It's entirely possible that I am the only person in the world who cares, but it is the works of This remarkable writer that lead me to decry the Mickey Mouse copyright eterno-extension act of 19whatever.
It seems that his work will not pass into obscurity after all--but I can tell you that it deadly hard to come by some of these. My paperback of The Passionate Witch is circa 1945, my hardback of The Bishop's Jaeger's is a first. I have five Del Rey printings of his more popular/well known works Topper, Topper Takes a Trip, The Stray Lamb, Nightlife of the Gods, and Rain in the Door. I have an ancient paperback of The Glorious Pool and one of scarcely more recent vintage of Skin and Bones. What's the attraction? Think thirties screwball comedies in paperback form. Think Busby Berkeley in paperback. Think Thurber with too much whiskey at hand. The books froth, bubble and boil over. They jaunt along at their own unique pace, never properly captured despite three film adaptations--(the two Toppers, and the Veronica Lake vehicle I Married a Witch a.k.a. The Passionate Witch.
Well, just another of my curious interests. But I will work to overturn the idiocy of that copyright act in any way made available to me. Great works are vanishing because publishers are not keeping alive what will not make a profit and it is all out of public domain so that we can protect Mickey Mouse. (Another one of my big beefs against big business--admittedly a very, very small big beef, but one that I am passionate about.)
Below--Thorne Smith on Thorne Smith:
"The more I think about it the more am I convinced that I'm a trifle cosmic. My books are as blindly unreasonable as nature. They have no more justification than a tiresomely high mountain or a garrulous and untidy volcano. Unlike the great idealists and romancers who insist on a beginning and a middle and an ending for their stories mine possess none of these definite parts. You can open them at any page. It does not matter at all. You will be equally mystified if not revolted. I am myself."
I CARE!!!
I discovered Thorne Smith when I was in high school. My mother disccovered me giggling over her old copies and told me that she used to sit on the front porch in her high school days giggling wildly over lines like, "I'm just a little ferry."
I should have figured you'd be another Thorne Smith fan. :-)
I had totally forgotten Thorne Smith! I read him back in college, when I worked at a public library, and could browse and browse and pick old books off the shelf for one night.
Back on my reading list. THANKS!
Hee! This is great!
I read Thorne Smith because the big book of fantasy writers said he was good. I kept reading Thorne Smith because, darn it, they were right!
They had The Bishop's Jaegers in the college library, and they were actually there most of the year (as opposed to Cabell, which spent most of the year walling a certain professor's office. And my, was he peeved if you checked them out for all of a week after his annual return of them to the library), and I have a few Del Reys also. (Hard come by, too.)