DETAILS

Title: Duke Herring (1931)

Authors:

Bodenheim, Maxwell

Year: 1931

Publisher: Horace Liveright, Inc.

Pagination: 242

Dimensions: 7.75 x 5.25

Illustrations: No

City: New York

Document Type: Book

Notes:

"Duke Herring" is Bodenheim's response to Hecht's caricature of Bodenheim in "Count Bruga." Duke Herring is Ben Hecht. Inside dustjacket reads: Here is another of Bodenheim's unfailingly entertaining novels, the story of a writer who dedicated himself to the tasks of ridiculing and distorting other men and women, in printed and spoken words, while he himself was utterly blind to the astounding frustrations and deceits of which he was made. Duke Herring's religion is a constant effort to disembowel other people while he shields his own skin with every variety of posturing, insolence, condescension and falsehood. Rejected by almost all women, he concocts a fable in which they are slaves whom he disdains to patronize. Distrusted by most men, he lulls their suspicions with voluble expressions of camraderie and then secretly maligns them. In his literary work, he embarks upon every species of commercial, tongue-in-the-check [sic] scribbling and then soothes his conscience with occasional intellectual efforts. His adventures make a tale filled with action, chortles, sexual rebuffs and satirical exposures. As a character study of an inventive sadist, it is remarkable. As a drama and dissection of an almost inhuman egomaniac who is forced to gulp a dose of his own medicine, it is brisk, bitter and engrossing reading.