The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94186 Message #1848312
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
02-Oct-06 - 11:18 AM
Thread Name: Poetry: Edgar A. Guest
Subject: RE: Poetry: Edgar A. Guest
Sinclair Lewis took some wonderful digs at him in his novel Babbitt. I've been rereading it lately, and the type is crystal clear, in this description (I looked for a bit from the dinner party chapter where he is introduced. His name is "Cholmondeley," pronounced "Chumley" and through the novel he's referred to as "Chum Frink."
I picked this up at Bartleby, it's in the public domain (and it is a wonderful novel).
Babbitt
But, naturally, the most distinguished of all was T. Cholmondeley Frink, who was not only the author of "Poemulations," which, syndicated daily in sixty-seven leading newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the world, but also an optimistic lecturer and the creator of "Ads that Add." Despite the searching philosophy and high morality of his verses, they were humorous and easily understood by any child of twelve; and it added a neat air of pleasantry to them that they were set not as verse but as prose. Mr. Frink was known from Coast to Coast as "Chum."
This is a chunk of paragraph 73.
SRS