Books: Authors to the Road

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The go-betweens who sign up U. S. lecturers, arrange speaking dates, collect from local committees, are a tightly-knit, secretive, high-pressure group of Manhattan agents who have field representatives scattered throughout the U. S. They get 25% of lecture fees, 50% if they also supply railroad fare. Biggest of the four firms dominating the field is that of William Colston Leigh, burly, smartly-dressed Manhattan businessman who handles Carl Sandburg, Mrs. Roosevelt, some 37 other ranking literary figures. Oldest in the business is William ("Pop") B. Feakins, whose 35 authors, including leftists like John T. Flynn and rightists like Lawrence Dennis (The Coming American Fascism), generally lecture on serious social problems.

As the winter lecture season got under way, one plain fact was apparent from the topics chosen for speeches, the fees paid lecturers, the types of writers who proved popular. It was that the taste of U. S. audiences had been rapidly changing. A few years ago sex and psychology were major lecture subjects, with travel adventure of the type popularized by Richard Halliburton running them a close third. This year's audiences will hear little sex but much politics, fewer accounts of adventures in Africa but many discussions on how to make friends, how to influence people, how to conquer worry, feelings of inferiority and fear. Most astonishing news to hard-bitten lecture agents was the spectacular success of Dorothy Thompson, whose intense, nervous speeches recapitulate the ideas she dins into her daily column in the New York Herald Tribune. Giving only eight lectures at an undisclosed figure, Dorothy Thompson (Mrs. Sinclair Lewis) last week had turned down 700 invitations to speak, at fees ranging up to $1,000 per lecture.