You see, this is one of the reasons that book groups, online or otherwise, are really useful. I would never have thought have reading this short novel without being prompted by Henry Eliot's read-along...

By Anita Loos (1889-1981), it was first published in serial form in the spring and summer of 1925 -- a full century ago, then -- and it's a wonderful reflection of that crazy era. The subtitle is The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady, and the Project Gutenberg edition I read is "intimately illustrated by Ralph Barton" (see the samples below). The vocabulary here is indicative of the coy style. Quite what our heroine, Lorelei, does for a living is never explicitly spelled out. But the language offers plenty of scope for educated guesses.



Loos was briefly an actor, and then a playwright and screenwriter, with several hit films to her name. As well as this novel and its sequel (But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes), she wrote a couple of other fictional works, plus some non-fiction titles and a couple of memoirs. She knew many of the famous people of her day (including Gertrude Stein, a detail of whose grave forms the picture at the top).

According to Loos's preface to the 1963 edition of Blondes, the idea for the book came to her when she was travelling by train from New York to Los Angeles with Douglas Fairbanks and his entourage: "Among us was a blonde who was being imported to Hollywood to be Doug’s leading lady in his forthcoming picture. Now this girl, although she towered above me (I weighed about ninety pounds) and was of rather a hearty type, was being waited on, catered to and cajoled by the entire male assemblage. If she happened to drop the novel she was reading, several men jumped to retrieve it; whereas I was allowed to lug heavy suitcases from their racks while men sat about and failed to note my efforts... She was a natural blonde and I was a brunette." So Loos wrote her story, and showed it to journalist and critic H.L. Mencken, who himself had a predilection for blondes. Mencken said Harper's Bazaar would be the ideal home for this send-up of contemporary mores, and sure enough, Loos's story was a major hit, with the magazine's editor-in-chief later testifying to sharply increased advertising revenue as newsstand sales doubled and then tripled.

Light as a bubble it may be, but there's a core of steel in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and it "brought Loos praise from literary luminaries such as Aldous Huxley ('I was enraptured by the book'), William Faulkner ('I wish I had thought of Dorothy first'), James Joyce (who had been 'reclining on a sofa and reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for three whole days'), and Edith Wharton (who said to Frank Crowninshield, 'I am just reading the Great American novel (at last!) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and I want to know if there are -- or will be -- others, and if you know the funny woman, who must be a genius.'"

When Blondes appeared in book form, says Robert McCrum, it sold out at once, and a second edition sailed off the shelves almost as quickly. It eventually ran to more than 80 editions, and was translated into 14 languages. For McCrum, it comes in at No. 49 on the list of 100 best novels. And this blogger has it down as "an infinitely better book than The Great Gatsby" (published the same year).

The novel takes the form of a diary written by Lorelei, from Little Rock, Arkansas. The blank book that she fills in every day is given to her by a gentleman friend (Lorelei has a succession of these, but this one, Gus Eisman, aka the Button King, has the financial staying power to make him a longstanding feature of the story). He's a dull man, our Gus, and he likes to "educate" her (an early example of the mansplainer, perhaps). But "he always has something quite interesting to talk about, as for instants the last time he was here he presented me with quite a beautiful emerald bracelet".

There are a couple of indicative things in that quoted sentence. Firstly, Lorelei hasn't had much opportunity for a formal education, and her spelling and grammar are not corrected (so we hear about the Eyefull Tower in Paris and the Half Brow house in Munich, for example). She's so utterly unabashed by this, though, that you don't feel you're laughing at her, but rather smiling in sympathy as she bats on regardless. Secondly, we learn early on that Lorelei is adept at turning her beauty and insouciant charm into solid wealth. She might appear dumb -- indeed this act is her best asset -- but she's actually very smart. She's a bit disappointed, for example, with Gus's birthday present, and punishes him with a headache. But he comes back with "a very very beautiful bracelet of square cut diamonds so I was quite cheered up". (By way of explanation, he tells her that business is bad, "and the button profession was full of bolshevicks who make nothing but trouble".) Thirdly, we realize early on that there are plenty of wry laughs, as the throw-away lines land one after the other.

It's true, though, that our heroine works hard for her bankable trinkets. Gus is a bit controlling (she had some cinema work in the past, but he makes her give it up). A friend-on-the-side, author Gerry, also has a stock of traditional ideas: "Gerry does not like a girl to be nothing else but a doll, but he likes her to bring in her husband's slippers every evening and make him forget what he has gone through." Gerry, too, tries to dictate Lorelei's behaviour. He doesn't want her to spend time with playwright Sam, for example, because he "always insists on telling riskay stories". (Generally, all this cultural stuff is a bit too much for our heroine. Of one book she says, "It was quite amuseing in spots because it was really quite riskay but the spots were not so close together." When she's given Conrad's Lord Jim, she asks her maid to read it, and tell her the story.) Gerry also wants her to drop Gus: "Gerry said it made him cringe to think of a sweet girl like I having a friendship with Mr Eisman." But Gus is offering a trip to Europe for Lorelei and her friend Dorothy, so that seems by far the better bet for the moment.


"He sent me a set of books by a gentleman called Mr. Conrad. They all seem to be about ocean travel"


"So I am sailing for France and London on Tuesday and taking Dorothy with me and Mr. Eisman will see us there later"

There have been much darker things in Lorelei's past, which are humorously alluded to, but still offer insight into the pitfalls awaiting the "professional lady". McCrum comments: "Loos joked that the plot of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was 'almost as gloomy' as a Dostoevsky novel." And some really bad stuff went down at one point, involving a Mr Jennings ("not the kind of a gentleman that a young girl is safe with"), a revolver, and a trial.

Dorothy is a wonderful foil for Lorelei. Dorothy regularly falls in love with unsuitable (ie poor) young men, whereas Lorelei is very hard-headed and practical in this respect; but Dorothy is wonderfully acerbic, and gets some of the best lines.

On her travels, Lorelei meets (of course) many potential and actual suitors, but she also gets involved in a bit of espionage, dances with the Prince of Wales, acquires (very controversially) a diamond tiara, and shops (lots). And she is introduced to "Dr Froyd" in Vienna, who "seemed very very intreeged at a girl who always seemed to do everything she wanted to do".


"The steward said he knew as soon as he saw Dorothy and I that he would have quite a heavy run on vases"


"Dr. Froyd seemed to think that I was quite a famous case"

Most significantly, she meets Henry Spoffard. Sanctimoniously "Prespyterian", he "spends all of his time looking at things that spoil other people's morals". But he's wealthy, and therefore interesting. Lorelei wins him over with a sob story (and Henry "said I seemed to remind him quite a lot of a girl who got quite a write-up in the bible who was called Magdellen"). And she wins over his mother. Eventually Henry proposes. Lorelei is not sure, though, and we get an insight into her calculations: "Because Henry is the kind of a gentleman who gets on a girls nerves quite a lot and when a gentleman has nothing else to do but get on a girls nerves, there really seems to be a limit to almost everything. Because when a gentleman has a business, he has an office and he has to be there, but when a gentlemans business is only looking into other peoples business, a gentleman is always on the verge of coming in and out of the house. And a girl could not really say that her time was her own. And when Henry was not in and out of the house, his mother would always be in and out of the house because she seems to think that I am so full of nothing but sunshine. So it is quite a problem and I seem to be in quite a quarandary, because it might really be better if Henry should happen to decide that he should not get married, and he should change his mind, and desert a girl, and then it would only be right if a girl should sue him for a breach of promise."

Dorothy, meanwhile, "says the only thing she could stand being to Henry, would be to be his widow at the age of 18". Lorelei, having gone on to charm Henry's ancient father, as she charms everyone, does briefly wonder whether it would be better to marry HIM, as he's so much closer to popping his clogs.

There is a happy ending, of sorts, whereby Lorelei contrives to follow up an opportunity in the movies with an interesting young man called Gilbertson Montrose, while marrying Henry and persuading him to bankroll Montrose's film.

Everyone seems content with this arrangement: "It really seems as if everyone I know has never been so happy in their lives." So it's time for Lorelei to say goodbye to the diary, "feeling that, after all, everything always turns out for the best".

***

Quotable quotes:

-- "Gentleman always seem to remember blondes."
-- "When a girl has a lot of fate in her life it is sure to keep on happening."
-- "I am beginning to think that family life is only fit for those who can stand it."


And the really famous one: "Kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond bracelet lasts forever"

***

It may seem strange to read a proto-feminist message into this frothy little work. But Lorelei is a very determined and resourceful young woman, who refuses to be intimidated, whether by aristocrats, literary figures, or courts of law. She's a good businesswoman, who knows very well that what she has to offer won't last for ever, and needs to be converted into something tangible as soon as possible. Rebecca Lampe quotes the view that the Lorelei figure is employed by Loos to "subvert two traditionally negative female stereotypes, the 'kept woman' and the 'dumb blonde,' to construct a female type who knows and gets what she wants". Her study concludes: "It is clear that Lorelei is a clever woman with bodily agency who uses men’s objectification of her to further the social station and opportunities of herself and others."

It's definitely an interesting window on the age. We meet a series of poverty-stricken British aristocrats trying to flog off their valuables; all Lorelei's gentlemen friends seem to be of a certain age; and Gus is going to Europe to visit his starving relations (who all turn out to be overweight, which wouldn't surprise us now, of course, since we're regularly assured that you can't trust Europeans). We're also presented very clearly with the double standard of the prohibition era and of the censorship fraternity.

All in all, a most entertaining and instructive little satire.