Books: Archaeology of The Well Born

MARQUAND: AN AMERICAN LIFE by Millicent Bell

Atlantic-Little, Brown; 537 pages; $17.95

Novelist John Phillips Marquand died only two decades ago, but social realities and the American literary scene have changed so thoroughly that Millicent Bell's thoughtful biography has become a work of archaeology. Marquand was a master of the literary flashback, now a wholly owned subsidiary of cinema, and a satirist of the rich, who have been depleted by taxes and supplanted by rock promoters and multinational executives.

He came from a family of decayed gentry whose life centered on a summer home in Newburyport, Mass. His father was a charming scapegrace, only occasionally employed. When Marquand entered Harvard in 1911, it was on a scholarship, although he was an indifferent scholar. He was a public high school boy, ignored by the "St. Grottlesex" preppies.

The humiliation stung him, and it seems no accident that when he married, into the wealthy and socially prominent Sedgwick family of Stockbridge, Mass., he found much to resent among his in-laws. His second wife came from a similar back ground, and neither marriage was successful. By the time' Marquand wrote The Late George Apley and H.M. Pulham, Esquire, he had earned his wry attitude to ward the well born.

Like John O'Hara, he was to yearn vainly for high literary honors (though he won a Pulitzer for Apley). But to some extent he was realistic about his gifts and limitations. Early on, Marquand discovered that he had a knack for writing Saturday Evening Post stories. These he tailored to the requirements of Editor George Horace Lorimer, grafting on happy endings when needed and making sure that there was plenty of boy-girl interest. He stayed clear of the literary world and regarded himself simply as an entertainer. When he encountered critical snobbery, as he began to break free of the golden chains of the magazines, he took to posing, says Biographer Bell, as an unenlightened middle brow. After meeting John Dos Passes in the 1950s, he reported that he was "a nice guy but hard for me to talk to, due to my mental limitations."

Marquand's self-deprecation seems only partly justified. If he had written nothing but his half a dozen best books, and none of his Post stories, he might have been spared a few swipes from reviewers, but his reputation now would not be much different, and his estate would have been far smaller. He wrote one superb and unimprovable book, Apley, several good ones (So Little Time, Point of No Return) and quite a few that were glib, unimportant, and exceedingly popular. He never had to teach freshman English or write book reviews, and he lived where he pleased. When he was middle-aged and famous, the Book-of-the-Month Club appointed him to its panel of judges, and that seems to have been exactly where he belonged.

—John Skow