Aaron Marc Stein (1906-1985), Modernist

As mentioned in my last blog piece, crime writer Aaron Marc Stein (1906-1985) graduated from Princeton in 1927 and published his first novels, Spirals and Her Body Speaks, penned under his own name, in 1930 and 1931; and his first George Bagby novel, Bachelor's Wife, in 1932.  All this by his mid-twenties!

Spirals and Her Body Speaks are modernist, stream-of-consciousness novels, Stein's great grab at the brass ring of great literature, while Bachelor's' Wife, described as "the story of Tommy, a modern girl about town, who thought she was hard-boiled until she tried to forget the man she loved," appears much more a mainstream effort.

the Grosset & Dunlap reprint edition of Bachelor's Wife, by "George A. Bagby"

All these of these books, as well as Stein's first three detective novels, which appeared between 1935 and 1937, were published by Covici-Friede, a New York City firm that had published Radclyffe Hall's controversial, landmark lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness in 1928.  The firm also published John Steinbeck and a small amount of mystery fiction, including the the early Anthony Abbot detective novels and Rudolph Fisher's pioneering African-American mystery, The Conjure Man Dies (1932).

Aaron Marc Stein as a Princeton student

Stein wrote hopefully about his literary prospects to Hugh L. Bell, Secretary of the Princeton Alumni Association:

I am now engaged in writing the second book [Her Body Speaks] in such time as I have to spare from the activities by which I earn my bread and an occasional bit of butter.  My hungry mouth is fed by the proceeds derived from the writing of an odd form of art criticism for the New York Evening Post.  I have been acting as editor and critic of the antique section of that daily for two years....I have been also writing occasional articles for magazines.

A bit of a dust-up followed the publication of Spirals, when it was attacked in the pages of the Princeton Alumni Weekly [PAW], by a pseudonymous reviewer, "Jenkins Gruffanuff" (see the works of William Makepeace Thackeray), who condemned the novel as obscene.

At least two Princeton alumni came to Stein's defense, writing letters of protest to PAW. Robert Rau demanded a retraction of the review, insisting that the failure to make one would "stand as an insult to every Princeton gentleman."  David McKelvy White expounded on the iniquity of Mr. Gruffanuff at even greater length.  The reviewer had launched a "diatribe" against Spirals, declaring the novel "lewd, lascivious, filthy and obscene," complained White, yet he, White, found himself

quite unable to guess what it was that caused the outburst...Jenkins gives us no hint, content with quoting, at considerable length, the Federal Statutes relating to "lewd literature."...I can only wonder what curious obsession in Jenkins' mind is thus hinted at....

According to his New York Times obituary, Robert Rau (1907-1994; Princeton '28) was "an import-export executive and a civic leader in Manhattan."  He also served on the board of directors of the United Jewish Appeal, a philanthropic organization.

David McKelvy White (1901-1945; Princeton '25), the son of a prominent Ohio Democratic politician, earned a graduate degree at Columbia University and taught English Literature at Brooklyn College between 1928 and 1937.

He was a member of the Communist Party and in 1937 went to Spain to fight for the Republican cause in the civil war there.  He apparently committed suicide in 1945, for reasons that, according to historian Matthew Young, "remain obscure, although explanations tend to find their source in his imminent expulsion from the CP.  David's openly gay lifestyle (having lived with a long-time partner during the 1920s and 1930s), combined with his close associations with recently denounced CP leader Earl Browder, made him a target."

I think this matter sheds some interesting light on Stein at this time. Stein was the son of a Dr. and Mrs. Max Stein who in 1930 lived at 799 Madison Avenue (now home to the fine French linen store Frette).

His older sister, Miriam Anne Stein (herself later an author of three mystery novels), graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1925.

Aaron Marc Stein (or "Rod" as he was known to friends) obviously came from a prominent Manhattan Jewish family and was ambitiously seeking to make his way into higher literary circles. The New York Evening Post once noted that when Stein first appeared to work at the paper he "was carrying a copy of Aristophanes' 'The Frogs' under his arm....his copy was in the original Greek."

What was it about Spirals that so vexed Jenkins Gruffanuff? I haven't yet read Spirals (I have ordered a copy; it is rather a rare book), but it is described in a review in The Sentinel, a Chicago Jewish newspaper, as a "narrative in brief, swift strokes" in the mind of  a student, Anthony Todd, of "outstanding incidents of four years in college life at Princeton" (The Sentinel, 25 April 1930, 47).

An interesting tidbit about the novel comes in a New York Evening Post article, "Womanless Book By Stein Published."  In the body of the article it is noted, tongue-in-cheek, that "Mr. Stein has been asked to write several magazine article to explain the absence of the fair sex from his novel. As soon as he evolves an interesting theory, he expects to respond to the requests for an explanation."

Did Jenkins Gruffanuff detect homosexuality in Spirals, a "womanless" college novel?  I do not know, but I am finding some suggestive elements in Stein's crime fiction.  Perhaps Stein was--like, in all likelihood in my view, Patrick Quentin/Q. Patrick/Jonathan Stagge (Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler), Milton M. Propper, Rufus King and Todd Downing (all reviewed on this blog)--one of the notable 1930s gay American detective novelists, not acknowledged as such at the time.

In any event, Stein's second novel, Her Body Speaks, supplied the women Spirals lacked.  Another stream-of-consciousness novel, with a strong psychological element, Her Body Speaks tells the story of "Edith Kent, a sex-starved unmarried woman of thirty-three" who witnesses a murder.  The review of the novel in PAW (not by Jenkins Gruffanuff but by Franklin Gary '27) concluded that

Mr. Stein is more interested in psychology and technique than in telling a story or in creating characters.  His technique often suggests the techniques of well known  modern novelists, Joyce, Faulkner, Mrs. Woolf, even O'Neill.  But none of these writers is interested primarily in technique for its own sake....

What was a fiction writer more interested in technique than characters to do in the 1930s? Why, become a detective novelist, of course!  Next post, I will be writing in detail about (finally!) Aaron Marc Stein's George Bagby mystery fiction.

Anthony Boucher's Dozen Best Mystery Novels of 1950

How did the influential American crime fiction critic Anthony Boucher see the state of things in the world of mystery as the twentieth century hit its halfway mark?  Well, let's look at his choices for the best mystery novels of the year:

note at bottom Christie tribute blurbs
from  Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr

A Murder Is Announced, by Agatha Christie (among her best)

Blues for the Prince, by Bart Spicer (rich and moving picture of the world of jazz music, in semi-tough manner)

Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey (high straight-novel characterization combined with solid detection)

Frightened Amazon, by Aaron Marc Stein (vivid study of unusual folkways)

Mischief, by Charlotte Armstrong (psychologically valid and purely terrifying)

The Bride of Newgate, by John Dickson Carr (the familiar--and incomparable--Carr virtues in the new form of a historical romance)

The Case of the Negligent Nymph, by Erle Stanley Gardner (there were only three Gardners this year; this is the best)

before Macdonald was merely "Ross"

The Drowning Pool, by John Ross Macdonald (hard-boiled detective story vivified by compassion and literary skill)

The Motive, by Evelyn Piper (best of the "best," as novel, as puzzle, as pioneer in a new type of mystery story)

The Rim of Terror, by Hildegarde Teilhet (best of the year's spy-pursuit thrillers)

The Wind Blows Death, by Cyril Hare (When the Wind Blows) (wittily literate British import)

Through a Glass Darkly, by Helen McCloy (impeccable plotting, eerie writing)

An interesting list.  The first thing that strikes me is that seven of the novel are in print, or have been in print within the last quarter century.

Probably almost completely forgotten is the Aaron Marc Stein book. The relatively forgotten ones are the novels by Evelyn Piper, Hildegarde Teilhet and Helen McCloy, though these writers are not forgotten by collectors.  Piper does have one book in print that I know of, Bunny Lake Is Missing (1957), likely on the strength of the well-received film adaptation from the 1960s, which starred Laurence Olivier and Carol Lynley.  In the 1950s and 1960s, Piper definitely was considered a notable American psychological suspense writer.

Six of the writers are women, six men (did Boucher do that deliberately?), but only three, I believe, are English.  Classical detection at its purest is represented by Christie and Hare and, I imagine, the Gardner, which I have not read.

not on the list

Carr somewhat adulterated his detective novel, in the eyes of the puzzle purist, with period atmosphere, laid on with zest, and McCloy hers with psychology and eerie suspense. (for others this was a good trade-off!) Psychology also is prominent in the Tey and, clearly, the Piper, though I have not read the latter. The Armstrong is a psychological suspense classic.

The Stein, which I also have not read, probably is purer detection, but it sounds like the main reason Boucher liked it was local color (Boucher was a great fan of local color). Then with Teilhet we have spies and with Macdonald and Spicer hard-boiled.  Hard-boiled arguably is underrepresented--or an American list, anyway--but no way was Boucher picking a Spillane! That was not. going. to. happen. in a Boucher column in 1950.

The Ballad of Baggy and Schmidty; or, The George Bagby Novels of Aaron Marc Stein: Part One, The Corpse Wore a Wig (1940)

"Baggy," Schmidty murmured, "don't be a dope."

With his long-running series of George Bagby detective novels--51 were published between 1935 and 1983--American crime writer Aaron Marc Stein merged the Great Detective and police procedural formulas by introducing two series characters, George Bagby and Inspector Schmidt, friends who refer to each other as Baggy and Schmidty during the course of criminal investigations.

George Bagby, you see, is Inspector Schmidt's "ghost"--he follows Schmidt around New York as he collars criminals and then chronicles his hero's exploits in books (this device was soon adopted across the pond by Englishman Rupert Croft-Cooke in his Leo Bruce "Sergeant Beef" detective novels).

Bagby, then, is Watson to Schmidt's Sherlock Holmes, Van to Schmidt's Philo Vance--although Schmidt is a far cry from an eccentric consulting or amateur detective. He does have one eccentricity, emphasized in the early books at least: his feet flattened from beat patrols, he always takes his shoes off indoors, even when he's on a case.

Otherwise he's a gruff cop, not too distinguishable from other gruff New York cops that I can see, aside from the fact that he actually solves his own cases and does not have to rely on Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, Drury Lane or Nero Wolfe to save his bacon. However, the early cases do not seem very procedural-ish in form, despite the trimmings.  On the whole we are in the world of the classic Golden age detective novel, American style.

Case in point: The Corpse with the Red Wig (1940).  A doctor, Jeremy Bullock, is found dead, with a wig covering the bullet hole in his head.  He was also dosed with chloral.  It soon emerges that Dr. Bullock may have been up to some shady doings. Other murders follow, a pair of poisonings by cyanide and again by chloral.  Additional establishments are implicated: those of a doctor across the street from Bullock, a wigmaker and a hairdresser.

This is a short novel, but even at about 60,000 words it felt rather like a padded short story. It probably would have made a superb short story, but is a bit lacking in narrative punch for a novel. Too often one hears the machinery click and the ending seemed rushed.  Still, there was enough of interest here to encourage me to look at additional Bagby titles.

There are some colorful and perceptive descriptions of modern doctors' offices and of tenements and some quirky characters.  I especially liked the cleaning lady Oleander, who is that rare thing in American Golden Age detective fiction, a black servant character who does not speak in overdrawn, southern plantation dialect.  Nor is Oleander servile or frightened, but to the contrary quite self-assertive and pugnacious.  I was wishing she would play a bigger role in the story.

Also interesting was the wigmaker Louis Davis, who, we learn, is an ex-con who used to play the female role in badger games.  As a seventeen-year-old he would dress as a young woman and entice men into hotel rooms, where his accomplices, masquerading as policemen, would burst in to find the couple in suggestive poses.  It would then be "discovered" that the mark was with "not the young woman he supposed her to be but an adolescent boy."  The mark would thereupon conclude that "the opportunity to pay imposing sums of hush money was heaven sent."

As this account indicates, the novel happily is rather more frank on sexual matters than many detective novels of the era.  I liked this exchange as well:

"So he gave me a mink coat," she howled.  "What's it to you?"
"What did you give him?"
"Use your imagination!"

My conclusion: The Corpse Wore a Wig was not outstanding but it was promising.  I hope to have a review of Bagby's earlier and much longer Ring around a Murder (1936) up by Sunday.

The Corpse Wore a Wig (1940), by George Bagby

The American author Aaron Marc Stein (1906-1985) published over 100 crime novels between 1935 and 1984, making him one of the more prolific mystery genre writers, yet he seems not to get much mention since his death.

Close to half Stein's crime novels, written under the name "George Bagby," detail the investigations of Inspector Schmidt, who debuted in 1935 and made his final appearance in 1983. The Inspector Schmidt series offers an interesting combination of police procedural and "Great Detective" traditions, at least from what I have seen of the earlier novels.

The seventh George Bagby crime novel, The Corpse Wore a Wig, was published in 1940.  The particular copy I read (see illustrations) was inscribed by Stein to John Ball (1911-1988), author of In the Heat of the Night (1965).

Stein graduated from Princeton in 1927, got a job as the "antiques and decorations" editor for the New York Evening Post and a few years later published two modernist, stream-of-consciousness novels, Spirals (1930) and Her Body Speaks (1931), as well as the first George Bagby title, Bachelor's Wife (1932). He then shifted to crime writing with his first George Bagby mystery, Murder at the Piano (1935).  I haven't read that book, but I am reading, and enjoying, Wig.  I will have to full review up this weekend.