He's not much read nowadays, and it's hardly surprising. For what Arlen gave his readers was the illusion of reading about fashionable people leading ‘racy’ lives, all evoked in a language of baroque ornamentation - a winning formula that made him a millionaire, at least until taste started to move away from him in the 1930s. Still, Arlen interests me because he had all manner of connections to other people whose reputations have held up better than his own. My forthcoming book Encounters with Michael Arlen will chart some of those relationships. Who knows? We may find familiar figures emerging in unfamiliar light.
(Click on photos to enlarge)
A chronicle in wonderful images--lovely.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Harry! Until I posted that newspaper article about Atalanta and the golden balls I'd completely forgotten the claim that Arlen was pursuing Coco Chanel in Paris in the Twenties. Yet another myth, I think. Chanel was the mistress of 'Bendor', the Duke of Westminster, at the time and Lucien Lelong, mentioned as Arlen's supposed marriage rival, married a Russian princess in 1927.
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