Books in Brief: Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time

Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time, by Marion K. Sanders (Houghton, 428 pp., $10). The name Dorothy Thompson now rings a faint and far-off bell, but in her heyday, the Thirties and early Forties, she was the “First Lady of American Journalism” and her voice was broadcast loud and clear into millions of American homes. As columnist and radio personality she helped rouse an isolationist-minded country against the Nazis. And although her critics labeled her shrill and hysterical, she was one of the first journalists to perceive the plight of European Jewry. This biography thoroughly documents a checkered career. And while the author establishes Miss Thompson as a woman of sprightly talent, she also acknowledges some of the more unlovely traits. Dorothy Thompson could, for instance, be enormously dishonest. While glorifying motherhood she was almost criminally negligent with her own son. She called for wartime thrift but indulged her own considerable appetite for luxury. And although she seemed to see herself as the country’s moral keeper, she often led an unabashedly immoral life. Nor is there ever a hint that she recognized the double standard here; rather, she seemed to believe the standards she publicly espoused simply didn’t apply to her. She had, in fact, an enormous ego. But she becomes a more sympathetic figure as the wife of Sinclair Lewis. Her honeymoon diary records, “It was a nice day. Hal [Lewis] didn’t lose his temper with me once.” And a few months later: “Bad temper is the most destructive of human faults. It supplants trust with fear; it poisons love; it breeds aversion or indifference; it sterilizes emotion.” Yet the marriage lasted for 14 years, and after a painful divorce, her journalistic reputation continued to grow. But after the war her career plummeted. In a quirky and disastrously unpopular move, she supported the Palestinians over the Zionists and was never able to regain her foothold. Newspapers dropped her column, her public began to desert her. Her biography shows her to be a woman whose talents depended upon enormous energy and boldness. She died in 1960, lonely and largely forgotten. The story serves to remind us that even the brightest talent can wane.

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Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time, by Marion K. Sanders (Houghton, 428 pp., $10). The name Dorothy Thompson now rings a faint and far-off bell, but in her heyday, the Thirties and early Forties, she was the “First Lady of American Journalism” and her voice was broadcast loud and clear into millions of American homes. As columnist and radio personality she helped rouse an isolationist-minded country against the Nazis. And although her critics labeled her shrill and hysterical, she was one of the first journalists to perceive the plight of European Jewry. This biography thoroughly documents a checkered career. And while the author establishes Miss Thompson as a woman of sprightly talent, she also acknowledges some of the more unlovely traits. Dorothy Thompson could, for instance, be enormously dishonest. While glorifying motherhood she was almost criminally negligent with her own son. She called for wartime thrift but indulged her own considerable appetite for luxury. And although she seemed to see herself as the country’s moral keeper, she often led an unabashedly immoral life. Nor is there ever a hint that she recognized the double standard here; rather, she seemed to believe the standards she publicly espoused simply didn’t apply to her. She had, in fact, an enormous ego. But she becomes a more sympathetic figure as the wife of Sinclair Lewis. Her honeymoon diary records, “It was a nice day. Hal [Lewis] didn’t lose his temper with me once.” And a few months later: “Bad temper is the most destructive of human faults. It supplants trust with fear; it poisons love; it breeds aversion or indifference; it sterilizes emotion.” Yet the marriage lasted for 14 years, and after a painful divorce, her journalistic reputation continued to grow. But after the war her career plummeted. In a quirky and disastrously unpopular move, she supported the Palestinians over the Zionists and was never able to regain her foothold. Newspapers dropped her column, her public began to desert her. Her biography shows her to be a woman whose talents depended upon enormous energy and boldness. She died in 1960, lonely and largely forgotten. The story serves to remind us that even the brightest talent can wane.