Life — December 22, 1927 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

x /rom. Hey wor oc: Broun: AR Eprror If you had just one hour be- tting hanged, no offense, old , what would you pick out to Don't be silly! Don't you try and Shakespeare me. And none of that stuff about one last erack at “Paradise Lost.” I know the answer perfectly well, even though [am the fellow that put the You'd ask for a newspaper might be interested in how the fight came out and might have the hope that by some chance or other John Roach Straton had met with a nasty accident. But chiefly you would not want to die without seeing what was in the Column. question. You you Even un- der present conditions (I refer to the fact that Eugene Field is gone) a newspaper Column is pretty nearly the noblest work of man. And [can tell you why fun than a whimsical novel, poem or a quaint essay. A good Column isn't about anything. When will you editors learn that it’s this business of being tinformative and coherent which drives writers and readers into breakdowns? “What's it is more an epic your piece going to be about?” you isk a contributor before he’s started How can he tell until the thing gets rolling? And the other poisonous query goes, “Have you got ideas Naturally [ haven't. in the second | A writer ought to e the same privilege as a tap dancer and be allowed a few vamp bars in which to warm up. If this were going to be an essay it would begin, “Robert Louis Steven- son once said, after a particularly trying afternoon (this was before he made the hegira to the South Seas and found quietude beneath the palm), he said when asked to name his favorite diversion And in fiction it would end, “‘T suppose,’ she said, ‘everybody expects it, but let’s wait until the mi before we tell them. Life can be better than that. isn't there more demand for written just the man talks it? Players in the game have said that my poker talk ought to be aragraph. on goes down Why stuif vlong way a set down. Indeed, there an offer to get me a noiseless type- writef so I can jot as I myself the trouble Don't worry, has been along and save of conversa- tion. do you that story topsis Club, twelve I'm not going to about the Thana- Somewhere in ten or seen that al- did it and got by, what's the use of one white chip? Still, there was a pretty good last Saturday. Mr. Kaufman that Mrs, Kaufman expressed disap 1 al of the rich at the house where they dining and he told her, “Oh, just sour drapes.” Pp RHAPS, it somebody magazines I've ready and even if | said and ornate hang were that’s was not you but rebuked me hours, but a has to who for poker and late creative artist have un work you home and night course, by income. Staying ing hard every nothing. Of time on it write a novel gets puttin, almost anybody But to be can why does every author have a novelist? It's like this that every actor has to play Hamlet and Romeo or die disgraced and sterile. Lately 1 lot of hard- elists and each for the I've been running int working young 1 : d, “There, but 1 and ten years and may Broun wore a bull- and yellow and numerous calls which “T help but naturally Heywood The last one saw fighter’s belt of red talked of the came to him for assistance. all I ean,” he told us, “ I have to refuse there are so many.” I have never read any of that young man’s books but I will, and if you have any sporting spirit I'll bet you I don’t like them, some because HAVE not met the recent adoles- cent sensation, Cornell Woolrich, but I went part way through his “Children of the Ritz.” This isn’t r me to talk about because the 1 rec 1 the $10,000 prize of- fered by College Humor, a magazine to which I have sold two pieces, but if I never sell another, “Children of the Ritz” is out of Scott Fitzgerald by Mal de Mer. There t to be a law that no young man y write 1 book about Happers for the next as for Irish dialect should be sted ten years, and that ban permanent Dunsany that au thors get ther and make up a language to be called dialect This would be ther the talk Scotch, Trish used w was supposed to. be gro or Milt Gro It would sa » lot of trouble and T wouldn't: be running stuff like, “Is it or recount of one of those dates of yours? Well, tell them ye've quit Ye're nobody's chawffer from this day on. I cite page G2 of Mr Woolrich’s novel into hivey YHERE is a ment on the d deal of question of whether familiar with A swell in author ought to be the stuff of which | novelist Harvey O'Hi make no seeret of the matter) “No.” He contends that th seription he ever read of a ty ina rowdy P. by May tinct never writes (it’s says, best de \ par iris cafe was written Sinclair and it is his dis impression that Miss attended in person any such jamboree. And well do I ret a talk which Harriette Underl I once carried on with 1 Reed. Miss Underhill the theory that no actress could do unless she had been one please don't Sinclair was voicing 2 mother and so on ‘Oh, that, dearie,” interrupted Miss Reed “In my next play I'm a harlot But nevertheless it is hard not to get annoyed when they get the stuff all wrong. instance, in’ th Woolrich of a stake ropolitan track in run past the This is the Haines, the chauffeur, wins on precisely the day the flapper’s father goes insolvent. Right you see For book race there is an account on the flat at a Met which the | three ti which De stands race on way we've got a situation. Still. she remained until he crumpled her lithe boyish form into his powerful but liveried didn’t mind that so much but (Ple turn very snooty arms. 7 t did make me to } comicbooks.com