At the New York Tribune offices, West 40th Street, Manhattan, in the summer of 1920…

…FPA [Franklin Pierce Adams, 40] is working on his column, The Conning Tower. Known as ‘the comma hunter of Park Row,’ FPA has been amazed at all the errors he has found in this year’s hit novel, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 25, and he has been highlighting them regularly in his column since the book first came out in March.

Who edited this mess?! Scribners is usually known for more professional output.

FPA’s lunch buddy from the Algonquin Hotel, New York World columnist Heywood Broun, 33, has joined the party. Between the two of them they are turning the search for mistakes into a scavenger hunt for their Manhattan readers.

Fitzgerald’s debut novel from Scribners, with all the mistakes

Again this year, we’ll be telling stories about these groups of ‘such friends,’ during and after their times together.

Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap. Look for our upcoming walking tour about the Paris ‘such friends.’

At the Lyric Theatre in the West 40s, Manhattan, November, 1925…

 

…playwright George S Kaufman, about to turn 36, thinks the new song for the musical, The Cocoanuts, he is writing with Morry Ryskind, just turned 30, is silly.

He has brought in Ryskind to help him tame the stars, the Marx Brothers. They are constantly late for rehearsal, and Kaufman has always found them to be totally unpredictable. Groucho, 35, has made it clear that he doesn’t like Kaufman’s wife, Bea, 31, and Chico, 38, is a disgusting compulsive gambler. Kaufman himself is a regular at his Round Table friends’ Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club poker game, but he certainly isn’t addicted to it like Chico.

Now the composer, Irving Berlin, 37, who Kaufman has enjoyed working with in the past, has brought them this song. Kaufman does not want to include it.

I’ll be loving you, always.’

How stupid is that for an opening line? No one is going to believe that lyric, thinks Kaufman. You might as well say,

I’ll be loving you, Thursday…’

The song is out.

Chico, Groucho, and Harpo Marx in The Cocoanuts

Again this year, we’ll be telling stories about these groups of ‘such friends,’ during and after their times together.

Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap. Look for our upcoming walking tour about the Paris ‘such friends.’