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Strictly stag, Sir Max's party was a literary event to which invitations were as rare and precious as a half-pound of wartime beefsteak. Novelist Charles Morgan (The Fountain) and Poet T. S. Eliot begged so hard to come that they were finally admitted as "gate crashers." George Bernard Shaw declined with thanks, cracked: "I suffered too much from the celebrations at my own 70th birthday 16 years ago to make myself a party to the same outrage at the expense of an old friend who has never done me any harm."
Players' Club artistes entertained Sir Max with nostalgic Victorian music-hall ballads. Hit of the evening was The Ballad of Sam Hall, which ends: "An' I'll see you all in 'ell, an' I 'opes you frizzle well—damn your eyes."
Then Dramatic Critic Alan Dent, who organized the party, presented Sir Max with 57 bottles of old wines. Sir Max blinked happily, remembered his neighbors in Abinger, the Surrey village where he now lives, said: "What will the villagers think now of old Gaffer Beerbohm?"
Author Ormsbee's battlefield scenes are just as tough. His no man's land is awash with blood. His hospital interludes are richly orgiastic. Lying in his hospital bed, Hero Abner hears "the nurses being chased through the halls, laughing and screaming."
Some readers may wonder whether Abner's conduct can properly be described as The Sound of an American. World-Telegram Reviewer Harry Hansen said that the book "pounds home that you can't write a decent novel when you are trying to outdo your competitors in vulgarity. The only sound of an American that I could discern . . . was the razzberry."