{"id":27634,"date":"2016-02-19T23:20:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T21:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=27634"},"modified":"2016-02-19T23:20:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T21:20:42","slug":"prominent-writers-and-michael-arlen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=27634","title":{"rendered":"Prominent Writers and Michael Arlen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Jirair Tutunjian, <\/strong>Toronto, 13 February 2016<\/p>\n

British-Armenian writer Michael Arlen (Dikran Kuyumjian) made a big splash in the English literary world in the mid-\u201920s with \u201cThe Green Hat\u201d. He was only 27 years-old when he wrote the novel which became his best-known book and was made into a movie starring Greta Garbo. He later moved to Hollywood to become a screen writer. When he died in the \u201860s he was relatively unknown since the publishing world and readers had long ago lost interest in the type of books he wrote.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Arlen had for decades a huge impact on English literature and on writers who later became famous. Among the many who were influenced by Arlen were Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond; John Gunther, foreign correspondent par excellence and author of the \u201cInside—\u201d series of books on politics; Scott Fitzgerald (\u201cThe Great Gatsby\u201d); novelist, travel writer, war correspondent Geoffrey Bocca; and famed British director-producer Michael Powell (\u201cThe Thief of Baghdad\u201d, \u201cThe Blue Narcissus\u201d,\u201cThe Red Shoes<\/em>).<\/p>\n

IAN FLEMING<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFleming was on a roll at the start of 1953 [he had just written Casino<\/em> Royale<\/em>, the first James Bond book]. His marriage was still fresh, he had an infant son and the family had recently moved into a new London home…And, best of all, in James Bond he had found an outlet for both his imagination and his restless ambition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe novelist Michael Arlen had advised him not to hesitate: \u2018write your second book before you see the reviews of the first. Casino Royale<\/em> is good but the reviewers may damn it and take the heart out of you.\u2019 Heeding his word, Fleming completed Live and Let Die<\/em> before its predecessor had even been published.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, in a letter to a friend (Michael Howard) Fleming wrote that while at Eton he had produced a school magazine \u2018containing my first piece of fiction–a shameless crib of Michael Arlien!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Man with the Golden Typewriter\u201d by Fergus Fleming<\/p>\n

Foreign Correspondent and author JOHN GUNTHER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNew York Post<\/em> people columnist Leonard Lyons reported an anecdote that to him summarized John\u2019s personality. It seems that British novelist Michael Arlen, who had been one of John\u2019s inspirations in his university days, had once given John a letter of introduction to the editor of the London Daily<\/em> Express<\/em>. Many years later, Arlen was in New York , where he and John chanced to meet.<\/p>\n

\u201cSay, whatever happened at the Daily Express<\/em>?\u201d Arlen asked.\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t get the job,\u201d John said, seeming oblivious to the fact that by this time he had become one of the world\u2019s best known journalists. It simply never occurred to him that his fame had far outstripped that of Arlen and most of the other literary gods he had once worshipped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cINSIDE…the Biography of John Gunther\u201d by Ken Cuthbertson.<\/p>\n

SCOTT FITZGERALD<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn A Moveable Feast<\/em>, Ernest Hemingway tells of a conversation with Scott Fitzgerald about Michael Arlen.<\/p>\n

\u2018The next day we drove to Paris on a beautiful day up through the Cote d\u2019Or with the air freshly washed and the hills and the fields and the vineyards all new, and Scott was very cheerful and happy and healthy and told me the plots of each and every one of Michael Arlen\u2019s books. Michael Arlen, he said, was the man you had to watch and he I could learn much from him. I said I could not read his books. He said I did not have to. He would tell me plots and describe the characters. He gave me a sort of oral Ph.D thesis on Michael Arlen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBest Seller\u201d by Geoffrey Bocca.<\/p>\n

GEOFFREY BOCCA<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cReading The Green Hat so long after it has faded into the library of books no longer read, one learns how much it affected the other writers of Arlen\u2019s time. The Hispano-Suiza, the Mayfair settings, are all now identified with Noel Coward. The unspeakable Columbine [Iris of The Green Hat<\/em>] occurs again as Daisy in The Great Gatsby<\/em> (1925), Aldous Huxley\u2019s Lucy\u00a0 Tantamount in Point Counter Point<\/em>–also flagrantly Nancy Cunard–and Evelyn Waugh\u2019s Susie in Put Out More Flags<\/em>. Napier Harpenden may well have been the model for Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly in T. S. Eliot\u2019s Cocktail Party.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBest Seller\u201d by Geoffrey Bocca.<\/p>\n

MICHAEL POWELL<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWill Michael Arlen be dining there?\u201d I asked, remembering my gossip columns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect so. He usually is. I remembered that you admired his short stories, Micky, particularly the London ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I answered, thinking that quite a lot of us in London had thought this young Armenian writer, Dikran Kuyumjian, who called himself Michael Arlen, and who brought something quite special to the English novel, would develop into another Dostoevsky. But The Green Hat<\/em>, his best-selling novel that had been made into a film with Greta Garbo, had called him to Hollywood and that had seemed to be that, for apart from Man\u2019s Mortality<\/em>, a pessimistic novel of remarkable power and little commercial success, he had published little else….<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Michael Arlen was dining at Romanoff\u2019s that night and I was introduced to him and told him I considered his novel Man\u2019s Mortality<\/em> a much-neglected book. He agreed with me, but didn\u2019t seem too depressed about it. He was a rather smart-looking man and dining with a smart-looking woman, both of them carefully dressed. I didn\u2019t tell him I was proud to meet the young author of London Venture, Piracy, These Charming People,<\/em> and Young Men in Love<\/em>. But I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael Powell: A Life in Movies\u201d by Michael Powell.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.keghart.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, 13 February 2016 British-Armenian writer Michael Arlen (Dikran Kuyumjian) made a big splash in the English literary world in the mid-\u201920s with \u201cThe Green Hat\u201d. He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27634"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27636,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27634\/revisions\/27636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}