Harold Bell Wright Turns out Another Novel
The Story. The Canon of Gold was the meeting place of one of the most oddly assorted groups of characters in all fictional Arizona. There the two obtrusively quaint old "pardners," Thad Grove and Bob Hill, kept house with their adopted child, Marta Hillgrove, found in somebody or other's cabbage-patch in the past, and at the time the story opens just budding into radiant womanhood. There also lived the foul Lizard, Villain Number One —and Saint Jimmy, who was just Tiny Tim grown up and wild about doing good to everybody. There also came Hugh Edwards—man of mystery—fleeing from the shadow of a crime—and, of course, Sonora Jack, the outlaw, dropped in occasionally—and Natachee, a philosophic Indian, was always monologuing his way about the crags—in fact, now and then, the good old canon got so cluttered up with characters there wasn't room enough left to swing a mountain lion in.
Marta and Edwards fell in love. And Sonora Jack and the Lizard did their best to raise H—1—but, H—1, what could they do against the forces of Virtue? The mysteries of Marta's parentage and Hugh's suspected crime were all wiped up—the Mine with the Iron Door discovered — Natachee had an opportunity for several symbolic orations—and "in the blue depth of the sky a wheeling eagle screamed . . . Natachee . . . smiled." So did Mr. Wright. Also D. Appleton and Co. Likewise, every bookseller and train-news-agent in these United States when they heard the good news, for here, once more, was that rara avis, a novel that sells itself.
The author knows the country of which he Wrights. It is to be presumed that he knows the people also. Taking all of which into account it is really extraordinary that he should so completely evade transferring any impression of reality to the reader. If it were not for the picture of Mr. Wright among the mesquite on the book-jacket one would be tempted to suppose that he had never been West at all.
The Significance. The novels of Mr. Wright, his publishers state, average a sale of 1,268,000 copies per book. Or perhaps it's 12,680,000. Anyhow, Mr. Wright can justly claim that he is America's favorite author. As a literary phenomenon, he is astounding. Why has he succeeded so vastly? In the first place, he tells a story, and nearly always an old enough one so as not to unduly tax the public brain. His books are clean, his heroines beautiful and virtuous, his villains black as sin. Each of his books contains a moral idea. He writes badly, but directly. He is sincere—he uses his cliches as if no one had used them before. And he is completely and happily impervious to criticism.
The Critics. Practically every critic of importance has, in his time, taken a crack or so at Mr. Wright. With no apparent result except to boost Mr. Wright's sales!