Life, 1910-12-01 · page 14 of 108
Life — December 1, 1910 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page is primarily **advertising and literary commentary**, not political satire. The left side features a **Seaboard Airline Railway advertisement** promoting train service to Florida and Cuba, with a route map and travel details. The center contains a **literary essay titled "Why I Am a Brilliant Writer,"** a self-satirical piece where the unnamed author humorously claims brilliance stems from having nothing to say and always writing about himself—a tongue-in-cheek critique of contemporary literary pretension. The author references Tom Dixon (likely the novelist Thomas Dixon) as an example of stylistic mastery. The right side shows a **"Vacuum Cleaning" illustration**—a small cartoon of a figure with cleaning implements, likely advertising domestic services. Bottom right features a **Great Western Champagne advertisement** claiming it won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition and costs half the price of imported champagne due to absent import duties. The page reflects early 20th-century consumer culture and literary self-mockery rather than political commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
VACUUM CLEANING master the subject or avoid the ob- vious or become a slave to that bane of all literature, accuracy. I do not mean that I might not be a_ better writer if I could write differently— if I could write, for instance, the way but first get information about the superior service and schedules of the itera Tom Dixon looks. A man who could \ and the superb All-Pullman write as the author of “The Clans- S UAANEW SMYRNA SEABOARD FLORIDA LTD. man” looks when, stick in hand and J ORLANDO Yb TITUSVILLE one night out New York to with a gray sack suit upon him, he Palm Beach. strides through the metropolis, would ROCKLEDGE Through Pallman, Observation be to literature what the Acropolis in MPALM BEACH and Dining Car Service. the age of Pericles was to architec- Hotels and Winter resorts. ture. The majesty of Gibbon’s prose Toarist tickets and stopovers. is in the gait of Tom Dixon, the fire Portsmouth, Va, . Golf, huntinz, fishing, climate, etc. of Shelley's verse is in the eye of Tom Y KNIGHTS KEY PE toe CEPA Dixon, and the length of a Homeric Direct 1183 Broadway, line is in the step of Tom Dixon. The Through Car Savana New York Routeto Atlanta, Birmingham and Memphis (Continued on page 954) fe an » Great Western persuades me that I never could have been quite mad, even when I was young. My whole mental life reor- ganizes itself around this dread of be- ing sane. The Professor will no doubt insist that I ought to overcome this fancy, but I fear that my career will be ruined in the endless fight against the overpowering obsession. In litera- ture nowadays sanity is a fatal handi- cap. With all my heart I envy H. G. Wells and the modern school of Ger- man poets. Why I Am a Brilliant Writer My first reason for being a brilliant writer is that I never have anything to say. The fact that I never have anything to say is not noticed, because 1 write so well. But my chief reason for being a brilliant writer is that 1 always write about myself. If I wrote about anything else I should have to Champagne Half the Cost of Imported Absence of duty reduces its cost 50%. Of the six American Champagnes exhibited, Great Western was the only one awarded the gold medal at Paris exposition, 1900. Your grocer or dealer can supply you === Sold everywhere—————= PLEASANT VALLEY WINE CO. RHEIMS, N. Y. Oldest and Largest Champagne House in America comicbooks.com