Trail of the Lonesome Pine is a curiosity lost in melodrama

John Fox, Jr. churned out sentimental novels about the American frontier that were immensely popular in the early 1900s. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was his first big success, making the bestseller list two years running.

Jack Hale sees the opportunity to make a fortune by buying land in the Cumberland Gap after the Civil War when the demand for steel soars.

While he’s looking for investment property up near the lonesome pine, Jack meets a young hillbilly girl, June Tolliver. Hale arranges for her to get schooling outside the mountains.

Meanwhile, Jack tries to civilize the hillbillies enough that investors won’t be afraid to come in. He makes enemies of both sides in the Tolliver-Falin feud.

His investments don’t fare well either. When June comes back, clean and cultured, she finds Jack gone to seed and the feud ready to blow her family apart.

If you can imagine John Wayne playing Professor Henry Higgins, you’ve got the flavor of the book. Trail has several intriguing  story lines, but none of them is fully developed.

Characters are underdeveloped, too. Hale initially considers June a child , but readers never learn her age, which is a pivotal fact.

This melodrama survives as a curiosity, but it’s too splintered to endure as a novel.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

By John Fox, Jr.

Grosset & Dunlap, 1908

421 pages

1908 bestseller #3; 1909 bestseller #5

My Grade C

© 2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

100 years on, The Man in Lower Ten is still tip-top

Mary Roberts Rinehart sets her mystery The Man in Lower Ten on a pullman car. From there, she leads an unlikely hero down many wrong tracks, much to his discomfort and reader’s delight.

Bachelor lawyer Lawrence Blakely’s take a train to Pittsburgh to take a statement from John Gilmore proving Andy Bronson forged the millionaire’s name. Blakely’s eye is taken by a photo of Gilmore’s granddaughter, Alison West.

On the return trip, Blakely is assigned to the lower 10 berth. He finds it occupied by a sound-asleep drunk.

The next morning the man in lower 10 has been murdered, the documents are gone, and there are blood stains on the berth where Blakely slept.

Suspicion falls on Blakely.

When the train wrecks and burns, Blakely escapes accompanied by a woman who turns out to be Alison West. From there the plot thickens, twists and turns before gliding gracefully to a halt.

With its gentle, quirky characters and period setting, The Man in Lower Ten practically begs to be made into a movie. It’s witty, funny, and totally absorbing—everything a mystery ought to be.

Find a copy and watch it in your mind’s eye.

The Man in Lower Ten
By Mary Roberts Rinehart
Rinehart, 1909
#4 on the 1909 bestseller list

My grade: B+

Two reviews ahead of 1909 novels

I have exhausted my pile of 1919 bestsellers. I meant to get to the state university branch library to use their archives, but life intervened.

I’ll step back 10 years and give you reviews of two novels from the 1909 bestseller list that I found in circulation: The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr.

Both books have been reprinted since their copyrights expired and they went into the public domain. If you can’t find them in your local library, you’ll find them at booksellers. Or you can find them at  Project Gutenberg for online reading. Rinehart’s novel is available for download to a Kindle, but I don’t believe the Fox novel is.

There is also a 1936 film version of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine for which Fox wrote the screenplay. It’s available on DVD.

~ Linda Gorton Aragoni

Romance is blight on Desert of Wheat

The Desert of Wheat is an unsatisfactory romantic novel by the master of westerns, Zane Grey.

The story is set in the Bend Country of eastern Oregon in 1917 after America had declared war on Germany. The Industrial Workers of the World is organizing farm and timber workers to disrupt the war effort by sabotaging America’s food production.

Kurt Dorn sides with his father’s mortgage-holder, Anderson, against the IWW, causing a breach with his father. Anderson tells Kurt how to save his wheat crop. The plan succeeds, but the IWW burns the harvested wheat before it can be sold. Kurt’s father dies attempting to save the wheat, and  Kurt deeds the farm to Anderson to pay the mortgage.

Kurt insists on going into the military to fight Germans. Anderson’s daughter Lenore promises to marry Kurt when he comes home.

Grey held me spellbound with the IWW material and his description of trench warfare in France. Lenore’s letting Kurt go to war made psychological sense to me, too. But I never got the sense that the issues that gave rise to the IWW were solved, nor that Kurt’s post traumatic stress was over.

I can’t help wondering what this novel might have been if Grey had shaken off the conventions of cowboy romance.

The Desert of Wheat
By Zane Grey

1919

My grade B-

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

Arrow of Gold too heavy to fly

The Arrow of Gold is presented as a manuscript written to a childhood friend by  a sailor, “Monsieur George.”

Between voyages, M. George meets two men in Marseilles who introduce him to Dona Rita de Lastoala, a beauty who secures her curls with a golden arrow.

Rita was discovered by a painter who made his model and mistress. At his death, he left her his extensive art collections and fortune.

Rita’s family considers her a disgrace. Her ugly elder sister condescends to manage one of the houses Rita inherited and in which M. George lives when he’s not at sea.

Rita seduces M. George into gun-running to support Don Carlos de Bourbon’s 1870’s attempt to win the throne of Spain.

The novel seethes with political intrigue, lust, murder, and mayhem all politely covered by pages of talk. When Rita disappeared, I was just happy she shut up.

Joseph Conrad’s characters are complex in a literary fashion. They have to be studied rather than just observed.

Conrad’s plot is also more literary than lively. Readers must pay close attention (or read the book twice) to figure out what is happening.

Sadly, what’s happening isn’t worth the effort.

The Arrow of Gold
by Joseph Conrad
Doubleday, Page, 1919

385 pages
My grade: B-

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

War’s Horror Is in the Details

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was acclaimed the greatest novel of the great war when it appeared in 1918.

Few today would rate it so highly.

Vicente Blasco Ibanez relies heavily on exposition, paints all French as noble and all Germans as monsters, and shifts focus unnecessarily. But despite its flaws, The Four Horsemen is still worth reading.

To escape military service, Marcelo Desnoyers flees to Argentina, where he and a German marry a rancher’s daughters.

Both ex-patriots become rich and return home. The German’s son goes into the military. The Frenchman’s son becomes a painter and philanderer. After Julio seduces a friend of his father, the elder Desnoyers refuses to see him again.

To fill the void in his life, Desnoyers begins collecting art in his Marne River castle. When World War I begins, Desnoyers is caught in the Battle of the Marne.

Afterward he is old, sad, and vehemently anti-German. Mutual emptiness reunites father and son until war parts them forever.

The novel’s strength lies in tiny details, like a farmer swerving his plow around mounds that indicate buried corpses, and  Desnoyers’ reply when asked in what capacity he served during the Battle of the Marne.

“Merely as a victim,” he replies.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
By Vicente Blasco Ibanez
Trans. Charlotte Brewster Jordan
E.P. Dutton, 1918
489 pages

My grade: B+

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

Once Famous Novelists Populate 1919 Bestseller List

A lot of novels have gone to the remainder bin since 1919. Few of the bestsellers of that year are still on library shelves. I have located a trove of vintage fiction at Milne Library at SUNY Oneonta, but that collection does not circulate.

However, I was lucky in finding circulating copies of the three top novels of 1919, which I’ll review the next three Wednesdays.

Here’s the entire list fo 1919 bestselling novels:

1. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalpse by V. Blasco Ibanez
2. The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad
3. The Desert of Wheat by Zane Grey
4. Dangerous Days by Mary Roberts Rinehart
5. The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land by Ralph Connor
6. The Re-Creation of Brian Kent by Howard Bell Wright
7. Dawn by Gene Stratton-Porter
8. The Tin Soldier by Temple Bailey
9. Christopher and Columbus by “Elizabeth”
10. In Secret by Robert W. Chambers

You may want to check Grandma’s attic to see if any of these titles are tucked away under the eaves.

The authors on the list were big names in their day. Temple Bailey, Howard Bell Wright, and Ralph Connor were so famous that other writers dropped their names into novel dialogue to establish the tastes and personalities of their characters.

Zane Grey’s westerns still have a considerable following.  Users at my local library branch have dog-eared numerous paperback editions of the works of the Ohio native who raised Western novels to a cult art form.

Pittsburgh novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart was more popular in her day than her chief rival in murder mysteries, Agatha Christie.   It is Rinehart, not Christie, to whom we owe the phrase “the butler did it.”

Gene Stratton-Porter maintains a strong following among homeschoolers today for her clean-cut young adult characters.

Joseph Conrad, of course, is represented on the reading lists of high school and college students by his Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks if The Arrow of Gold is equally good.

Next Wednesday’s review will be of the #1 novel of 1919, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

~Linda Gorton Aragoni

Old Pybus is guilt-free romance

During the early days of World War I, bookseller John Pybus exhorted men to enlist. His own sons, Conrad and Probyn, preferred to serve in protected occupations that lined their pockets.

Their father disowned them.

Years later, they learn he is the “boots” at a country hotel.

Probyn’s son Lance learns of his grandfather’s existence and looks him up. They bond immediately. Lance calls his grandfather “the Venerable.”

When Lance wants to become a writer instead of going into his father’s business, Old Pybus supports him. Through his grandfather, Lance meets a woman with whom he falls in love. And the Venerable is also responsible for Lance developing an adult relationship with his parents.

Much of the plot of Old Pybus is predictable. However, the novel’s interest isn’t the plot but the characters. At first glance, Lance looks like a standard-issue hero, but on longer acquaintance he exhibits all sorts of quirks, becomes pig-headed and sometimes acts downright stupid. He is, in short, human — a very fine thing for a book character to be.

If Old Pybus had been written by someone other than Warwick Deeping, the story could have dissolved into sentimental claptrap. By making readers his confidants and reminding them real life isn’t this tidy, Deeping lets readers revel in the romance without the tiniest feeling of guilt.

Old Pybus

By Warwick Deeping

Alfred A. Knopf, 1928

350 pages

1928 bestseller #7

My Grade: B +

© 2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

What to expect for the rest of 2009

I’m finding it increasingly harder to locate copies of  bestsellers published before 1940 and even more recent titles are getting scarce. Fortunately, some of the great older books are being reissued either in paperback or in digital format.

I’ll be finishing out  2009 with reviews of an assortment of vintage books I have unearthed. Most will be from the bestseller lists, but some will be famous or notable books that were not the top sellers of their day.

I wasn’t able to find the #7 bestselling novel on the 1928 list before the date when it should have appeared. I’ve since located a copy.  I’ll post a review of  Old Pybus by Warwick Deeping next Wednesday.

Linda Gorton Aragoni

The cream of 1929 bestselling novels

The top novel of 1929 was,  and remains, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel bares the callousness that soldiers develop as protection against the brutality of war.

Both the novel and the film based on it are classics.

The other 1929 bestsellers I recommend are both about black women. Mamba’s Daughters by DuBose Heyward and Scarlet Sister Mary by Julie Peterkin examine strong women determined not only to survive, but to leave a legacy to their children.

I’ve not been able to find a copy of  Dark Hester by Anne Douglas Sedgwick  or  The Galaxy by Susan Ertz, which were number 3 and number 9 respectively on the 1929 bestseller list.

The remaining five novels on the 1929 bestseller list have interesting features, but none has strong entertainment value for today’s readers.

Linda Gorton Aragoni