John Phillips Marquand

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John Phillips Marquand (born November 10, 1893 in Wilmington , Delaware , † July 16, 1960 in Newburyport , Massachusetts ) was an American journalist and writer .

Live and act

John Phillips Marquand was the son of an engineer from a Boston patrician family. He was a great-nephew of the writer Margaret Fuller and a cousin of Richard Buckminster Fuller , who achieved fame as the inventor of the "geodesic dome".

Until he was 14 he lived in Rye , New York , then in Newburyport, Massachusetts. After attending Newburyport High School , Marquand received a scholarship to Harvard University . There he studied chemistry against his inclination . During his studies he worked as an editor for Harvard Lampoon . After graduating from university, he turned to journalism .

From 1915 to 1917 Marquand was a reporter for the Boston Evening Transcript . After the First World War, Marquand worked as a copywriter, then became a novelist. In 1922 he published his first novel The Unspeakable Gentleman . Marquand also wrote many short stories and published them in popular magazines and journals. Many of his novels have also been serially published in these magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post , Cosmopolitan , Collier’s and Good Housekeeping .

Marquand was married from 1922 to 1935 to Christina Sedgwick, who came from an aristocratic family. She was the niece of Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick. From this connection come a son and a daughter. From 1936 to 1958 he was married to Adelaide Ferry Hooker. This marriage resulted in two sons and a daughter.

John P. Marquand died of a heart attack on July 16, 1960 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Social and Popular Literature

Marquand's life and works reflect his juxtaposition of conflicting feelings and thoughts about American society and especially the power of the old elites. He was not discouraged even by negative reviews and remained true to his social aspirations. In 1922 he married Christina Sedgwick, the niece of Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick. The Sedgwicks were a prominent family with good social ties, and the Atlantic Monthly was one of the most prestigious magazines in the country. In 1925 Marquand published his first important book, Lord Timothy Dexter , an examination of the life and legend of the eccentric Timothy Dexter (1763-1806).

Marquand was a prolific and successful writer of fictions for various glossy magazines. In the mid-1930s he wrote a number of novels on the problems of New England society. For the first of them, The Late George Apley (Eng. The Blessed Mister Apley ), John Phillips Marquand was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1938 . This slightly satirical novel tells the exact and very detailed portrayal of a Boston aristocrat. This was followed by novels such as Wickford Point (1939), HM Pulham, Esquire (1941) and Point of No Return (1949). The final novel is a satirical account by Harvard anthropologist William Lloyd Warner . Warner tried in his Yankee City study to describe and analyze the manners and customs of Marquands Newburyport. In Marquand's view, this attempt failed miserably.

Before Marquand gained recognition for his serious novels, he had great commercial success with a number of spy novels. He initially published nine amusing, very successful feature pages and crime novels, the title hero of which is a Japanese politician. The first novel, Your Turn, Mr. Moto , appeared in 1935, and the last, Right You Are, Mr. Moto , was published in 1957. The novel series inspired Hollywood to produce eight Mr. Moto films with Peter Lorre in the title role, but these were made very loosely based on the novels.

Marquand also occasionally wrote satirical short stories illustrating the sport. A collection of these stories was published as a book in 1957 under the title Life at Happy Knoll . The stories humorously deal with the social problems of a long-established country club with a new country club nearby.

Social environment and reputation

For all of his ambivalence towards America's elite, Marquand finally managed not to connect with it, but to portray it with its characteristics. He forgave his outrageous upper class classmates who snubbed him in college. He satirically describes these relationships in HM Pulham, Esquire (1941). He has received invitations to the most prestigious clubs in Boston (Tavern, Somerset) and New York (Century Association, University). His second marriage to Adelaide Ferry Hooker brought him to the Rockefeller family. His wife's sister was married to John D. Rockefeller III . Marquand also managed luxury apartments and houses in Newburyport and the Caribbean .

Although his most important works are largely out of print after Marquand's death, his espionage novels continue to be printed. He attacked his contemporary John O'Hara in a moderate tone with the dispute over "honor and inequality in American society". Marquand's financial success and apparent reverence for upper society, which O'Hara was a part of, was enough for science to be ignored. Marquand was ruthless in his disdain for scientists, especially in the novel Point of No Return , he mocked the anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner. At Wickford Point , he mocked a prominent member of Harvard's English Department.

Jonathan Yardley wrote in the Washington Post in 2003 that Marquand's contemporaries found his satires funny and appropriate. That Marquand has almost disappeared from the literary landscape is an unfathomable mystery to him. From 1937 to 1960 Marquand was one of the most popular writers in the country. The critics turned up their noses at Marquand, and they still do today, because of a number of contributions to popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post in his early career .

In 2004 Atlantic Monthly critic Martha Spaulding wrote that Marquand was comparable to Sinclair Lewis and John O'Hara in his day and that his 20th century social portrait in America was comparable to Honoré de Balzac's human comedy . Only the critics rarely took him seriously. During his career, he was annoyed by the lack of recognition of his work and believed that their lack of respect stems from his early success in the glossy magazines.

Marquands summer house

John Marquand bought a small farmhouse on Kent's Island in Newbury , Massachusetts in October 1935 . This house was his home until his death. He and his second wife turned the house into a museum with collections of quality antiques and family heirlooms , including a Gilbert Stuart portrait of a Marquand ancestor and a silver box by Paul Revere .

Shortly before his death, Marquand expressed concern about what would happen to his property in the future. His three children from their second marriage inherited the property, but what if they don't want to use it? His concern was not unfounded. In 1974 his children sold the property to the State of Massachusetts. The state administered the mansion until 1978. The condition of the house deteriorated rapidly as a result of vandalism and the weather. In 1984 the governor of Massachusetts was written to about this issue. The general public was informed of the case through press action. This began a local interest in protecting the Pulitzer Prize-winning home from destruction. Despite a few newspaper articles and an interview with a Boston television station, as well as an interview with the Massachusetts state government, hardly anything positive could be achieved. In 1989, John Marquand's summer home was demolished. When you visit the island today, nothing reminds you of Marquand's house.

Awards

Film adaptations

bibliography

Books from the Mister Moto series and other publications by and about John P. Marquand:

  • Your Turn, Mr. Moto (1935), original title No Hero , alternativ (Great Britain) Mr. Moto Takes a Hand . Originally serially published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1935.
  • Thank You, Mr. Moto (1936), originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
  • Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937), originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
  • Mr. Moto Is So Sorry (1938), originally serially published in 1938 in the Saturday Evening Post.
  • Last Laugh, Mr. Moto (1942), originally published in Collier’s 1941 under the title Mercator Island .
  • Right You Are, Mr. Moto (1957), original title Stopover: Tokyo , alternatively The Last of Mr. Moto . Originally published in series in the Saturday Evening Post in 1956/57 under the title Rendezvous in Tokyo .

more publishments

  • Wickford Point (1939)
  • HM Pulham, Esquire (1941)
  • So Little Time (1943)
  • Point of No Return (1949)
  • Melville Goodwin, USA (1951)
  • Life at Happy Knoll (1957)
  • James Baird: John P. Marquand , in Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction, vol 3, Edited by Frank N. Magill. Pasadena: Salem Press 1988.
  • Paul H. Carlton: John P (hillips) Marquand , in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 102: American Short-Story Writers, 1910–1945, Second Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Bobby Ellen Kimbel, Pennsylvania State University, Ogontz Campus. The Gale Group, 1991, pp. 208-216.
  • C. Hugh Holman: John Phillips Marquand , in American Writers, 1974, 3: 50-73.
  • C. Hugh Holman: John P (hillips) Marquand , in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 9: American Novelists, 1910-1945. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by James J. Martine, Saint Bonaventure University. The Gale Group, 1981, pp. 194-199.
  • John P (hillips) Marquand , in Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2000.
  • Charles Nicol: Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. Moto . Para-doxa 1995, 1: 2, 224-30.
  • Otto Penzler: Mr. Moto , in The Private Lives of Private Eyes, Spies, Crime Fighters, and Other Good Guys, 1977.
  • George J. Rausch: John P. Marquand and Espionage Fiction The Armchair Detective , 1972, V: 194-198.
  • Jon M. Suter: Mr. Moto and the Pulps , Dime-Novel-Roundup. 1994 Dec, 63: 6 (630), 107-16.
  • Why did Mr. Moto Disappear? , Newsweek January 21, 1957, p. 106.
  • Richard Wires: John P. Marquand and Mr. Moto: Spy Adventures and Detective Films . Muncie, Ind: Ball State University, 1990.

The works published in German include:

  • HM Pulham
  • There is no going back
  • Interlude in Tokyo
  • Blessed Mister Apley
  • Thank you very much, Mr. Moto.
  • No pity, Mr. Moto.
  • Well laughed, Mr. Moto.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.biblio.com/author_biographies/2200281/John_P_Marquand.html accessed on July 29, 2009
  2. ^ A b John Phillips Marquand , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 38/1960 of September 12, 1960, in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on August 1, 2009 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  3. ↑ http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/marquand.html accessed July 27, 2009
  4. ↑ a b An address, Fathers, Sons, and Grandsons: John P. Marquand, by Richard E. Welch III, delivered in the Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society, Newburyport, Massachusetts, February 17, 2002
  5. ↑ a b c Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 30, 2009  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.encyclopedia.com
  6. ↑ Washington Post, February 19, 2003 , accessed January 11, 2019
  7. ^ The Atlantic, Volume 293 No 4, May 2004 , accessed July 31, 2009
  8. ^ Marquand: An American Life by Millicent Bell. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1979, page 261 ISBN 0-316-08828-5
  9. ^ Marquand: An American Life by Millicent Bell. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1979, pages 477-478 ISBN 0-316-08828-5
  10. ^ "Newburyport Magazine," Fall 2008 Issue
  11. ^ Members: John P. Marquand. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 12, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Publications by and about John P. Marquand Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 30, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.csupomona.edu
personal data
SURNAME Marquand, John Phillips
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilmington , Delaware
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1960
Place of death Newburyport , Massachusetts