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.
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 