Word: nathanity
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Mencken and Nathan and God Yes, probably, possibly...
Stanley Meets Livingstone. Nathan made his debut in the sticks; he was born in Fort Wayne, Ind. in 1882. At eleven, he was already scribbling playlets for the neighborhood children to act out in the Nathan barn. In his late teens, he went east to Cornell, where he edited the school daily, won a gold medal for fencing, received his B.A. in 1904. He topped off his education with a year at the University of Bologna. His uncle, Frederic Nirdlinger. a well-known critic and playwright, got him his first job of cub reporter and third-string drama critic...
...foster such notables as James Joyce, Aldous Huxley. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser and Eugene O'Neill. They also became trademarks of the "lost generation" along with hot jazz, bobbed hair and the hip flask. Mencken lashed out at the "booboisie" with a bull whip; the debonair Nathan was content to use a swizzle stick. In the eyes of the proper-minded, the two iconoclasts were unholy terrors. A couplet of those days went...
Mercury associate, Charles Angoff, has reached back over 34 years, dusted off Nathan's personal Five-Foot Shelf of writings (some 39 books) and pieced together a Nathan sampler. Sipped, The World of George Jean Nathan is a delight; swallowed, it leaves a faintly rusty taste on the palate, like water too long in the taps. With malice toward some, Nathan has his say on every subject under his sun. Examples...
What's good about the theater today? "Its honesty," says Nathan between chain-smoking puffs. "In the earlier days, the playwrights couldn't tell the whole truth about people and characters." What's bad about it? "For one thing, the new producers. In the last few years young men have come on the scene who want to be producers. They know nothing so they put on trash. The cry is 'young blood.' Bosh, young blood has corrupted more fine things in this world. It needs to get just a bit stale." About as stale, perhaps...