Joyce james

1933 · 19197 — New York: The Macaulay Company. Fair. c.1933. First Edition. Hardcover. no dust jacket well-worn book soiling to covers and page edges ffep removed with consequent cracking to front hinge second ffep with blurb ripped almost in half and nearly detached; basically a reading copy only. A very scarce book the only novel "written" by Ms. Joyce following her 1930 quasi-memoir "Men Marriage and Me" reportedly ghostwritten by Wallace Thurman the most notorious man-chaser of her day. Clearly designed as a fictional riff on her own romantical hijinks the book tells a tale of "rich American wives who become bored with husbands who have learned nothing more than to pay their bills" and who attempt to alleviate their ennui by decamping for Paris and the Riviera to experience "the cynical degenerate life of European pleasure capitals with their dangerous traps for American woman." Well like they say: write what you know. The anonymous reviewer for the New York Times felt that the book began "on an almost painfully moralistic plane" before descending to "broad burlesque" which the critic felt was preferable: "None of the book can be taken seriously but it is much easier to read when the author herself ceases to take it seriously." Peggy's countless affairs and multiple and often profitable marriages provided rich fodder for columnists comedians and songwriters she was referenced in songs by Rodgers & Hart and Cole Porter for well over a decade until her celebrity began to fade in the mid-1930s. The year this book was published in fact might represent the apex of her career as she also appeared as herself in the Paramount film INTERNATIONAL HOUSE the last of her handful of movie appearances serving primarily as the butt of some of the film's wisecracks delivered by W.C. Fields and others. . The Macaulay Company hardcover books