Names dropped with a thud

Reviewed by Harry Eagar, 2007-05-01

The term `public intellectual' was not used early in the 20th century, and it is a poor phrase now, but it does describe the position of George Jean Nathan and Henry Mencken in the period from about 1908 to 1926, when they stopped collaborating.

They were two lucky young men, the last to be able to make a living as boulevardiers before radio and film ruined that profession; and because the early 20th century offered plenty to jeer at. They were good at it, but, as Thomas Quinn Curtiss makes painfully clear, they were not very discerning critics.

Their problem was they hardly knew when to stop jeering, although they did from time to time, for example Nathan's promotion of Eugene O'Neill. (In an amusing publisher's advertisement at the back of the book -- how very 1915ish -- O'Neill is credited with making Nathan, while Curtiss avers, but hardly demonstrates, that it was the other way round.)

Mencken is still read but Nathan, who was rather higher style, is known as a name from the '20s, like Djuna Barnes, but his 50 books are forgotten. Excerpts in 'The Smart Set' show why. He kept his boyish looks into his 40s, and his boyish and collegiate humor as well. Looking back, it seems odd that such a callow fellow could have gained the reputation of the suavest American. Though, it's true, the competition was thin.

Curtiss knew both men, though it is not clear how well, and with a lifetime of his own around the theater (as a critic at the International Herald Tribune), he was in a position to have written a well-informed, stylish memoir of two men who were all about style. He did not do so. Perhaps he began too late. `The Smart Set' was published in 1998, when Curtiss was about 83.

It is a confusing mishmash, held together neither by chronology nor theme. Much of it is a listing of names, most of which anybody living in the 21st century has never heard of. The book is replete with anecdotes, which will be of interest to those who are interested by literary and, especially, theatrical anecdotes; but there is little else to recommend them.

A memoir of Mencken and Nathan demands, at least, panache. `The Smart Set' is written with all the verve of an encyclopedia article, and wretchedly edited. Names are misspelled (along with much else), errors of fact are common (Provincetown is not in Rhode Island) and episodes are introduced then never concluded. A wretched production.