Life, 1907-06-20 · page 18 of 32
Life — June 20, 1907 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This humorous story satirizes early 20th-century literary pretension and the divide between "difficult" and "popular" fiction. A shipwrecked man, using "mental science" (likely referencing New Thought philosophy), miraculously manifests a library—only to despair at its contents. The joke targets **Henry James**, whose late novels ("The Golden Bowl," "What Maisie Knew") were notoriously dense and obscure, leaving readers "imbecile, blind and dizzy." Contrasted against him is **Laura Jean Libbey**, a prolific writer of sentimental romance novels considered lowbrow. The castaway faces an impossible choice: intellectually taxing "serious" literature or intellectually unchallenging popular fiction. The author (Mrs. Wilson Woodrow) leaves the ending ambiguous, mocking readers' inability to reconcile literary snobbery with actual readability—a dig at those who prize difficult authors like James despite finding them unreadable.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Life’s HERE was once a man who, while making a sea voyage, was unfortu- nate enough to suffer shipwreck, and was cast upon a desert island. There, after building himself the usual hut and assuring himself that the supply of cocoa- nuts and fish was sufficient to last a life- time, he cast about for some mental diversion. “T would not regard this experience as calamitous,” he said, “if I only had something to read. I will go farther and frankly confess that I would really enjoy my present enforced solitude if I but had the consolation of a library. This vista of limitless sky and limitless ocean is extremely monotonous, and is wearing my nerves to a frazzle.”” But he wasted no time in despair, for he was a devout mental scientist, and, instead, resolved to demonstrate a library, and with that end in view, he put in all his time in meditation and concentration. At last, one day his efforts were re- warded and, to his satisfaction, he saw floating on the incoming tide a box which he felt in his soul must contain the books for which he had so earnestly demonstrated ; and he capered on the beach and shouted aloud in his great joy At last the box was washed ashore and the man tore at it with eager fingers. Finally, he succeeded in opening it and there, wrapped in oilskin to protect them from the sea, were rows of volumes. As 1¢ lifted them out the poor fellow almost swooned with rapture; but upon examin- ing them the more closely he fell into a state of grievous despair, and at the height of his frenzy would have cast him- self into the sea but that the tide had gone out. And, indeed, ’twas no wonder that he beat his breast, for the box contained the later works of Henry James, all of the earlier and more lucid ones being care- fully omitted, and a complete set of Laura Jean Libbey. “What shall I do?” cried the unhappy man. “One half hour spent over ‘The Golden Bowl’ or ‘What Maisie Knew? leaves me imbecile, blind and dizzy, lost in a Henry James fog. While as for * LIFE: Little Problems «he lifted them out Laura Jean Libbey, to ask a sane, if shipwrecked, man to read her novels is too much. Yet it is not only the habit of a lifetime but the law of my nature to read. Oh! What shall I do?” Then with many imprecations and bitter groanings, and crying out that he was a companion to owls and a brother to dragons, he stretched out his hand and took—“'The Golden Bowl" or ‘Junie’s Love Test.” Which? Do you know? Mrs. Wilson Woodrow. comicbooks.com