The OK Novelists Today

ARVID SHULENBERGER

Evelyn Waugh once remarked to a sensitive New York Times reporter that the best American novelist of the day was Erle Stanley Gardner. The reporter himself went into a state of literary shock, but readers possessing less refined sensibilities may have found something refreshing or even healthy in Mr. Waugh’s sacrilegious judgment. Refreshing, because there is even today a notion surviving in the world that novels are intended for pleasure, and many readers have derived pleasure from Gardner; healthy, because there is also a belief current that novels ought to exemplify values without strain or self-consciousness—as do Gardner’s yarns about the brave new California world.

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Arvid Shulenberger

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ARVID SHULENBERGER

Evelyn Waugh once remarked to a sensitive New York Times reporter that the best American novelist of the day was Erle Stanley Gardner. The reporter himself went into a state of literary shock, but readers possessing less refined sensibilities may have found something refreshing or even healthy in Mr. Waugh’s sacrilegious judgment. Refreshing, because there is even today a notion surviving in the world that novels are intended for pleasure, and many readers have derived pleasure from Gardner; healthy, because there is also a belief current that novels ought to exemplify values without strain or self-consciousness—as do Gardner’s yarns about the brave new California world.