No. IRVING WALLACE: THE MAKING OF A BESTSELLER W. John Leverence A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY -June 1974 Approved by Doctoral Committee (/3. Advisor Department of English Graduate School Representative &-S-7} Janus ia£\^ BOWLING GREEK STATE UNWERSiW LIBRARY il ABSTRACT Having served as a newspaperman, a foreign correspondent during World War II, a major participant in the famous "Why We Fight Series" for the Army Signal Corps, a magazine writer, a studio contract writer, and a novelist, Irving Wallace's career is a number of careers in amal­ gam. During any stage of his life as a professional writer he could be considered a paradigm by which one could learn of the problems and pos­ sibilities of that area of professional writing. How he achieved his position as one of the world's most successful writers is a remarkable story, not only of Irving Wallace, but of the structures of success and failure in the day-to-day world of American commercial writers. In late January, 1973, Irving Wallace began depositing manuscripts, letters and ephemera in the archives of The Center For The Study of Popular Culture, Bowling Green University. This study is based upon those materials and further information provided this researcher by Mr. Wallace. This study concluded that the novels of Irving Wallace are the­ matic and structural extensions of his careers in journalism and film writing. The craft and discipline of journalism and film writing served him well in his apprenticeship as a writer, but were finally restrictive to him because of their commercial nature. Wallace's multiple careers in professional writing exemplify the conflicts between the business and creative aspects of commercial writing. Because the popular writer is financially dependent on editors, publishers, pro­ ducers and other brokers of his work, he is forced to make concessions to their business decisions which, in many cases,, have little reference to the artistic integrity of that work.; Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research and writing of this dissertation were given in­ valuable aid by the patient and expert counsel of Ray B. Browne, James Harner and Robert Meyers. Without the full cooperation of Irving Wallace this study would be less complete and more wanting of the details which comprise his life and career. My fondest thanks go to Margaret, Julie and India, three good companions and one help­ ful family. John Leverence Bowling Green February, 1974 IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................... v' IRVING WALLACE: THE MAKING OF A BESTSELLER..................... 1 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................... 115 V INTRODUCTION In late January, 1973, Irving Wallace began depositing manuscripts, letters and various ephemera in the archives of The Center For The Study of Popular Culture. Professors Ray Browne and James Harner en­ couraged me to consider the extensive primary research materials Wallace was steadily donating as a research base for my dissertation. I ac­ quainted myself with the Wallace collection by cataloging it, and I soon began to see the possibilities of doing a bibliographic biography of Mr. Wallace. By bibliographic biography I mean a biography which primarily charts the writing and publishing aspects of the author's life. I asked Mr. Wallace if he would cooperate with the project by supplying more papers and documents, and he kindly agreedit. The Center’s collection of biographical and bibliographic data on Mr. Wallace now measures some thirty-five linear feet. I have had at my research disposal typescripts of all his novels, hundreds of editorial letters, Mr. Wallace's private journals, workcharts, income tax records, his manuscripts (or records of them) from the thirty years he wrote for magazines and film studios, and hundreds of bibliographic- biographic ephemera that have proved invaluable in preparing this study. Moreover, Mr. Wallace has advised me personally in scores of telephone conversations and personal letters. An exact description of the mate­ rials that formed the basis of this dissertation can be found in the bibliography. No one has ever done this type of study on Mr. Wallace, perhaps largely because he is a popular writer of low aesthetic estimate in the VI academy. My dissertation is not concerned with his literary merits, but with his personal and professional development as a popular writer in America. Having worked as a newspaperman, a foreign correspondent during World War II, a major participant in.the Army Signal Corps’ "Why We Fight Series,'.' as a magazine writer, a studio contract writer and a novelist, Mr. Wallace's career is a number of careers in amalgam. During any stage of his professional work he could be considered a paradigm by which one could learn of the problems and possibilities of that particular area of commercial writing. How he achieved his posi­ tion as one of the world's most financially successful authors is a remarkable story, not only of Irving Wallace, but also of the structures of success and failure in the day-to-day world of American writers whose craft is their living. This study seeks to demonstrate that the novels of Irving Wallace are thematic and structural extensions of his careers in journalism and film writing. The craft and discipline of those careers served him well in his apprenticeship as a writer, but were finally restrictive to him because of their commercial demands. Wallace's multiple careers in professional writing exemplify the conflicts between the business and creative aspects of commercial writing. Because the popular writer is financially dependent on editors, publishers, producers and other brokers of his work, he is forced to make concessions to their business decisions which, in many instances, have little reference to his product as an integrated work of art. The notion that the hungry writer working in a garret is more artistically independent than the wealthy writer laboring in West Los Angeles is, at least in the case of Irving Wallace, Vil patently false. Not until he achieved financial independence and artistic control over his works was Wallace really free to do the work he wanted to do. Then and only then did he escape the restrictive, often absurd demands of commercial writing. 1 If successful novelists had a formula, they would not have failures, and I know of no novelist who has not had a failure at one time or another. —Irving Wallace, The Sunday Gentleman.1 What does Irving Wallace know of failure? What does any novelist who has sold ninety-two million books and is one of the five most widely read writers of his time know but success? He is the one who made a quarter of a million dollars in thirteen months from The Chap­ man Report. He is the one who sold The Prize to the movies for another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And certainly he is the one whose Midas Touch has brought him six figures on a single paperback reprint sale.^ This is what he says: "Money is equated with not being honest. But the real villain is being hungry. Because you’ll write anything—■ and I've been on that side of the street. Neither part of the story tells the whole tale. The success and the money mean nothing without the poverty and desperation of the thirty years that preceded his first success, The Chapman Report of I960. And the long decades of frustration need their complement in the years after Chapman. Otherwise, like a caricature, the lines of any Wallace profile are diminished or intensified through pure editorial bias. This profile of Irving Wallace, based on private letters, journals, unpublished manuscripts, personal recollections, and other sources never before available to a researcher, is an attempt to make more whole and more objectively visible this man and his extraordinary career. It is neither definitive nor is it blessed with the perspective of time. 2 Rather, it is a look at people, events and ideas that have defined his character and his work. Its purpose is not to be prescriptive of attitudes about Wallace, but to be descriptive of the facts of his life and the fiction of his novels. And so the profile 'must extend as far forward as the books he has not written but wants to write, and go back into the past, even to January of 1916, to the sixth month of Bessie Wallace’s first preg­ nancy.^ She fell off a chair and for almost three days there was no life felt inside her. The doctor told her the pregnancy had ended. But on the third day Bessie knew he was wrong. On Purim Sunday, March 19, 1916, she gave birth to a pound son who was named Irving, after his maternal grandfather, a bookkeeper and Talmudic scholar of Narevka, Russia. Bessie had emigrated to the United States in 1907. She was seventeen years old when she accompanied her brother Bernard and her sister Gertrude on a journey from Narevka to the port of Bremen. There, for the first time in my life, I saw electric lights. It was the most modern city in the world, and after it, even the cities in America were dis­ appointments. The museum there was wonderful. There were mummies, thousands of years old, made to breathe by machinery. I was never so frightened. A fourteen day crossing in third class was followed by a train ride to Chicago; Bessie Liss was there reunited with her older sister, Yetta. At first they shared a four room apartment. Then, after Bessie found a job as one of four hundred women in the Cable Corset Company, where she was paid $6 a week, she took a private room (with board) for $5 a month.