history runs, and furnishing the chief clue to the achievements of those prehistoric folk whose aspirations may only be guessed at.”

Because “this religious instinct was directly responsible for most of the great migrations which have developed and civilized the world; and for most of the wars which, from time to time, have reset the stage and revised the plot and recast the players of the age-old terrestrial drama.”

Because “any education which fails to comprehend the importance of religion to the mental, spiritual, and physical evolution of the race is sadly deficient…”

He says “there are at least two mental types who fail to appreciate this fact…. Strangely enough, these types are utterly antagonistic to each other, at deadly enmity, holding each other in abhorrence; yet, by circuitous routes contriving to arrive at a common destination where their surprise at meeting is doubtless mutual.

“One is the blatant scoffer, who hoots at all religion as the shameful legacy bequeathed by a long line of superstitious forebears. And the other is the mole-eyed bigot whose sacred books and sacred creed and sacred symbols are the only authoritative manifestation of God to the human race.”

Douglas says that, of the two, it is probably the religious bigot who has “achieved the larger results in making shipwreck of their neighbors’ feeble faith.” People tend to be turned away from the faith most consistently by those who, “with rack and wheel and fagot-fire,” with “denunciation and the selfishness of bigotry, have maintained that their peculiar sects enjoyed a monopoly of religious truth, and that all who differed were without remedy or recourse in a sinful world.”

It is against such displays of narrow-mindedness that college students typically turn away in disgust, Douglas says. But more than that, it is perfectly natural for young people to rebel. It’s part of being young. It’s actually a good thing. It’s what keeps the human race moving forward. And it is that very rebelliousness that the church stands in desperate need of, he says. I’ll explain why in my next post.

Ann Arbor, Fall Semester, 1919

by Ronald R Johnson

First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor circa 1917. In LCD’s 1917 Scrapbook, Box 5, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

Over the next several weeks, I will be using Frieda Diekhoff’s collection of Lloyd Douglas’s sermons to reconstruct his preaching during the 1919-1920 school year at the University of Michigan. If you want to imagine the scene, the first ingredient you’ll need to include is excitement. By all accounts, Douglas’s sermons attracted enthusiastic audiences – so much so, that latecomers were often turned away for lack of seating.

Lionel Crocker was a graduate student at the time. He remembered years later that Douglas “was the leading preacher in Ann Arbor when I was studying and teaching at the University of Michigan…. I, like hundreds of others, had to be in my pew at ten o’clock for a 10:30 service” (“Preaching Through the Novel,” Classmate, March 9, 1947, p. 3).

The congregation was composed of professors and administrators from the university, as well as businesspeople from Ann Arbor. Douglas appealed to both “town” and “gown.” But the balcony was reserved for students, and it was always filled to capacity. As I mentioned in previous posts, Douglas was in charge of the YMCA at the University of Illinois before coming to Ann Arbor, so he was popular with students. But he never talked down to them. His sermons were geared to the level of educated audiences – of all ages.

It’s the beginning of a new school year, and a new season of football at the University of Michigan. The Great War (which we, with a larger historical perspective, call the First World War) is in the recent past. It’s in the back of our minds, but quickly receding. Two years earlier, everyone was walking around in a grim mood, but not now. Life is good again. Although it’s too early for people to say so, the Roaring Twenties are about to begin.

The music at this church is excellent. Earl V. Moore is the organist and choir director. He will soon become the head of the Music Department at the university, but for now he is the university organist and Douglas’s prize catch. Although people come primarily to hear Douglas preach, they also come for the music.

Here is a description by Calvin O. Davis, Professor of Education, in A History of the Congregational Church in Ann Arbor, 1847-1947, published by the church circa 1947, pp. 60-61:

“Dr. Douglas was one of the most scintillating and brilliant ministers ever to occupy our pulpit. To many individuals he was a platform orator. Facile in speech, powerful in imagery, dramatic in delivery, and quick to utilize a pithy saying or a humorous anecdote in order to emphasize a point in his sermon, he made a tremendous appeal to young and old alike, particularly to many university students. Within a short time the auditorium of the church was filled to overflowing every Sunday morning – scores, if not hundreds, of persons often being turned away from the doors by ushers because there was not an available seat left in the building.

“Dr. Douglas was accustomed to use notes in the delivery of his sermons but rarely, if ever, did he read directly from his manuscript. His aesthetic nature was peculiarly sensitive and expressive, especially in his recital of poetry, his description of art pieces, and his appreciation of music. At times his audience would spontaneously laugh aloud at some unexpected descriptive phrase or witty saying.”

But Professor Davis didn’t gloss over the negatives: “To some he seemed not deeply spiritual – more of a lecturer and entertainer than a preacher and religious inspirer. Some withdrew from the church on that account; others stayed but criticized. Certainly the religious influence he exerted through the publication of his many books since leaving Ann Arbor is proof of the spiritual leadership he possessed. It is true his theological views were broad and liberal and he gave only slight emphasis to creeds, but to the thousands who came in contact with him either on Sunday mornings or at other times he was a genuine inspiration.”

But what did he say in those sermons? That’s the question I’ll be answering in detail over the next several weeks.

Thank You, Frieda Diekhoff

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of “The Religion of a Collegian,” Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

Lloyd Douglas’s daughters were not the only ones who donated items to the Bentley Library’s “Lloyd C. Douglas Papers.” Private contributors also donated files. One valuable donation was a collection of sermons that Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor during the 1919-1920 school year. He always typed his sermons in advance and made copies available upon request. In the upper left corner of the first two sermons is the name of the donor, who must have collected them at the time and saved them. Her name was Frieda Diekhoff.

I assume this is Mrs. Frieda Sophie Diekhoff Attwood, who was “a lifelong resident of Ann Arbor.” She was awarded a bachelors degree from the University of Michigan in 1924 and a masters in 1927, although her obituary does not say what field she studied. Also in 1927, she married Stephen S. Attwood, who “later became Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.” (I’m quoting from her obituary on the “Find A Grave” website.)

When Douglas’s daughters established the “Lloyd C. Douglas Papers” at the university’s Bentley Historical Library in the 1950s, I am sure this was announced in university press releases. As the wife of a dean, Mrs. Attwood probably heard about the archive and realized her sermon collection would be a valuable addition to the set.

What makes this file so valuable is that it allows us to see Douglas at work, week after week, for almost an entire school year. I have found it particularly useful in understanding the evolution of his thought during a pivotal moment in his life, for 1920 was the year in which he became a frequent contributor to the Christian Century and had his first book published (Wanted: A Congregation).

The Fall 1919 part of the collection is filed as “Sermons [4],” and the Winter/Spring 1920 part is called, “Sermons [5].” They are found in Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Here is a list of the sermons in this collection:

*The Religion of a Collegian (Oct 12, 1919)
*The Conservation of Moral Leadership (Oct 19, 1919)
*The Pearl-Trader (Oct 26, 1919)
*Human Engineering (Nov 2, 1919)
*Buried Treasure (Nov 9, 1919)
*Understudies (Nov 16, 1919)
*The Grounds of Our Gratitude (Nov 23, 1919)
*Walled Towns (Nov 30, 1919)
*What Do You Want for Christmas? (Dec 14, 1919)
*Sermon (Jan 4, 1920)
*Personality: First Phase (Jan 18, 1920)
*Personality: Second Phase (Jan 25, 1920)
*Personality: Third Phase (Feb 1, 1920)
*The Wilderness (Feb 15, 1920)
*The Father of Our Country (Feb 22, 1920)
*Art Thou a King, Then? (Palm Sunday, Mar 28, 1920)

Over the next several weeks, I will summarize and quote from these sermons, in the order in which they were preached. Along the way, I will offer my own interpretations, especially in light of his overall development as a thinker and writer. I am excited to work with such a great resource. It is somewhat like a time capsule, giving us glimpses of Douglas’s preaching and thinking over a sustained period. I am grateful that young Ms. Diekhoff saved these pages, and that, years later, she was willing to give them to the university for the benefit of future generations.

The Mission of Lloyd C Douglas

by Ronald R Johnson

Autograph on first page of a customer copy of Forgive Us Our Trespasses.

Although it’s true that the phenomenal success of the 1929 novel Magnificent Obsession changed the life of its author, it was a delayed reaction. Not until he sat down to write Forgive Us Our Trespasses in the summer of 1932 did Lloyd Douglas realize how greatly his life would change. As I told you in previous posts, he had wanted his next novel to be a satire on the state of modern art, with emphasis (apparently) on the New Fiction of the 1920s; but instead, he wrote another novel like Magnificent Obsession, in which the story was based on a portion of the Sermon on the Mount. As he neared retirement from full-time ministry (which he planned to do in the summer of 1933), he had imagined himself as a mainstream novelist, not as a writer of Christian fiction.

His embarrassment comes through in an unpublished essay that he had intended for the Ladies’ Home Journal in early 1933. (All quotations in this post are from that essay, “Adventures in Parables,” which is filed under “Addresses and Articles,” Box 3, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The University of Michigan holds copyright to this document.)

“More or less by accident,” Douglas wrote, “I have become an author of goody-goody stories in which the characters are tiresomely decent and everything turns out happily in the end. This is an offense to modern art in letters, and if I knew to whom apologies should be offered, perhaps I might solicit such shriving as the transgression demands.”

He was joking, but he really did feel like he had been caught trespassing in literary territory. In that sense, the title Forgive Us Our Trespasses was more appropriate than people realized.

“My main trouble, in the opinion of the literary critics,” he continued, “is that I broke all the rules of novel-composition through ignorance. That’s what makes my position in the world of letters so embarrassing. The only woman at the dinner party who dares plant her elbows on the table and hold the squab in her fingers is the lady whose social experience is beyond the reach of query or cavil. If Maggie O’Flaherty did such a thing, the whole solar system would be set back two minutes due to time out for recovery.”

To understand the next example, you have to bear in mind that this was the Great Depression, and Roosevelt wasn’t president yet. At the very moment he wrote this piece, banks all over the country were closing. Douglas wrote, “The only man in town who can afford to wear a greasy old hat is the banker. (Pardon me. I was momentarily thinking of earlier times when bankers had money. If you can think of another word here for ‘banker,’ give him the old hat with our envious felicitations.)”

Then he got to the point:

“The only writer who can take the risk of breaking the laws in respect to the composition of fiction is the sanctioned, seasoned, spurred veteran; which I am not.

“Nobody in these frugal days should waste ink, stamps, and sarcasm in notifying me that Magnificent Obsession and Forgive Us Our Trespasses are, technically, about as bad as stories could be without exposing themselves to censorship in the cause of sound literary production. Perhaps I am too naive to know just how bad they are, but I have a general idea.”

He was being too hard on himself. Although a case can be made that this or that aspect of his first two novels could have been improved, critics with credentials – especially those based in New York – had good things to say about both novels. As I noted in a previous post, there were only a few writers in local newspapers (Kansas City, for example, and Birmingham, Alabama) who trashed Magnificent Obsession, and that trend continued with Forgive Us. But Douglas didn’t consider either of those books literary masterpieces, and that’s why he was embarrassed when some people did criticize them on literary grounds.

“I have only one defense to fall back upon,” he said, “when the really competent critics complain that my stories are shocking examples of How Not to Write a Novel. I am fully aware of it. I do not think of myself as a novelist at all. These things I have written are probably not novels. Perhaps they are modern parables.”

Again, he was conceding too much. They were novels; they just weren’t the kind that was in vogue after the literary revolution of the 1920s. They were “purpose novels”: novels in which the thesis was more important than the plot. And yet his first two books demonstrate that he understood plotting and did it with skill. His only real problem was this: that he was a writer of purpose novels in a day when that genre was considered a thing of the past.

There’s something he’s not telling us in this essay, however. The truth is, he had always aspired to be a novelist – not a writer of purpose novels but of real ones – ones in which the story was everything. Through all his years as a minister, he had waited patiently for that day, when he could shed the clerical collar and WRITE. But when his moment came, his incoming mail convinced him that God had other ideas. As much as he wanted to be “the sanctioned, seasoned, spurred veteran” writer of modern novels, he chose the path he felt his people needed.

This was the mission of Lloyd C. Douglas: to write “modern parables” for people who desperately needed the guidance such stories could provide. When he composed Forgive Us Our Trespasses, he had to make a choice. Would he follow his heart and be the novelist he had always dreamed of being, or would he do what he discerned the Spirit of God calling him to do? Knowing how much it meant to him, I believe it was a gut-wrenching decision. But he chose what he perceived to be his calling. And the rest is history.

This is as much as I can tell you, in these blog posts, about Douglas’s life story. The biography that I’ve written picks up here (1932) and covers the rest of his life, until his death in 1951. If you would like to know more about that book, I send a free monthly newsletter to Lloyd Douglas fans, updating them on the progress of my research and writing. I invite you to fill out the form below, and I will be glad to add you to my list.

In the meantime, future posts at this site will delve more deeply into the documents in the Lloyd Douglas archive: his sermons, speeches, published articles, and interviews. Stay tuned!

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Release

by Ronald R Johnson

Although he never flaunted it, Lloyd Douglas knew his New Testament Greek. And that was probably why he chose the working title, Release, for his next novel,in the summer of 1932.

Luke 6:37 is usually translated into English as, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” but a literal translation would be “Release, and you will be released.” The Greek verb is apoluō, which means “to release.” It also means “to forgive,” because that is one example of how you can “release” someone. The point Douglas wanted to emphasize in this new novel was that, in releasing others, we ourselves are released.

Here is how he explained his thesis to Ira Rich Kent, the Managing Editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company on 7/26/1932 (from Box 1, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan):

“This book is not in any sense a sequel to Magnificent Obsession…. The thesis of M.O. was, briefly: How to get what you want, and be what you would like to be, through a practice of a Galilean principle of secret philanthropy.

“The thesis of the present work is: how to get free of the encumbrances which block the way to the expansion of personality.

“The most common of these encumbrances is hatred – prejudice, toxic frustrations, cancerous might-have-beens, bottled-up injustices.”

Notice that his examples go beyond just hatred to include disappointment and frustration that has been “bottled-up.” The title Release has even more meaning in this regard. He continues:

“The solution – to be cryptically disclosed through a process not at all homiletic, but by a device capable of sustaining reader interest – is based on the only comment the Lord offered on ‘the Lord’s Prayer’: If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will forgive yours.

“Trespasses, in this book, are considered as ‘invasions of rights.’ My ‘Major Personality’ has a right to energies which He has invested in me. I cannot hope to succeed in a large way unless I concede and honor His right to the control of such power.

“My freedom to enjoy; to savor life; to get out of it all that is in it for me by putting into it all that I possess, depends upon my willingness to put myself into complete harmony with His design for me.

“I cannot hope to do this unless I free myself of the encumbrances that weight me down.

“At this point, there arises a quite definite proposal of NEGOTIATION. If I sincerely forgive all who have made life difficult for me, I have offered the credentials necessary for this FREEDOM.

“All this sounds didactic and brittle, as I attempt to explain it; but it will not appear so in the book.”

That part about “negotiation” will almost certainly appear foreign to Christians. We place our trust in Jesus, not in any sort of “negotiations” or “credentials” we may bring. The thing to remember here is that Douglas isn’t talking about salvation, and he’s not using orthodox vocabulary. He’s talking about unleashing one’s potential in one’s daily pursuits, and he’s using the vocabulary of the ordinary person out in the world. His congregations were filled with people who professed to be Christians but who had never done the things Jesus talked about. He’s trying to get them beyond talking about it and actually doing it. And he’s starting at Square One.

In the book (Chapter 15), he has the character Julia explain it this way (and she seems to be referring to Matthew 18 here):

This little piece [of scripture]… doesn’t whine at all. It doesn’t ask you to whimper for mercy.

It’s just a business proposition same as if you owed a thousand dollars to Mr. Smith, and ten other people owed you a hundred dollars apiece, and Mr. Smith said, ‘Pay me that thousand dollars,’ and you said, ‘I can’t – with all these people owing me.’

And Mr. Smith said, ‘I don’t need the money so much, but I like you and want to be friends with you, and as long as you are owing me you’ll be keeping away from me for fear I’ll ask you for it and make you ashamed. And it won’t do any good for me to tell you just to keep the money and forget it, because that would make you ashamed, too, and you would always feel in debt. So – I’ll make you a proposition. If you will cancel all the debts of these people who owe you, and are afraid to face you, so that they can afford to cancel the debts of the people who owe them, I’ll call it square with you. Then we can all be good neighbors again, and nobody will be afraid of anyone else, or shy, or ashamed.’

This all sounds so much more sensible to me, dear, than the way they talk about it at the meetings. It’s just as if God wanted us to do business with Him about these things that have kept us strangers.

Houghton Mifflin published the book in November 1932 under the title, Forgive Us Our Trespasses. Douglas had thought it would be a clever satire of modern art, but it ended up being much more. And, in writing it, he found his mission in life. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

Mencken

by Ronald R Johnson

I’ve been telling you about the tentative plans Lloyd Douglas made sometime around 1930-31 for his next novel, after Magnificent Obsession. He wanted to write a satire about modern art, and apparently it was going to focus on 1920s fiction. As I showed in my last post, it was going to include some of his firsthand impressions of daily life in Greenwich Village, where starving young artists sat in gloomy eating establishments, trying to think up the next big thing.

I’ve also been telling you that his ideas for this next novel changed over time, as the success of Magnificent Obsession, and especially the letters he received from readers, convinced him that his job wasn’t finished. People had questions that he couldn’t answer neatly in mere correspondence. So he took the ideas he had been working on and reshaped them into a novel that would answer some of those questions.

It was around this time that he began talking about the main character of the novel. He wanted the protagonist to grow up “full of poison from his neck to his heels.” He would be modeled after the best-known cynic in America at the time: Baltimore Sun columnist H. L. Mencken.

I don’t think Douglas fully understood Mencken. It would have been hard for anyone in Douglas’s position to be sympathetic toward Mencken, especially since Mencken was so rabidly anti-Christian and anti-middle class.

James D. Hart writes in The Oxford Companion to American Literature (4th edition, 1965) that Mencken was “best known for… aggressive iconoclasm… especially during the decade following the First World War [the 1920s, in other words], when he exhibited a savagely satirical reaction against the blunders and imperfections of democracy and the cultural gaucheries of the American scene…. His critical views were widely influential… although he aroused much popular antagonism” (p. 541).

Vernon Louis Parrington, near the end of his massive three-volume work, Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920 (NY: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1930), grouped Mencken with “the younger intellectuals” who offered “a searching criticism of the triumphant middle class, its ideals and its habitat, the town and the city; the repressive tyrannies of its herd mind; the futility of its materialism” (Volume 3, p. 376).

The Macmillan Company’s Literary History of the United States (Third Edition), says of Mencken’s Prejudices: “Mencken’s major quarrels are two: with the Christian moral code whether in its pure state or in a diluted state, and with government by the people, whether under a democratic or communistic form” (1144). Mencken thought the American people were a bunch of “boobs,” and he put his faith in a literary elite that consisted of people he helped make famous – guys like Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and James Branch Cabell.

Mencken was the person Douglas modeled his main character after. “I do not think that Mr. Mencken will sue me for slander,” he wrote, “because (a) he will not read the book, and (b) he is too self-consciously omniscient to identify any other portrait of himself than one he might draw; but Dinny Brumm [the hero of the novel] develops into that sort of a person” (LCD to Ira Rich Kent, 7/26/1932). And for Douglas, that meant a person who was “full of poison.”

Douglas’s main problem was getting readers to have sympathy for someone like that. His solution was in two parts: showing readers Dinny’s difficult life growing up, and then giving him star power. “I had thought to make [him] a thin-necked little puke as a child,” Douglas confided – take that, Mencken! – “but I have changed my mind” (LCD to his daughter Betty, 5/16/1932). A month later, he said, “Now he is a ham-handed, overgrown young rake-hell that can hardly keep his shirt on…. I think he will make a larger appeal in the new form” (LCD to Betty, 6/20/1932).

In college, for example, he’d be good on the football field because practice sessions would give him permission to knock the hell out of the rich kids on his team—the Pullman Boys who rode to school in style while he had to sit in Coach Class, the fraternity members who looked down on “barbs” like him. He’d be the crowd favorite in his English Composition course because his biting humor would go over the professor’s head but all the students would catch the joke. He and the college president’s daughter, Joan Braithwaite, would fall in love, but his scathing editorial mocking “the Greeks” (privileged members of fraternities) would also insult her, as the leader of a sorority. He’d get kicked out of school for giving a religious conservative a black eye. And he’d rise to fame as a syndicated columnist because intelligent people all around the nation would love to see him take down the powerful, the self-important, and the dim-witted.

Bob Willett, at Willett, Clark & Colby, planned to publish the book and kept asking about it, but Douglas didn’t want to work with Willett again. The Chicago publisher hadn’t advertised Magnificent Obsession very much outside The Christian Century, and Douglas was sure he wouldn’t promote a second book any more effectively.

Since, years earlier, Douglas had published two non-fiction books with Charles Scribner’s Sons, he decided to give them another try. He met with a “Mr. Perkins” in February 1932 after sending him five rough chapters of the new novel. The meeting went well, apparently, because Perkins asked Douglas for the right of refusal on the book. Douglas did not commit. During their meeting, he learned that Perkins was “a close friend and ardent admirer” of Mencken, a fact which convinced Douglas that Perkins wouldn’t support the new novel with much enthusiasm. That may have been true; however, it’s also unclear whether Douglas realized who this man was. Maxwell Perkins was the editor who not only discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, but also worked hard to get their manuscripts into shape. Douglas might have benefited from that kind of attention, but it is also quite probable that he would have felt stifled. He thought it was a bad fit, and he was probably right.

Although Douglas kept some of the satire he had originally intended for the book, by 1932 he had changed its focus. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

Greenwich Village

by Ronald R Johnson

In my last post, I told you about the plans Lloyd Douglas had for his next novel, sometime around 1930-31. It was going to be a satire about modern art and was probably going to focus on the New Fiction of the 1920s. There is reason to believe that some of the book was going to take place in the bohemian artist’s colony at Greenwich Village, in New York.

In their biography of their father, Douglas’s daughters say that they lived in The Village for a short time. As I mentioned in earlier posts, Douglas had sent them to Paris for a year to study. After Lloyd and Besse moved to Montreal in 1929, the girls came “home” and joined them there. The following summer (1930), the girls moved to New York and rented an apartment in Greenwich Village, “hard by the Third Avenue elevated.” Betty, the oldest, “had a good position in the personnel department of a big Brooklyn store” (Shape of Sunday, 240); Virginia was “acting as secretary to an author” (p. 236). It’s not clear whether this “author” had ever had a book published, or why he needed a secretary, but it is clear that he didn’t have any money. He promised to pay Virginia “when his book comes out” (p. 237).

Concerned about the things his daughters wrote in their letters home, Douglas went down to New York to see for himself how they were doing. He was appalled at the poor conditions under which they were living. They were young and carefree and thought it was all rather fun, but he didn’t like it at all. He said nothing about it while he was there, however. He just listened and observed.

“He was very polite in his comments about our living quarters,” Virginia wrote later. “After all, we were in Greenwich Village, a place he had always read about longingly, and the artistic atmosphere was undoubtedly there. Betty and I took him to cellar eating-places where candles stuck into bottles glowed dimly in the gloom. We introduced him to our friends – most of whom were out of work and talked scathingly of the ones who had given up their art and gone home to help Father in the store.

“‘Oh, if I could only think of some novelty to catch the public fancy,’ they would groan. ‘Look at the chap who invented the Eskimo Pie: simply ice cream with chocolate around it. He’s made millions'” (p. 237).

Douglas wanted to meet Virginia’s “employer,” but she was equally determined to prevent such a meeting. The man was not only destitute but also deeply depressed, and he spoke rather casually about killing himself. On Douglas’s last day in New York, however, he and Virginia were in a restaurant at a table next to a window, and the starving artist suddenly appeared, watching them. Douglas insisted that he come in and join them, and the two men seemed to hit it off. But it only seemed that way. When Douglas was alone with Virginia afterwards, he called an end to her “employment” (pp. 237-239). And after he got home, he wrote her a letter (LCD to daughter Virginia, November 1930):

LCD to daughter Virginia, November 1930. In LCD Correspondence, Box 1, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

“There is a well-established theory that real art is produced in such kennels,” he wrote, referring to the apartment in which they were living. “I don’t know enough about Art to be in a position to pass on that.” This was typical of Douglas: he liked to make fun of his “country boy” upbringing and to pretend he was unsophisticated. “What little scribbling I have done has amounted to nothing; or next to nothing.” He was talking about Magnificent Obsession. In November of 1930 there was still no reason to consider the book a success. “I make no pretense of understanding how people ought to feel; how cold and miserable they ought to be; how empty of gut; how full of ideals; how frowsy of hair; how out at the seat of the pants one should be in order to make The Great Contribution to Reality.”

But as a parent, he had some strong opinions about the place. Betty was now engaged to be married, but Douglas wanted Virginia to come home to Montreal.

Still, the time she had spent in New York wasn’t a complete write-off. “It has probably been good for you to have had this experience,” he said. “You can make notes on it and come home and write a story. Ye gods – what a lot of firsthand information that ought to go into a novel!”

It’s unclear whether Virginia ever did write a story about Greenwich Village, but Douglas did. This is probably how he got the idea for his satire on modern art. At any rate, the novel he did end up writing was about an aspiring novelist living in The Village. “What a lot of firsthand information ought to go into a novel!” he said.

Meanwhile, Back in Montreal…

by Ronald R Johnson

I’ve spent the past few weeks writing posts about how the novel Magnificent Obsession quietly worked its way from obscurity in November 1929 to the Top 25 Bestsellers in April 1931, and upwards from there. But meanwhile, the book’s author, Dr. Lloyd C. Douglas, was busy working as Senior Minister of St. James United Church of Montreal. Because his job kept him busy, and because he was living in Canada, Douglas felt somewhat remote from what was happening. Within the publishing world, his star was rising; but his day-to-day life went on almost as normal.

Almost.

He still had to prepare sermons and visit sick people. He still had to do all the things a pastor normally does. But his incoming mail increased dramatically, as people from all over North America wrote to him about his novel. The things they said, and the questions they asked, convinced him that the publication of Magnificent Obsession had started something he couldn’t walk away from. As he wrote later in his “Author’s Foreword” to Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal, “the author became aware that he had not completed his task.” [All quotations that follow are from this “Foreword.”]

As strange as it may seem, he hadn’t realized that before. Magnificent Obsession was an experiment. He took what started out as a secular novel (Salvage) and added a religious thesis to it (Exploring Your Soul) in hopes of reaching a larger audience. But up until now (1930-31), he hadn’t given much thought to what would happen next. What if he did reach a larger audience? What if they needed help applying the thesis to their lives? What if they wanted to know more about the gospel?

As I said, he hadn’t anticipated those questions. He did enjoy writing Magnificent Obsession, and he wanted to do another novel, although his work at St. James kept him too busy to follow through on that wish. But he had no intention of writing another book like Magnificent Obsession. Douglas tried never to repeat himself. His next novel would be about the world of art, with emphasis on contemporary literature. He had some opinions about that, especially now that he himself had published a novel.

But his incoming mail kept nagging at him. “Do you honestly believe in this thing,” people asked him, “or were you just writing a story?” Well, he did believe in it, but he wanted his next novel to be just a story. He had some jokes he wanted to put into it… some rather droll remarks that his more sophisticated readers would enjoy… some critical comments about the state of literature today.

But his mail kept increasing. As he admitted later, “The task of dealing sympathetically with this strange correspondence became a grave responsibility. No stock letter, done on a mimeograph, would serve the purpose. It was necessary that individual replies be sent to all earnest inquirers. One dared not risk the accusation that, having advocated an expensive and venturesome technique for generating personal power, the author was thereafter too busy or lazy to care whether anybody benefitted by such investments.”

So he wrote to them, one-by-one. “Some of the questions were practically unanswerable,” he says, “but it wasn’t quite fair to limit one’s reply to a laconic ‘I don’t know.’ Frequently one’s counsel was pitiably inadequate, but not because it was coolly casual or thoughtlessly composed.”

Here, then, was a busy pastor, daydreaming about writing another novel in his spare time – just for fun – but instead spending all his available time corresponding with people who were prompted by his latest novel to ask for his help with their spiritual lives.

Whether he liked it or not, the shape of that next novel started to change. It would still be about the arts; the main character would be an aspiring young novelist living in “The Village” with other aspiring young artists. But instead of it being a satire as he had originally planned, it was slowly turning into a story about the young man’s soul. And as the story changed, Douglas’s future changed with it. He began to realize that the road ahead did not go in the direction he had envisioned.

Publishing Miracle 14: Breakout

by Ronald R Johnson

I’ve been telling you about the various factors that made the novel Magnificent Obsession a bestseller. Unlike most successful books, however, it took a year and a half for this one to make it to the top. On April 18, 1931, eighteen months after its release, Publishers’ Weekly ran a notice about it: “A book which was published in November, 1929, has for some time been appearing on the best seller lists of mid-western stores, and this month its percentage brought it up among the leading twenty-five books of fiction. This is MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, by Lloyd C. Douglas.” It wasn’t in the Top Ten yet, but the quiet path it had taken earned it respect, even from New York critics.

The prestigious Saturday Review of Books called Magnificent Obsession “a readable and refreshing story, with an unusual message.” “The idea of achieving a magnificent personality is not new,” the reviewer said, “but Dr. Douglas’s method is quite different from that of the personality racketeers, and no commercialism soils it.”

Surprisingly, The New York Times had already reviewed the book soon after its release (1/12/1930). On the whole, it was a good review, correctly summarizing the book and saying, “For those with curiosity concerning obsessions, flavored with love and adventure, Mr. Douglas’s book will prove pleasant reading.” There is only one negative remark, and it is difficult to interpret: “Even for those who have a large appetite and enjoy a varied menu, Magnificent Obsession should prove an ample though rather indigestible repast. Besides romance and mystery, it concerns itself with medicine, chemistry, psychology, ethics, religion, alcoholism and altruism, and above all, with the ‘Major Personality.’ Incidentally, a formula for success and happiness is propounded.” (That word “indigestible” would seem to be a negative assessment of the book, perhaps meaning that Douglas tries to do too much; but everything else the writer says is positive.)

The Times mentioned the book again a few years later (1/17/1933), at the start of a story about 1932’s bestsellers: “The year’s marvel, the wholesalers say, was The Magnificent Obsession, which placed sixth on the fiction list after lesser sales during three years on the market.” (It had moved up from the Top 25 in April 1931 to the Top Ten overall by the end of 1932.)

Nothing works like success. Now everybody reviewed the book. That meant, of course, that some would attack it, especially in cities where it had done well. In Kansas City, for example, a frustrated reviewer lamented, “Almost everything is wrong with The Magnificent Obsession. It is poorly constructed, the characters are unreal, the dialogue is not natural, the style is bad, and the plot is unconvincing. It does not even tell a good story.” The headline of the review was, “Why Publishers Go Mad.”

Kansas City Journal Post, Sunday, April 19 (no year).

In Birmingham, Alabama, an entire page was devoted to the subject. A local minister defended the book, but two critics from the paper trashed it on literary grounds. One of the critics called it “the most vulgar book I have ever been forced to read.”

But others were pleasantly surprised by the book.

Emily Newell Blair, the book review editor at Good Housekeeping, wrote in December 1932 that, although many people had urged her to read it, she had avoided doing so because she thought it would be a boring religious tract. “What was my amazement to find it, first of all, a corking good story with something happening in every chapter to hold your interest, characters which were actually alive, and a real plot. It was, in fact, a really good novel, entirely apart from the theme which has made its appeal so wide…” That theme, in the hands of a less gifted writer, would have ruined the story, she said. “That it does not spoil this one is almost proof that the author has practiced what he preaches; namely, that man may enlarge his personality and do anything he wishes if only he will adopt the philosophy of life discovered by the doctor in the book.”

With these words, Blair went farther than any of the book’s other reviewers, even among Christian periodicals. Not only did she claim that the book had technical merit but she also proposed that its author was illuminated by the very power that the book talked about. Then she took the next step that this implied: she wondered “why the thousands who have already read this book are not already practicing it.” Although she was surprised to find it “a really good novel,” she understood the challenge implicit within it. “Indeed, if its message were believed and practiced generally, it would change the world.” Although she was an editor at a secular magazine, she well understood what Douglas had accomplished and she challenged her readers, wondering why more people were not trying the experiment. “Perhaps they are,” she added hopefully.

Over the past dozen posts I’ve described the path Magnificent Obsession took from relative obscurity to the Top Ten bestsellers nationwide. What I find most interesting about its slow ascent is that it illustrates what is now a publishing truism: advertising alone doesn’t sell books; word of mouth is much more effective. There are many different reasons that people become motivated to buy a book, but as is so often the case, Magnificent Obsession got people’s attention by the “buzz” generated through a number of channels: religious, social, and professional. But first, of course, there has to be something in it worth talking about. Magnificent Obsession had that in spades.

And it changed Douglas’s life. I’ll talk about that in my next few posts.