They called it “wireless” in those days. Only a few enthusiasts throughout the country bought the kits, assembled them, then listened eagerly for messages from other enthusiasts. They could originate from anywhere. That was part of the fascination of it: trying to determine exactly where a message was being broadcast from, and how far it had traveled.
In Lloyd Douglas’s scrapbook, there are two newspaper clippings about an upcoming wireless experiment on New Years Eve, 1919. Neither one tells us the name of the newspaper, but one, entitled “Will Wireless Greetings on New Years Eve” (see above), is either from the University of Michigan or from an Ann Arbor paper; the other (see below) is apparently from the Detroit Free Press and is entitled, “U of M to Radio 1920 Greetings.”
According to the first of these: “On the evening of December 31, [1919,] just before the new year is ushered in, radio operators at the university radio station will send out greetings for the year to all parts of the country. Community Service, Inc., under whose direction the movement is being carried on in all sections of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is starting what will probably be an annual event in a great publicity campaign.”
Wireless radio was such a new thing that they had to perform stunts like this to make people aware of its potential. The article continues:
“Every radio station in the United States will send out New Years greetings during the evening, and all amateur operators are urged to ‘sit in’ and copy each message received.”
A paragraph later, the article says that the university “will use both the radio telephone and the radio telegraph.” That’s how new this technology was: what we now call “radio,” they called “the radio telephone” to distinguish it from “the radio telegraph,” which was, apparently, a wireless transmission in Morse code.
From the Detroit Free Press: “The telegraphic message will be sent out at 8:30 the evening of December 31, and the wireless telephone will follow 15 minutes later. The message, which is not to be made public before it is sent, was written by Rev. Lloyd Douglas, Congregational pastor of this city [Ann Arbor], and is 60 words in length.” [They were referring to the “telegraphic” message. His “radio telephone” message would be longer.]
The event would be under the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel John Lucas, head of the signal corps work at the university ROTC, and Professor J. C. Evans of the university faculty. There was an official aura around this technology, with the ROTC providing a kind of military authority to it. Things would be very different later, when radio would become a commercial enterprise.
As both articles said, “A rotary spark transmitter will be used by the university station, and for receiving the telegraph message, receiving tuning sets should be set at 600 meters wavelength. For receiving the radio telephone message, tuning coils should be set at 660 meter wavelength.” The organizers hoped that amateur operators all over the country would write down whatever messages they received, then mail them back to the university with detailed information about their location.
It was an exciting experiment, and it was just the kind of thing that Lloyd Douglas would be involved in, not just because of his interest in science but also because of his eagerness to pursue new ways of expanding his audience. I’ll tell you about his messages in my next post.
On November 30, 1919, at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, Lloyd Douglas reviewed a book by architect Ralph Adams Cram entitled, Walled Towns. That was also the title of Douglas’s sermon, but it wasn’t actually a sermon; just a book review. In fact, Douglas didn’t even give his own opinions about the book; he just read large portions of it. He had already sent out a brochure about the sermon in advance, however, and had made clear in that circular that he thought Cram’s book was important and deserving of everyone’s attention.
Looking back on this sermon a century later, I don’t see anything of importance in Cram’s book. Perhaps I’m missing something. He said that history moves in distinct 500-year waves, in which one civilization rises and falls, then another takes its place, with the intervening years being periods in which monasticism flourishes within “walled towns.” I’m not convinced that that’s true, but I’m especially not impressed by Cram’s prediction that the present world order would come crashing down by the year 2000, or that monastic conclaves would make survival possible.
For our purposes, though, the question is what this book meant to Lloyd Douglas; and that, too, is a mystery. Douglas was a modernist; Cram was a medievalist. Douglas saw history as progress; Cram believed in recurring cycles. Douglas believed in the power of individuals to change the world; Cram was (apparently) deterministic.
But there was something about Cram’s book that excited Douglas’s imagination — and it had to do with Cram’s dividing of history into 500-year epochs.
In this diagram, Cram represented history as an ebb-and-flow in which civilizations rose and fell (A), with monasticism playing an important role during each crisis moment (B). What seems to have interested Douglas was Cram’s predictions about the next two decades (the 1920s and 30s), and especially his prediction of the fall of the present civilization by the year 2000. We know that this book stimulated Douglas’s thinking because he mentioned it again in an article he published in the YMCA’s monthly newsletter. Also, a book reviewer some years later would recall hearing Douglas speaking about this rise-and-fall diagram during a lecture in Chicago around this same time.
Why is this important? Because it strongly influenced Douglas’s novel Green Light, which was published fifteen years later. In the following passage, we can see Douglas’s more mature reflections on Cram’s thesis. This is from Chapter 13, pages 214-217 in the original printing. At a dinner party, Dean Harcourt of Trinity Cathedral has been asked to share his views on the cycles of history:
“‘It all goes back at last,’ [the Dean says], ‘to the engaging story of the Long Parade. We must break our bad habit of talking about human progress as if it were a gradual upward journey from the jungle to Utopia. It isn’t quite that simple. We’ll have to think of that upward course in terms of planes, as if mankind proceeded on a series of steps up –‘
“‘Like climbing a terrace?’ [someone asks].
“‘Exactly! The half-dozen generations comprising a certain era will move along rather uneventfully, at times almost apathetically, on an approximately level plane. The upheavals, revolutions, and excitements of climbing up out of the era immediately preceding will already have become legendary. In this particular economic and political set-up that we are considering, customs crystallize rapidly into laws, the laws take on dignity and resolve themselves into codes, constitutions, charters. Manners beget morals. Traditions become established. After a while, there is a well-defined group of reliances: the State, the Church, hero worship, ceremonials; norms — the norms of beauty in art, norms of gallantry in conflict, norms of social conduct, norms of intellectual fitness… Very well. Then — when everything has become neatly integrated and the Parade has had its relatively serene period of recuperation from the now almost forgotten struggle of the climb to the level on which it is traveling, it wants to look out! — for the time has come for the taking of another steep grade!
“‘Customarily, these sharp ascents have been made within the space of a single generation. Sometimes it has taken a little longer — but not often. The people who are called upon to make the climb up to the next level unquestionably get a more comprehensive view of the Great Plan for humanity’s eventual destiny than is possible for the people who live midway of an era when things are, as we would say, normal. In the course of this rough scrambling up to the next plane of living, practically all of the old reliances are under heavy stress. Long-respected statues are found to be obsolete and obstructive. Emergency measures of an economic nature inevitably upset the morals which had prevailed — for the ethical imperatives of a given time are, in most cases, the product of economic conditions. Cherished dogmas, vital and useful yesterday but now defunct, are skinned and stuffed for museums. Art — supposedly long, in relation to the fleetingness of Time — yields to the clamor for reappraisal, along with everything else.'”
A little later he adds that “the people who happen to be in the line of march when Destiny determines that a grade is to be taken may be no better, no stronger than their fathers; no fitter than their sons. They just happen to be in and of the long Parade when it arrives at the foot of the ascending hill…’
“‘Hard on the old folks,’ grinned Mr. Sinclair.
“‘Quite!… Whatever sympathy may be felt for bewildered Youth on these occasions, the people in the Parade who find the climb most difficult and painful are the mature. For they have learned all they know about living under the more or less stable and predictable regimentation of the long plateau over which they have come. It does strange things to them as individuals. The same degree of heat required to refine gold will utterly consume a pine forest — and that doesn’t mean that a pine forest is of no value. In such periods of transition many individuals who, in a normal time, might have been very useful, crumple into defeat. Many others who, under normal circumstances, might have lived mediocre lives, endure the unusual with high distinction.'”
Someone remarks that this new age “gives the youngsters a chance”:
“‘Who are too immature,’ said the Dean, ‘for such a responsibility. So — they all go scrambling up the hill, everybody talking at once, rather shrilly. And at length, they reach the top and come out upon a broad plateau; write off their losses, tie up their bruises, mend their tattered boots, and the Long Parade trudges on. New customs settle into laws. New codes are framed. New constitutions written. New moral standards are agreed upon…. And then –‘
“‘Another half-dozen generations of that,’ assisted Norwood.
“‘Yes — and when everything has become nicely articulated again in that era, so that the people know practically what to expect of their institutions, their schools, their banks, their parliaments, their methods of transportation, communication, propaganda, social welfare; then you need to look out! It’s about time to take another grade!’
Yes, says the Dean, “‘…we are taking one of these grades now. It isn’t asked of us whether or not we would like to be members of the Long Parade during this brief period of hard climbing. We are members of it. And the only option extended to us as individuals is our privilege to determine whether we prefer to be dragged up — in which case we are an obstacle and a liability — or to proceed under our own power…'”
When Houghton Mifflin published this book in 1935, Douglas drew an illustration for his editor, showing him the general idea. His editor, Rich Kent, liked the drawing so well, he used it as the “end-papers” for the book (the inside cover). Here are those pages as they appeared in the original printing:
The end-papers (inside cover) of Douglas’s novel Green Light (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935).
Douglas didn’t want readers to think that he believed life was “a bed of roses.” He wanted them to know that there was some hard climbing ahead. And there was… for they were in the middle of the Great Depression, and the Second World War was already on the horizon.
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.
Lists of bestsellers, such as those printed in the New York Times or USA Today, are compiled from periodic reports submitted by certain designated bookstores around the country. These reports may not always be accurate, but they give at least a general idea of the top books that are selling at each of those stores.
After the publication of Magnificent Obsession in 1929, its publisher, Willett, Clark & Colby, had access to sales information for that book and shared it with the novel’s author, Lloyd Douglas. It’s not clear how much time Douglas spent looking at these stats for his earlier non-fiction books, but he became an expert on the subject from Magnificent Obsession onward, keeping track of where his books sold and correlating it with other facts, such as advertising campaigns or his own personal appearances. For this reason, some remarks he made in 1935 are especially helpful in tracing sales of Magnificent Obsession.
This is jumping ahead in the story, but in January 1935 he wrote a letter to his agent/editor Rich Kent, advising him on where to spend advertising dollars for his newest novel, Green Light. “I believe a little ad in a Kansas City paper – The Star, maybe – would do some good. That’s the plexus which drove Magnificent Obsession. Kansas City. They took it up first. They put me on the map…. Kansas City is really the center of the largest sales we had of that book” (LCD to Ira Rich Kent, 1/28/1935).
It would be fascinating to probe deeper and find out why that city was the one where his book sold best. Viewed superficially, it was a mob town, ruled by Tom Pendergast; but as David McCullough notes in Truman (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1992/93), pp. 196-198), despite the Great Depression, life in Kansas City “had never been better” than in the early 1930s (the very time in which Kansas City’s residents were buying Magnificent Obsession). “Compared to other cities,” writes McCullough, “the Kansas City outlook was confident and expansive. There were jobs, and local government – the organization – was providing most of them” (196). It was, in other words, a complex social situation that defies easy analysis, but there were people in that place who actually governed well (including a young judge named Harry Truman), and the overall mood seems to have been upbeat.
It is surely significant, also, that Kansas City was the headquarters of Unity, Inc. Douglas was surprised by the enthusiastic response his novel received from that spiritual organization. He joked to a friend, “Oddly enough, several metaphysical cults have reviewed the book at considerable length and have adopted me into their respective households of faith. Whether, at the present writing, I am in better standing as a Christian Scientist, a member of ‘Unity, Incorporated,’ or as a preacher in the rather conventional ‘United Church of Canada,’ is not quite clear” (LCD to Jewell Stevens, 10/6/1930).
In Douglas’s scrapbook is the July 1930 issue of a Unity publication called Scientific Christian Training. The first 18 pages of that issue are devoted to a retelling of key parts of Douglas’s story. Richard Lynch, the editor, writes, “Here, in brief, is an interpretation of a section of the Sermon on the Mount and of its instructions as to how to draw on the universal Supply that I have never come across before. It is but a reinforcement of all the teachings of Unity” (p. 17).
Douglas shouldn’t have been surprised. In its vocabulary and teachings, Magnificent Obsession seems to agree with the basic principles of Unity as laid out in James Dillet Freeman’s book, The Story of Unity (Lee’s Summit, MO: Unity School of Christianity, 1965). What Douglas offered as a metaphor (God as a form of energy, for example, or Christianity as a kind of science), the Unity organization had been saying very seriously since the late 1800s. To the extent that Kansas City “put [Douglas] on the map,” it may have been because his book was embraced by leaders within the Unity organization.
But Kansas City wasn’t the only metropolitan area that bought the book in large numbers. In his letter to his agent/editor, Douglas also mentions “Buffalo, Chicago…. Nashville. Dallas. Atlanta. Magnificent Obsession and Forgive Us [his second novel] have been rated as bestsellers in Atlanta, GA, for years and years!”
Atlanta was another interesting case. I assume he meant “white” Atlanta, because the city and the state were heavily segregated, and there was little in Magnificent Obsession that would have appealed to the day-to-day lives of people of color. But, as in Kansas City, the white people of Atlanta were optimistic in the years leading up to Magnificent Obsession’s publication and were working to bring their city up to date. They considered themselves part of the New South, and they did what they could to attract business and encourage the arts. (See Darlene R. Roth and Andy Ambrose, Metropolitan Frontiers: A Short History of Atlanta (Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 1996), chapter three.) Where Atlanta differed from Kansas City was in its response to the Stock Market Crash in 1929: Kansas City was still doing well in the early 1930s, but Atlanta was hurting.
In many respects, Atlanta seems to have been like Akron during the years that Douglas was there: growing fast, trying to become urbane, but also dealing with significant economic decline. Under those conditions, Akron had drawn inspiration from Douglas’s ideas. Perhaps Atlanta liked him for many of the same reasons.
I haven’t even begun to probe this subject (why particular cities responded more enthusiastically than others to Douglas’s novel), and I’m not sure that I can. Douglas didn’t have enough information himself to draw inferences about that. All he knew was that Magnificent Obsession sold well in certain metropolitan areas. He didn’t know why.
Here’s a commonsense suggestion. It’s probably safe to say that word-of-mouth advertising, in 1929, 1930, and 1931, was most effective at the local level. If a person bought the book because they heard about it from a friend, that friend was probably someone they interacted with face-to-face. Long-distance telephone service wasn’t a part of people’s daily life yet. Letter writing was, and that may have played a role, but, of course, none of the technologies that are so much a part of our lives today (telephone, internet, social media) were available then. So it may be safe to say that good sales in one city and poor sales in another may have had a lot to do with word-of-mouth advertising (or the lack thereof) in each of those cities.
And while we’re on the subject of conversation, the novel itself had certain features that lent itself to discussion around the watercooler and elsewhere. I’ll talk about that in my next post.
I’ve been explaining how the novel Magnificent Obsession became so successful after its publication in 1929. One factor that was especially serendipitous was the support Douglas received from Canadians.
As I noted in earlier posts, in the spring of 1929 Douglas and his wife Besse moved to Montreal, where he served as pastor of the St. James Church. This congregation was part of the United Church of Canada, a denomination that had been formed four years earlier from a merger of Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and other churches in the Canadian provinces. As in earlier seasons of his life, Douglas’s influence spread well beyond the city in which he served. He was often invited to speak in Toronto and other cities in Ontario. He was well-received and was already well-known throughout that region of Canada by the time his novel was published in the fall of 1929.
Within the publishing realm, Canada was a separate entity from the United States. US publishers didn’t just distribute their books throughout the provinces as though they were extensions of the fifty states. Publishers had to form relationships with Canadian publishers and sign agreements with them to distribute their books within Canada.
As a small publishing house, Willett, Clark & Colby, the company that published Magnificent Obsession, had a very informal agreement with Douglas. There was no contract, per se. And they lacked any official relationship with Canadian publishers. So Douglas made his own agreement with the Thomas Allen Company in Toronto. Instead of just distributing the American version of the book, the Thomas Allen Company actually printed their own Canadian version. Although the text wasn’t different from the American version, the fact that the Canadian books contained the Thomas Allen imprint and said they were printed in Canada gave them the appearance of having originated within Canada rather than being an American import. And the misimpression this created turned out to be helpful to Douglas, for Canadians took special pride in what they perceived as Canadian books.
For example, in her column in The Sherbrooke Telegram, Anne Merrill was surprised that a local YWCA library in Sherbrooke, Quebec, didn’t have a copy of Magnificent Obsession on its shelves. She said, “Had this really great book been written by a man in the USA, high-powered salesmen would have been set to work on it, till it was pushed into the million class!” In other words, she thought it was a Canadian book written by a Canadian author, and she lamented that it wasn’t being hyped to the extent that it would have been if it had been published in America. In his scrapbook, Douglas drew a smiley face beside her comment.
A similar remark was made in the Calgary Daily Herald: “Seldom, if ever, has the fiction product of a Canadian author met with such sales success in the Canadian field in so short a time.”
As I said, this was a misimpression. Douglas was not a Canadian author. (Anyone who heard him speak would know instantly that he was an American. Having grown up in Indiana and northern Kentucky, he had that uniquely nasal Indiana twang.) But some Canadians thought he was one of them, and even those who knew better took pride in his connection with them as pastor of the church in Montreal. This boosted sales throughout the Canadian provinces in a way that did not ordinarily happen with American books.
In appreciation of this fact, Douglas would remain loyal to the Thomas Allen Company for the rest of his life, insisting on signing separate Canadian contracts with that publisher for all of his novels, instead of letting his American publisher work out arrangements in Canada.
Sales of Magnificent Obsession also benefitted from Douglas’s special connection to another influential interest group: the medical profession. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.
In my last post, I told you how members of the clergy in North America helped boost sales of the novel Magnificent Obsession after its publication in 1929; but they weren’t the only ones spreading the word. Women’s groups were also helpful. In Douglas’s list of important influencers, he names twice as many women reviewers as he does ministers:
*Mrs. Ada Turnbull, Monmouth, IL *Mrs. Buena Mimms, Ocala, FL *Mrs. R. C. Richey, Memphis, TN (at home of Mrs. W. L. Meux at Whitehaven) *Mrs. M. R. Elikan, Bellaire, OH *Mrs. Abe Levin, Youngstown, OH *Mrs. J. H. Davis, Birmingham, AL *Miss Sue Reese, Salisbury, NC *Mrs. Charles Gilliam, Warsaw, IN *Mrs. Theodore A. Switz, East Orange, NJ *Mrs. Cox, Marion, IL *Mrs. Danna Sellenberger, Kokomo, IN *Mrs. Alex Woldert, Tyler, TX *Mrs. Judson Geppinger, Hamilton, OH *Mrs. Jerome Lewis, East St. Louis, IL *Mrs. John Whiteman, Ardmore, OK *Mrs. Harry W. McGhee, Brownwood, TX *Mrs. W. E. Smith, Elkhart, IN *Miss Althea Montgomery, Dean of Women of the Junior College, Washington, IA *Mrs. Leroy Flanegin, Peoria, IL *Mrs. E. N. Stone, Chickasha, OK *Mrs. Wm. B. Mathews, Newport News, VA *Mrs. Myrna Moore, Oklahoma City, OK *Mrs. John Garvin, Toronto, ON (Canada) *Mrs. T. G. Landers, East St. Louis, IL *Mrs. Lawrence Ely, member of the Westmoorland College Faculty, San Antonio, TX *Mrs. L. J. Wathen, Dallas, TX *Mrs. Telis Miller, Hickory, NC *Mrs. F. E. Ornsby, Cedar Rapids, IA *Mrs. W. P. Johnson (at Mrs. Frank R. Mayers), Lake Worth, FL *Mrs. Bessie Kagay, Effingham, IL *Mrs. Clyde Young, Fort Collins, CO *Mrs. Harvey Tuel, Rogers, AR *Mrs. Gable, Richmond, IN *Mrs. Sophyl Ozersky Levin, Youngstown, OH *Mrs. James S. King, St. Paul, MN *Mrs. Clyde Hickerson, Russellville, AR *Fannie Lou Morgan, Oklahoma City, OK *Mrs. Odell R. Blair, Buffalo, NY *Mrs. R. T. Fiske, Buffalo, NY *Mrs. Wm. B. Gramlich, Kenton, OH *Mrs. W. K. Royal, Portland, OR *Mrs. Edward E. Draper, Troy, NY (broadcast over WOKO, Port of Albany, weekly program called “Current Bookshelf”)
Some of the reviews were given at churches, others at libraries, still others at community groups. One was called “The Housekeepers’ Book Club.” Here are a few clippings about them from Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession scrapbook. Note that this first one makes a mistake on the name of his book:
Some of these groups were very much into culture, reviewing Douglas’s book in the same afternoon as a study of Shakespeare…
And not all of these reviews were positive. One said that, from an artistic standpoint, the book was “negligible,” but the subject matter was important. Another said that the novel was more “rational” than “Christian.”
Women also wrote reviews in local newspapers. Some of these were the paper’s usual book reviewers, while others were columnists who took time out to write about Douglas’s book. As you may have noticed in the list of names above, one woman in New York had a local radio program for book reviews, and she did a segment on Douglas’s novel.
I am especially impressed, however, with a review written by a woman for a denominational paper, The Western Baptist. Her name was Jennie S. Hill, and I’m impressed because she picked up on things that few others – even among male reviewers – noticed.
“There is no padding,” she says, “no unnecessary description, while every trifling incident is vital to the story.” (Some might disagree with her, but Douglas wouldn’t have. He tried very hard to write his stories in a way that condensation of any kind would damage its integrity. I credit Miss Hill with recognizing how important this was to Douglas, even if I can’t defend every little detail of the book.)
“Then there is no ‘villain’ in the plot,” she continues. “One feels that the people are just ordinary people, some with more strength of mind than usual, but no single character so unusual as to be called impossible.” (Jennie Hill was the first person to acknowledge this fact in print: that Douglas found a way to make his stories suspenseful without demonizing any of his characters or turning them into villains. That is, in my mind, one of his great accomplishments, and very few reviewers seem to have noticed, even after he had written a number of novels that way. Many years later, a literature professor named Carl Bode would call it one of Douglas’s weaknesses, saying that his characters were too good. But Jennie Hill understood what Douglas was trying to do: portray humans as they appear to us in our own daily lives, not as “good guys” or “bad guys,” but as ordinary people trying to make their way in the world.)
Miss Hill also deserves credit for pinpointing one of the main weaknesses of Magnificent Obsession from the standpoint of communicating Douglas’s message: “The only criticism that could truthfully be made is that difficulties [within the story] are too often solved by the use of money. It is very human to conclude that money can do everything, and though that is decidedly untrue, the lessons that the author would teach would have been made more clear had not the possession of so much money really dimmed the motives of his chief character.” As she said a little earlier in her essay, the real point of the book is “the subduing of one’s own life in order to help someone else to raise his own standing. But to understand it, one must read the book.”
I’ve been analyzing what Noel Busch called “a publishing miracle,” telling you step-by-step how Magnificent Obsession became so well-known. This is one of the steps: women talked about it within their social circles and helped create “buzz.”
But their efforts were amplified by the local newspapers. In the early twentieth century, the life of the community was considered newsworthy in a way that is no longer true in the twenty-first century. I’ll discuss that in my next post.
In a previous post I said that Lloyd Douglas must have felt he was going back to square one when he submitted his manuscript of Magnificent Obsession to Willett, Clark & Colby, a two-year-old company that was run by the same people who published The Christian Century. But it is safe to say that Douglas’s novel wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if it had been brought out by a name-brand publisher.
The Christian Century, having a vested interest in the success of Magnificent Obsession, advertised the book prominently and kept doing so – relentlessly – for the next few years. And since, as Douglas later said, they were taking the funds from one pocket of their trousers and putting it into the other, they could afford to do this. Douglas would later complain that Willett did very little publishing outside The Christian Century, but (as I’ll show in the next post) it was immensely beneficial to the book to receive such lavish attention from the Century.
Here is a full-page ad from the October 23, 1929, issue:
They didn’t include ads in every issue after that, but when they did, there were usually two of them: one from the publisher and another from “The Christian Century Book Service” (a book club tailored to the needs of clergy and lay leaders). Here’s the Book Service ad from November 13, 1929:
Ministers and laypeople who subscribed to The Christian Century were reminded again and again about Douglas’s novel over the many months that followed. And they kept it current, creating new ads whenever a prominent minister wrote something favorable about the book.
In the June 11, 1930, issue, under the headline, “LIFTED UP THEIR HEADS,” the publisher wrote, “In the rapid coming and going of many books, these books have lifted up their heads and will not be put down. The reading public discerns their value – and buys them.” Five books are listed, including Magnificent Obsession.
At this point, they were exaggerating. Willett, Clark & Colby was a very small fish in a big pond, and they had only been in business for a few years. Their claim to have published five books of importance was just hype. Even Magnificent Obsession wasn’t selling that well yet. Its first printing, in November 1929, was of 3,000 copies. Those sold quickly, so Willett ran a second printing of 3,000 that same month. But despite their claim in June 1930 that the book had “lifted up its head,” there were, at that point, only 6,000 copies in existence. It wasn’t until August that they ran a third printing of 3,000. After that, however, things took off. Their ads became increasingly newsy, announcing each new printing with mounting excitement:
Testimonials by respected ministers were printed. Reviews from increasingly important newspapers were excerpted. And now it was no longer just hype. In the April 29, 1931, issue of the Century, the publisher ran a full-page ad with the headline, “SUCCESSFUL!” Immediately under this, they printed the following quotation.
“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….”
from Publishers’ Weekly, April 18, 1931
“Publishers’ Weekly,” the ad explained, “is the recognized book trade journal. Its ‘best seller’ records are compiled from reports issued by bookstores all over the country.”
The ad continues:
“Hundreds of subscribers to THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY have already read this amazing story by the pastor of St. James United Church, Montreal, Canada. Ministers in all parts of this country have taken MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION into the pulpit and have broadcast its message to their congregations. It has become a best seller in many cities, and the demand for copies, after eighteen months, is increasing! (The average life of most books of fiction is but a few weeks.)”
This was all true. In terms of sales, most books do what they’re going to do within weeks of publication; or at any rate, publishers expect immediate results and do not give long-term support to most books. Magnificent Obsession surprised people in the industry by climbing up to the bestseller lists slowly, over the course of a year and a half. That was due, in large part, to the fact that the publisher kept hammering away at subscribers of TheChristian Century, reminding them about the book. The ad concludes:
“The publishers believe that every subscriber to The Christian Century, layman as well as minister, would profit by the reading of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. Order a copy from your bookstore today…”
And, of course, as the novel climbed farther and farther up the NY bestseller lists, the ads in the Century kept announcing that fact, along with news of subsequent printings:
“Seventh printing, May, 1931 Eighth printing, July, 1931, …and the current demand for copies is greater than ever before!” says one ad.
What’s ironic is that those “hundreds of subscribers” mentioned in the April 29, 1931, ad were the key to the book’s success. It all started with the advertising, but the “publishing miracle” was largely due to the response of Christian Century readers.
As I explained in an earlier post, Douglas’s novel Salvage was meant to be in line with the New Fiction of the 1920s, especially the works of Sinclair Lewis. Douglas had already written the first two chapters that way. There would be no moral. In the New Fiction, novels weren’t supposed to have morals. Characters were introduced; they were thrown into a set of realistic contemporary problems; and they must either sink or swim – and, in many cases, the protagonists of the New Fiction would end up sinking. Douglas was too much of an optimist to let that happen to the characters in Salvage, but he was also attuned to the type of novels being written in the 1920s, and he knew there could be no heavy-handedness on his part. He must let his characters “work out their own salvation” (as he said in a letter to his cousin Edith Kirkwood, 11/16/1932, in “Correspondence, Undated,” Box 1, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan).
Up until January 1928, they didn’t.
Douglas checked in on them periodically throughout 1927 but was disappointed to discover they had made no progress since he had last looked in on them. None of them knew what to do; they just sat there waiting for him to tell them. “As if I knew,” he said later (“Pygmalion,” The Kiwanis Magazine, December 1938).
Granted, he had nudged Bobby Merrick a bit in Chapter Two, by way of the head nurse Nancy Ashford, until Merrick decided to devote his life to medicine. But after that, Merrick was supposed to be on his own. To Douglas’s disappointment, he needed more help than that.
On January 20, 1928, Douglas’s daughter Betty suggested that he base the rest of the novel on the subject he had preached about that morning. Although Betty may not have known this, her suggestion amounted to taking the work he had done over the past few months on his non-fiction project, Exploring Your Soul, and inserting it into the as-yet unwritten chapters of Salvage.
This posed a technical issue: how to take information from one book and insert it seamlessly into another book, especially when one was non-fiction and the other was a novel. Douglas’s solution to this problem was ingenious: he turned the non-fiction material into a coded diary, which Merrick and Nancy Ashford would decipher and discuss.
But there was a much bigger technical issue with Betty’s proposal: it would mean making the rest of the story “didactic.” In other words, it would point toward some lesson that the reader was supposed to learn. Ever since the onset of the New Fiction in the 1920s, that was no longer deemed acceptable by the arbiters of literary taste.
Like any good novelist in the 1920s, Douglas did not want to be labeled “old-fashioned.” He had never been old-fashioned in his preaching, and he certainly didn’t want to be an old-fashioned novelist. Besides, in the literary world of the 1920s, that would mean the kiss of death. Douglas had no intention of ruining his reputation before he had even begun.
So he used a number of literary devices to avoid the problems of earlier didactic novels. Instead of quoting scripture, he makes the scripture lesson a mystery to be solved; and when Bobby and Nancy are on the point of quoting an actual Bible verse, he cuts them off mid-sentence. The characters draw attention to the fact that they are about to learn a scripture lesson, and they protest loudly. And rather than making them learn against their will, Douglas has them try the experiment that the scripture suggests. Yes, one could say that the end result was “a didactic novel,” but it was brilliantly conceived, and executed with a playfulness that is absent from the didactic novels of any earlier age.
But there is another technical issue that Douglas didn’t take seriously at all: the fact that the first two chapters of the book lead the reader in one direction, and the rest of the book, from Chapter Three onward, goes in another. He left the first two chapters the way he had written them prior to January 20. He didn’t find it necessary to rewrite them in light of his new idea.
In Chapter Three, Dr. Hudson’s young widow, Helen, puzzles over the conversations she is having with people who have come to pay their respects to her late husband. Dr. Hudson has done much good in the lives of many people, but he has sworn them to secrecy. All these people share a strange vocabulary. Those to whom he loaned money, for example, say that he wouldn’t let them pay him back. “I have used it all up myself,” he told them.
This is the real beginning of the novel, as Douglas conceived it from January 1928 onward. This is what the book is all about.
You might reply, “Oh, but don’t the first two chapters introduce the characters and prepare us for what’s coming?” My answer is, “Yes and no. They introduce the characters, but rather than preparing us for what’s coming, they give us a different set of expectations.”
Let me show you why I think this is a problem.
I’m jumping ahead of the events I’m narrating, but here are two representative samples of how the book would later be reviewed in newspapers and journals. Can you spot the interpretive dilemma these samples illustrate?
Sample One: “a young waster… is saved from drowning at the cost of the life of a famous brain surgeon” (The Congregationalist).
Sample Two: “Surgeon number 1 leaves a manuscript in cipher behind him when he dies and surgeon number 2 translates it, assisted by a nurse” (Winnipeg Tribune).
I ask you: Which of these two summaries has captured the essence of the novel?
Based on Douglas’s intentions from January 1928 onward, I would have to say that Sample Two wins the prize; but most summaries of the book agree with Sample One instead. In fact (although this is also jumping ahead), the book would be converted to the silver screen not once, but twice (in 1935 and again in 1954), and in both cases the moviemakers would assume that Sample One was the essence of the book (as well as the last three chapters).
In other words, the first two chapters attract so much attention to themselves, it becomes very difficult for readers to understand what Douglas was actually trying to do. As it turns out, many people got the message. But many others didn’t.
Then again, Douglas would go to great lengths to make his meaning clear, even devoting an entire chapter to emphasizing the purpose of the book. I’m referring to Chapter Eighteen, and that will be the subject of my next post.
From “Sermons [6],” Box 3, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The University of Michigan holds copyright to this material.
Sometime in 1927 (probably in the fall), Lloyd Douglas began writing a non-fiction book called Exploring Your Soul. Chapter One bore the title, “In Defense of Unconcern.” His files contain seven drafts of the first page. Here is the text of one of those versions (note how it differs significantly from the draft in the image above):
It is neither a jest nor a slander to say of the average thoughtful man today that he knows next to nothing about his soul. Or perhaps it would be more precise to say that he thinks this is the case, though that comes approximately to the same thing. Our typical modern of inquiring mind is not embarrassed when confronted with the charge that he is not only uninformed but unconcerned about souls—The Soul as an institution, or his soul in particular. He rises to meet the accusation with a ready smile indicating that his confession of complete ignorance in this matter identifies him as a discriminating person who has learned to distinguish at a glance between problems which invite further acquaintance and mysteries which no man in his right mind can hope to fathom.
Indeed, one gathers from his attitude that all persons who imagine they know anything of certainty or significance about the soul are entertaining delusions from which he is happily free. Toward no other of all the interests which constitute his life does he exhibit such finality of indifference. As for the physical forces at work within himself and throughout as much of the world as obtrudes upon his five senses, his inquisitiveness is unlimited.
–“Exploring Your Soul,” loose pages of manuscript stored with “Sermons [6],” Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
The seven alternative openings in his files differ mostly in phrasing; his main purpose is to acknowledge that his target audience (educated professionals) may initially be turned off by the subject of their “soul.” As he says in one version, “Detailed information is available to [the reader] concerning all the other organs and interests which constitute his life…. The inquisitive man of our time not only knows why he breathes but is on intimate terms with all his bodily equipment. His knowledge of his stomach is precise. He knows just what to expect of it under given conditions. It is no news to him that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
Another draft says, “For considerably less than the asking, he can possess himself of knowledge which only a little while ago was held in the custody of a privileged few, and not too securely held even by them. Information concerning the energies which operate the natural world, until lately vague and incomprehensible, has now been translated into the vernacular, requiring so little of intellectual effort on the part of the ultimate consumer that it may be suspected of our modern vanity over our knowledge of physical facts that it is, of all our prides, the most shallow.”
In still another version he writes, “Practically all the other interests which constitute [the reader’s] life are being illumined by attractive and accurate information to be had without application. But as his knowledge grows concerning the structure, functions, and proper upkeep of his physical equipment, his opinions about his soul have become less satisfying, less secure.”
Where was Douglas going with all this? From this handful of loose pages alone, we aren’t given enough clues to know. Fortunately, he presented these ideas several months later in a sermon series at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles (more on that in my next post), and from that series we can glean his basic outline. This book was going to talk about what the soul is, “How It Operates… What It Lives On… How to Develop Its Peculiar Capacities.” The answers to these questions were going to come not from creeds but from the teachings of Jesus.
At this initial stage (while he was writing his opening paragraphs), he seems to have had more ideas than he ended up using. On the back of one of the pages, he scribbled some notes in pencil. Under the heading, “Christian Credentials,” he wrote: “Matth 5:45 – ‘that ye may be the children of your Father.'” Below this he jotted a double underline as a kind of section divider, then asked, “What makes a Christian?” Beneath this he offered three possible answers, which he listed out of numerical order:
“3. Membership in a religious organization? “1. Mutual acceptance of a system of beliefs? “2. Emotional reaction to beauty, [handwriting unclear: either pity or piety], courage?”
After another section divider, he writes, “Christians must bring credentials – (credits),” and below this he lists the following (he gives the scripture text for the first one, and I have added the others in brackets):
“Parable of the forgiven debtor (Matth 18:23) “Leave there thy gift before the altar. [Mt 5:23-24] “Doctrine of the ‘Inasmuch’ [Mt 25:31-46] “Breakdown of caste (If thou make a feast) [Lk 14:7-14]”
By themselves, these handwritten notes, although fascinating, do not tell us exactly where his thought was heading. In light of where he ended up, however, we can draw some inferences. He planned, initially, to offer his readers a number of ways that they could make their souls more immediately aware of God’s presence in their lives. “The Parable of the Forgiven Debtor” would suggest that one might lay hold of the power of God by forgiving other people’s trespasses. “Leave there thy gift before the altar,” although similar, would suggest that the reader drop what they are doing and make amends with others. The “Inasmuch” Declaration, which was important to Douglas throughout his ministry, would be an invitation to treat others as one would want to treat Jesus if he were here in the flesh now, with particular emphasis upon those who are in special need of assistance. And the note about “Breakdown of caste” would suggest that the reader should be on the lookout for opportunities to help others who will not be in a position to reciprocate.
Douglas didn’t end up mining these rich fields. Instead, he settled on a single passage of scripture that seemed to capture the spirit of them all:
Take heed that you do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest thine alms, let not they left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into they closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:1-6, King James Version
As Douglas said in interviews sometime later, once he had decided on explicating this text, he felt he had grabbed onto “a pretty hot wire.” It needed to be handled in an entirely different way from his recent non-fiction books. Instead of a monologue, he began to write it as “a three-cornered dialogue,” much in the style of his manuscript The Mendicant, which was published under the title Wanted: A Congregation. In that earlier book, the protagonist (a minister) had a series of conversations with an industrialist, a newspaper editor, and a physician about different aspects of his work as a pastor. For this new book, however, Douglas created three characters: one to present the thesis and two others to debate it with him. This was not a novel; it was a dialogue. But he wasn’t writing to an audience of other ministers this time: he was aiming at educated professionals who needed concrete guidance in their approach to God.
Douglas never finished writing the book, Exploring Your Soul. In January of the following year (1928), he presented his ideas in a series of sermons, and the congregation’s reaction led him in an unexpected direction.
When Lloyd Douglas was living in Ann Arbor and learning about surgery at the University of Michigan’s medical school (sometime between 1915 and 1921), he read a notice in the newspaper that he thought would make an interesting premise for a novel. A physician had drowned while the inhalator that could have saved his life was being used on a young man who had been in a boating accident. Douglas clipped the article out of the paper and carried it in his wallet for years. After thinking about it for a long time, he started writing that novel in 1927. Its working title was Salvage.
He didn’t get very far into it before he realized that the idea by itself wasn’t substantial enough for book-length treatment. In the first chapter he introduced his main characters – Dr. Wayne Hudson, a world-renowned brain surgeon who is also the founder of Brightwood Hospital; his grown-up daughter Joyce, who parties at all hours with her friends, including the rich young playboy, Bobby Merrick; and a young woman named Helen Brent, who is a positive influence on Joyce and, for that reason, has agreed to marry Dr. Hudson and help bring order to their home. At the end of the first chapter, young Merrick, who is drunk, falls overboard in a sailing accident and is revived by Dr. Hudson’s inhalator, just as the doctor himself is drowning and in need of the device.
In Chapter Two, Bobby Merrick wakes up at Brightwood Hospital, where he discovers that his life has been saved at the expense of Dr. Hudson’s. Although he feels bad about it, he doesn’t know what to do. In a heart-to-heart discussion with Brightwood’s head nurse, Nancy Ashford, Merrick decides to make something of himself, so that Dr. Hudson’s sacrifice will not have been in vain. It is implied that, because Merrick has the aptitude for medicine, he will perhaps follow in Dr. Hudson’s footsteps.
And that was all.
In two chapters, Douglas had already accomplished what the clipping in his wallet suggested. The rest would be up to the characters to work out. He assumed that Merrick would go on to medical school… but then… what? Douglas didn’t know. He didn’t even know which way the love triangle would go. Would Merrick end up with Joyce or with Helen?
If you’re familiar with this story at all, I want you to forget everything you know about it, because, at this point in Douglas’s life, the proposed novel had a very different feel to it from the story you’re thinking of. What Douglas had in mind, as of 1927, was a completely secular book – something akin to Arrowsmith, the 1925 Nobel-prize-winning novel by Sinclair Lewis.
During the late 1920s, Douglas was watching Lewis closely and even considered him his direct competitor. (This comes out in Douglas’s interviews and correspondence around this time.) Lewis knew nothing about medicine, but he did his homework, then wrote Arrowsmith, about a young doctor who is determined to pursue medicine scientifically, rather than in the old-fashioned country-doctor sort of way. This novel must have touched Douglas on many levels. He, too, believed in the scientific pursuit of medical knowledge, and he must have felt himself more qualified than Lewis to write such a novel. But he also must have been repulsed by Lewis’s young hero, who lacks basic human qualities. Douglas wanted to write a book that would take the reader deep into the scientific aspects of the medical profession, but he also wanted his main character to be a good person, worthy of the term “hero.”
Unfortunately, he couldn’t imagine the rest of the story. What was the point of the book? Why should anyone keep reading after Chapter Two? Douglas didn’t know the answers to these questions. All his life he had been sure – as sure as he had ever been about anything – that he was meant to write novels. And yet this one, once he finally started writing it, came to a screeching halt at the end of Chapter Two. And he couldn’t get past it.
Douglas had other projects to work on while he waited. As I mentioned in the previous post, he had his hands full at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, trying to reach professionals and educated people in the city at-large, while being dragged down by some of the core members of his own flock, who were more conservative than any of his previous parishioners had been. This was a big job all on its own. But his latest non-fiction book, Those Disturbing Miracles, was also released at this time by Harper and Brothers, and there were newspaper interviews and correspondence to attend to about that.
And there was something else: he had a big idea for his next non-fiction project. Harper was the top publisher of non-fiction religious titles in America. Now that Douglas had his foot in that door, he was excited about his next non-fiction book. In Those Disturbing Miracles, he had said that faith isn’t merely a belief in supernatural events that happened long ago and far away. To have faith, he said, is to exercise it here and now, by using it to solve the problems of day-to-day life. In this next book, he was going to describe a spiritual adventure in which one could experience the power of God directly… by investing one’s energies in the lives of others and divulging the secret to no one else but God.
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 