I re-read J. P. Marquand's H. M. Pulham, Esquire, which was published in 1940 and was still widely read during the Fifties. It's disappointing that the new novel repeats so much of The Late George Apley. Pulman is a mock autobiography, and once again Marquand satirizes social norms by using the device of the dim narrator (in this case Harry himself). Pulham is an upper-class Bostonian who should have married the enterprising and highly sexual Marvin (sic) Myles (played by Hedy Lamarr!!! in the King Vidor film version) but instead finds himself fastened to a whiny woman of his own set. He's stuck in an unrewarding job, his children dislike him, and he clings so blindly to respectability that he cannot see that dear Kay is sleeping with his best friend. It couldn't happen because "Bill King is a gentleman." There's much about the suffocating miasma of Boston society, but also a pointed critique of the only alternative that's offered -- the hollow world of New York advertising. It's a post WWI novel, and Harry served in combat, but he can't seem to leverage the lessons of the war to free him from Bostonianism.
Re-reading brought to mind that the buzzword of the 1950s was "conformity." It was an age of mass-produced housing, the routinizing of jobs, and of the ascent of mass advertising. So far, the two Marquand novels that I have read have both taken conformity and the failed resistance to conformity as theme. Next up: Point of No Return. I'm curious to discover whether Marquand repeats himself again or whether he tackles other aspects of American culture. He certainly knows how to tell a story.
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