"The Devil Is An English Gentleman" by John Cournos (1932)

[sonetka]

In her essay on John Cournos in American Writers In Europe: 1850 To The Present, Marilyn Schwinn Smith comments on a general lack of Cournos scholarship, stating that "although the quantity and quality of his publications testify to an ambition and and aspiration no less energetic than that of his better known, compatriot friends and colleagues …

Comments

[persephone_kore]

Wow. Just... wow.

[sonetka]

My feelings during this whole process were best expressed by that gif of Samuel Johnson peering at a book with a vaguely hostile expression, captioned "WHAT THE FUCK AM I READING?" Even now I can't figure out what the hell Cournos was attempting to do in this book. The characters' philosophies are muddled and incoherent, they describe themselves as "virile" in a totally serious manner, and at the end Richard seems to have completely missed the point of the very perceptive letters written to him by Stella/Sayers. He decides that by not forcing her he was being TOO CONSIDERATE. The best touch is that the book is dedicated to his wife. How she could possibly have retained any respect for him after reading it is something that eludes me.

[persephone_kore]

The best touch is that the book is dedicated to his wife. How she could possibly have retained any respect for him after reading it is something that eludes me.

*feebly grasps at straws* Maybe she couldn't get through it?

[sonetka]

One can only hope. But I can't imagine she could be living with him and not heard many, many discussions of the plot. Of course, he was very likely a much better talker than writer.

(This does remind me of the time I was hunting up a copy of a book by Edgar Lee Masters at the Newberry Library. It was published in the mid-1930s, and it was a presentation copy signed by Masters and it had the presentee's name in it as well. When they lent me the book in 2012, I had to take it to the desk to get the pages cut. Sometimes even your nearest and dearest just aren't into your books).

[lopezuna_writes]

I am very impressed that you managed to persevere to the end. It sounds truly dreadful. Cournos comes off as a prize wart (WHAT on earth was Sayers thinking???)

[sonetka]

He must have have had a truly brilliant line of bullshit. He sounds like he was charismatic enough in person, and the twelve-year age difference probably added greatly to his perceived authority, especially since if I remember correctly Sayers had very little serious experience with men when she fell for him. He might have been one of those people who's a wonderful raconteur but whose verbal charm doesn't translate onto paper. Given the way she describes Philip Boyes, it wouldn't surprise me if a few years later she was wondering the exact same thing you are! (Though oh, those letters she wrote to him after he got married -- she must have fallen so hard for him. That he turned around and used them in tenth-rate novel, potentially exposing the story about her son -- I can't imagine how his wife could have retained any respect for a man who would do that, whatever she may have thought of DLS).

[nineveh_uk]

tin-eared, self-delighted Literary Man

I'm hearing that to Gilbert & Sullivan tunes.

Thank you for slogging through this so that we don't have to. It sounds absolutely dire, and Cournos thoroughly unpleasant. What, indeed, could his wife possibly think of it, goodness knows. I'll concede that Sayers put him in a book first, but the biographical details are so different that the culpability seems very different - especially with his quoting her letters! There's copyright infringement, if nothing else!

Peter Smallpiece has surely got to be another snide comment, in which case it is fitting that it is Sayers who has the final say in their print wars, with Boyes being condemned as bad in bed. It's not the size, but what you do with it that counts!

[sonetka]

She put him in a book in the way it ought to be done -- she used elements of him to create a new character who breathed on his own, so to speak. Reading about Boyes and reading about Cournos, it's easy to think of them as separate people who have a lot in common. (And I'm pretty sure she put other elements of Cournos into a very different character -- Paul Alexis). With Cournos's book, though, none of the characters live on their own, not even Stella, though she comes the closest. He thinks realism means just slapping down a transcript of something that actually happened and letting it take care of itself, and imagination means writing about people the way you think they should be. None of his characters breathe, though Stella comes the closest, just because she's so unlike the Sexy All-Giving Yet Fiery cardboard cutouts which make up the other women characters

[nineveh_uk]

The letters thing really shows his true, and deeply nasty character. It's so petty. No-one else could have known, but it's such a "Ha, ha! Look what I'm doing and you can't stop me!" thing. As for Paradise, no doubt the chief qualification for entry was suitable worship of the almighty.

I hadn't thought of Cournos as also contributing to Paul Alexis, but I like it. The idea of the fantasy man, who is wonderful if only people would just acknowledge it.

Ed. Also, "a truly brilliant line of bullshit" - and good looking - does indeed explain a lot!

[sonetka]

I don't know how much their personal characters had in common but the early life-histories were very similar; leaving Russia in childhood for America, impoverished life in New York, selling papers on the street -- I don't know if Cournos actually worked in a restaurant or not but it wouldn't surprise me if he did. Alexis is more sympathetic to my mind, both because he's much younger than Cournos was (he was over forty when he met Sayers) and because she makes a point that he didn't soak Mrs. Weldon when he had the chance. The delusions of grandeur are certainly something both men shared :).

(One sign that she got most of her Slavic trivia from Cournos is that Alexis's original first name is Pavlo, which is not Russian -- it's Ukrainian, as Cournos was ethnically. In Russian it's Pavel. This makes me twitch every time I see it, though it's possible in-universe that Alexis was also ethnically Ukrainian, or had passed through there on his way to New York, and was just really, REALLY deluded about his connection the Imperial family).

[teenybuffalo]

I read through to the end with my face like D-:

Your post is elegantly worded and witty. I'm currently having a jolt of rage about the way in which DLS could never call C. on his bullshit because of what C. could do to her.

I will just have to comfort myself by remembering the delicate implication in Busman's Honeymoon that Harriet's never had an orgasm with a partner before because her only other sexual partner was a colossal disappointment in bed.

[sovay]

I will just have to comfort myself by remembering the delicate implication in Busman's Honeymoon that Harriet's never had an orgasm with a partner before because her only other sexual partner was a colossal disappointment in bed.

"It seems to be an entirely new tiger. I never had one before-only kindness to animals."

[sonetka]

It's enough to make you feel just a little bit sorry for the character of Phil. But not for Cournos, who I hope read that passage :).

[sonetka]

I thought of that too! I hope Cournos read it, too.

[evelyn_b]

Thanks for posting this summary! I tracked down The Devil is an English Gentleman last year because I was curious about Cournos, but I couldn't get through it. I barely managed to skim the Stella parts. It's very bad. I wanted it to be better than it was, because I felt sorry for Philip Boyes, being murdered in a book and not even getting any sympathy for it, but it was so bad and there was so much of it.

Anyway, your sacrifice is appreciated!

[sonetka]

"It was so bad and there was so much of it" is probably one of the best summaries of Cournos's literary oeuvre that I've seen. The saddest part is that even though Philip is dead before SP opens, his personality still comes across so much more vividly than that any of the very much alive characters in this one.