Life, 1907-10-10 · page 17 of 24
Life — October 10, 1907 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes early 20th-century society fiction—specifically the popularity of romantic melodramas featuring tangled love triangles among wealthy characters. The text mocks the formula: elaborate plots where nearly everyone is in love with the *wrong* person, creating maximum romantic chaos. The satire's point: a novelist attempting such a complex "masterpiece" of interconnected affairs actually suffers a nervous breakdown. When he recovers, he writes something radically different—a novel where husbands love their own wives and unmarried people pursue each other normally. This "shockingly original" premise becomes wildly successful. The joke targets both the absurdity of overcomplicated society novels and readers' appetite for them. The irony is that depicting *normal* relationships becomes the real innovation. The bottom section appears to be an unrelated brief comedic scene involving Mr. and Mrs. Flyer and a malfunctioning aircraft valve—typical period humor about emerging aviation technology.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
429 A Novel That Succeeded HE. society novelist. was writing his masterpiece. It was to be a triumph of its kind. More husbands were to be in love with the wrong wives and more wives plan- ning to elope with the wrong hus bands than in any previous effort He laid the opening scene at a house party, because the opportu- nities were so good for that sort of thing. There was Mrs. Bradish Radshaw, who was madly in love with young ‘Templeton ‘Tinker. Bradish- Radshaw himself was infatuated with Mrs. Tommy Tucker, who was having trouble deciding between him and Meredith Mintsauce, a situation which was spiced somewhat by the fact that Mr. Tommy Tucker and Mrs. Mint- sauce, who had once been married to each other, showed signs of want ing to try it again In addition, there was the affair be- tween Captain Kershaw and Mrs. Mid dleton-Bangs, and that of Middleton. Bangs and the governess, while in the midst of it the Middleton-Bangs chauf- feur was to run off with Mrs. Bobby Brayton, leaving her husband,a charm ing man, when sober, to the tender mer: cies of Miss yn Hobick, who, as a matter of fact, was simply crazy about him. It started well, but at the end of the third chapter the talented author threw up both hands and was carried howling to the hospital. When he emerged, sev- eral weeks later, he constructed a plot in which all the husbands were in love with their own wives and all the wives with their own husbands and in which the unmarried people fell in love with cach other instead of with some one already married This was so absolutely new and so startlingly origi that it made the greatest hit imaginable, especially as the book had a handsome binding and good illustrations of people in evening clothes, It became one of the Six Best ellers and the author is now rich be- yond the dreams of avarice. Howard Shedd. A FEW YEARS HENCE eddy say anything yester- Mrs. Flyer: HURRY, HENRY, A CLOUD BANK 1S CoMING! day Henry (between cuss words): 11'S NO USE! YOU WILL HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR TRIP TO “TI don’t know. Haven't looked at LOS ANGELES THIS AFTERNOON. THIS COMPRESSED SPEED VALVE IS BEYOND REPAIR. the ticker.” comicbooks.com