"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

[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).

[sovay]

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.

I had always wondered about that! I kept trying to make it work out Watsonianly and eventually chalked it up to the murderers not knowing as much Russian as they should. The Doylistic explanation is much more satisfying.