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NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE WEEKLY BOOK REVIEW, APRIL 25, 1948 
Genius of a Famous and Self-Effacing Editor
The Unique Achievement of George Horace Lorimer in His Time, Place and Chosen Job

[[photo]] George Horace Lorimer

GEORGE HORACE LORIMER AND THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
By John Tebbel. . . . 335 pp. . . New York:  Doubleday and Company. . . .$4.

Review by J.C. LONG

"The most notable magazine editor of our times," commented the New York Herald Tribune when George [[missing text]] than a year after he had relinquished the helm of the "Saturday Evening Post."

John Tebbel's new biography of the man and the magazine justifies that conclusion in a provocative, well-documented and convincing fashion. A Ross-New Yorker author must compose his works in the tone and scale of the magazine, a Timeditor takes the veil of anonymity, but  writer for Lorimer's "Post" was in a paradise where he might find fame, fortune.--and a considerable degree of freedom.

Lorimer's personal taste dominated the "Post," up to a point. He believed in optimism, business success, popularity, love and family clean-living, the respectable ambitions and feelings of so-called middle-class America, but he could also be hospitable to the writer of unconventional approach. One of his last acts at the "Post" in 1936, says Mr. Tebbel, as to buy a series of articles by Gertrude Stein on the subject of money. When his dissenting editors asked him why he did so, Lorimer replied, "Because it amused me."

This was no new-found catholicity of taste. "The Pit," by Frank Norris was serialized in the "Post." Rebecca West has some of her earliest work purchase by Lorimer. Stephen Crane, Edwin Markham, poet of the masses, Leonard Merrick, who was admired chiefly by an intellectual few, Joseph Conrad and James Branch Cabell were published by Lorimer. In fact, almost every distinguished name in letters appeared in the "Saturday Evening Post" during Lorimer's reign, 1899-1936.

Obviously, Lorimer's phenomenal success as a circulation-builder depended upon his flair for discovering and developing authors of popular talent. Mary Roberts Rinehart, Booth Tarkington, Clarence Budington Kelland, Kenneth Roberts, Katherine Brush, Stewart Edward White, Thomas B. Costain, Earl Derr Biggers, Walter Edmonds and J. P. Marquand are but a small fraction of America's best-selling fiction writers who established their following through the "Post."

In non-fiction, Lorimer was a less successful mentor than in fiction. Perhaps his own satisfaction in most particulars with the status quo made him unreceptive to original lines of thought unless in story form. The conservation of natural resources was the chief crusade in which his article-writers engaged, and even there at times they used the fictional method.

Samuel G. Blythe was Lorimer's favorite non-fiction man and Tebbel has a high regard for Blythe's sagacity and abilities, a point of view open to challenge. Blythe could expand a few simple thoughts into six thousand mildly entertaining words; at least he had fluency. But there were better prose writers than Blythe, such as Atwood and Will Durant, who appeared less frequently. Tebbel, in fact, quotes Lorimer as recognizing that too much of the non-fiction was second rate.

The policy of using ghost-written articles signed by men famous in public life was another deterrent to quality, however much it may have helped circulation. The "Post" assigned its best staff men to the ghosting, but the principals often had very little to say. Tebbel's account of how Mussolini's contribution was concocted leaves the reader between laughter and nausea.

The world of authorship, of whatever political slant, should hail [[?]] the name of Lorimer and call him blessed. It was he who started the practice (too infrequently followed even now) of deciding on manuscripts within seventy-two hours and of paying upon acceptance. He also carried the care and feeding of writers, including obscure one, to new high levels. Luncheons, actual board and lodging, trips to Atlantic City, automobile tours, cajolings, rebukes, and the instinctive understanding of what makes an author tick or not tick, all were part of the Lorimer success.

Lorimer has been painted as an arch-conservative, a prodigious worker, strong-willed, paternalistic. Tebbel shows all of that side; but he also portrays a man of gusto, fond of long vacations, a bon vivant, one who was interested in all conditions of men; in short, a born reporter.

Tebbel for occasional stretches is tedious in two particulars:  First in his recording of testimonials to Lorimer by noted names (who cares?), second in apologizing for defending Lorimer's conservatism. Lorimer asked no quarter. He was what he was, take it or leave it.

The editorial page of the "Post" was negligible. True, Lorimer sweated over its columns, yet Tebbel observes that until the 1930s the "Post" was "primarily an organ of entertainment and enlightenment, notwithstanding its political campaigns." When Lorimer devoted his utmost energies to combating the New Deal, his influence was not impressive; and he incurred some studied criticism. That, too, was ineffectual, for Lorimer's genius, as Tebbel brings out, was in an intrinsic self-effacement. He was the impresario, not the star. He never featured Lorimer, allowed no biographies, no personal exploitations.

Tebbel as a whole has done an excellent job, telling of Lorimer's errors and failures as well as of his peculiar genius. The book, moreover, is an important piece of documentary history. It is an informative presentation of the inner workings of a major publishing achievement and its editor, a stimulating account of an era in American life.