SOURCE: "Between Times: 19th Century Values in the 20th Century," in The Southern Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, No. 3, Spring, 1986, pp. 49-57.

[In the following essay, Hoover discusses Cobb's shaping values, which she views as being rooted in the American South of the nineteenth century.]

Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944) had access to more of the media of mass culture in America than perhaps any other man of his day. He wrote two novels and more than 300 popular short stories, as well as speeches, jokes, quips, essays and opinion pieces for magazines; for more than ten years he reported daily human interest "news" for New York newspapers; he wrote screenplays and acted in films; he spoke to a national audience in his own radio program; he saw three of his plays produced on Broadway; he entertained "after dinner" to groups ranging from the elite of the business and professional world to Hollywood celebrities, small town Kentucky audiences and local fund-raising groups.

Cobb embodied the mind of the post-Civil War South as it struggled with questions of racial segregation, "Old South" cultural values, and economic and political upheaval. Judge Priest, his major fictional middle-class hero, and Jeff Poindexter, his most enlightened black voice, typified the old and the new South, while both struggled to live "by the rules" in a period when the rules were changing. Cobb's themes and sentiments upheld the traditional values of nineteenth-century life and literature. He maintained old style values of the intrinsic worth of the common man, of a sense of community, of good defeating evil, of care for the downtrodden.

Cobb's estimate of the worth of these values can be seen in a letter he wrote to James Whitcomb Riley in 1914 in response to "kind words" Riley had spoken about Cobb's work to a friend from Paducah, Kentucky, Cobb's home town. Cobb wrote, "I hope you'll believe me when I tell you that I would rather have your good opinion than the good opinion of any writing man in this country. .. . I found in your poems the kind of poems I have loved best .. . the poems that deal with every day people and every day homely things." Cobb once called Riley the "greatest poet of the people that America ever had" (Letter to Landon).

Cobb's narrative style, chronological order, formal structure, correct syntax and emphasis on reality all place him squarely in the nineteenth-century mold. How were the modernists of the early twentieth century different from this mold? How may we characterize the modernist change that occurred in the early twentieth century and locate Cobb in his proper place on either side of that line or straddling it?

Modernist writers, unlike Cobb, exchanged narration for ambiguity, imagery and symbolism (Lodge 3-4). They probed the unconscious, they challenged taboos and in some cases they saw their works repressed. T. S. Eliot argued against the writer's use of his own experiences. Poetry, he said, is made of poetry, and is not necessarily comprehensible, is not a reflection of the poet's life and times, feelings or perceptions. The poet's personality must be rendered extinct and he must become an intermediary or catalyst that aids in the creation of poetry but remains separate from it" (Eliot 7-11). Lionel Trilling, in his essay "On the Modern Element in Modern Literature," finds "the disenchantment of our culture to be a dominant theme in modern literature" (60).

Modernism seemed, to Cobb, to be a flight into chaos, necessitated by the questioning and rejection of old values and styles, with nothing concrete having been devised to replace them. The revolutionary modernists tore away at the structural forms and the underlying moral values at the same time. They claimed that life imitated art, but it seems clear that they and their art were reflecting the crisis of values that afflicted Americans during this period. While writers like Sinclair Lewis exposed the smallness, shallowness and meanness of village life, Cobb clung to his small town as a symbol of continuity.

Cobb expressed vehement opposition to modernist literature in letters, speeches and articles. He described the "young intellectuals" as the "literary bad boys of the East," whose "average age is approximately seventy years." These "self-appointed superior minds," who called business clubs like the Rotary "bourgeois" and "provincial" were his favorite target ("Intellectuals are Target"). In an attack on the "purveyors of superrealism and the deliberately chaotic style," Cobb accused them of being "so busy discovering sex and garbage they have forgotten beauty exists in the world." Cobb found their efforts to be up-to-date pitiful and impossible since "you have to wait until today has crystallized into yesterday before you can describe it accurately." He ridiculed another group of writers, observing that "Chicago woke up one morning and discovered that there were a lot of writers there. Bang! The Chicago School came into being." It was not that they were poor writers, some of them were good at their work, but they were lost in "a maze of words"; they were suffering from "nervous culture." They wrote "propaganda," and, Cobb said, "propaganda is never art" ("Gompers and Cobb").

Cobb deplored the trend of equating smut with sex that he saw developing. He reminded his readers that sex had been around since the beginning of time and that some literary newcomer's "discovery" of it did not really make it new. It was not sex to which he objected because, as he said, "life is full of sex and literature must deal with life" ("Slushy"). It was the presentation of it in its sensationalized and blatantly rebellious form that he found objectionable. Language still considered "improper" had become accepted on the stage and screen where it was considered merely "realism." If a truck driver said the same words in public, he would be arrested for using obscenity since he was not "artistic, but just a poor overworked slob of a vulgarian" (Ladies and Gentlemen 166).

Cobb feared censorship would result from this "superrealism." He acknowledged that perhaps it took such a group as the Legion of Decency to curb the trend toward "excesses" that developed early in the motion picture industry. He saw "no art" in a little boy writing "short and dirty words" on an alley fence, and he saw "no art in smut and filth acted out before a camera and flung upon a screen." The real problem, however, lay in "over-zealous or bigoted prurient-minded censors" (Exit). He blamed censorship on "sensualship." "I believe in free speech," he insisted, "but I don't believe in it being free and easy. As for this notion of censorship, it merely is another expression of the desire to destroy individual liberty by sumptuary legislation which, made fat and greedy by the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment, now would assault our rights again" ("Censorship").

Cobb's opposition to the prohibition amendment brings us to a sense of Irvin Cobb as liberal social critic, the point at which he begins to differ from the conservatism of the nineteenth century. His campaigns against prohibition, against religious bigotry, against oppression of the poor, all set him apart from nineteenth-century moral and social certainty and align him with the spirit of the twentieth century.

If Cobb's views seem to straddle both sides of the intellectual fence, however, his literary style does not, with the single exception of his use of poetic descriptive devices. He remained an adamant "purveyor of the deliberate non-chaotic style," to turn his epithet into a description of himself. He continued to use the narrative form to compose his stories, articles, essays and speeches. He preferred clarity to obscurity and "correct" form to experimentation. Cobb's subject matter reflected his feelings about the life he observed around him; his stories have heroes and villains, good guys and bad guys. His fiction is not made of fiction, but of experience. There is no glossing over of human frailties that typified many nineteenth-century novels, but his characters are not all bad or depressed or disillusioned, either. His villages are populated with those who are satisfied to be there, but we are not asked to believe, therefore, that they are unintelligent, unmotivated, stifled provincials in contrast to those who had the good sense to move.

Cobb's attitudes about social reform may throw him in with the progressives, but he did not write typical "progressive novels" with their naive heroes rising up through the corporate or political structure and finally acquiring enough power to overcome the evils of privilege. Nor were his heroes the beneficiaries of the "lucky accidents" of life, always in the right place at the right time, as in a typical Horatio Alger story.

If Irvin Cobb's criticism of his fellows has any weight, it must relate to his own literary status. What were his credentials as a writer? Contemporary criticism is mixed, but generally favorable. His first book of stories, Back Home, published in 1912, was praised both by H.I.B., a reviewer in the New York Times, and by the London Bookman. The first supported Cobb's notion of showing life in the South "without gilding that romance or adorning it with plumes borrowed from the helmet of Ivanhoe." His success was in "showing southerners as they really are with their weaknesses intact, but with pride and affection." Cobb gave a "true picture of a sadly misrepresented plain folk." From a European perspective, Bookman describes Cobb as a "South American who has gone to live in the North," who has written "unforced and curiously effective" stories, the "freshest things of the kind that have come out of America since Bret Harte wrote his first book." The stories were "clever," and "delightfully, humorously and poignantly human." Blanche Colton Williams in Our Short Story Writers called Judge Priest the best representative southerner ever found in literature, and compared Cobb with O. Henry, in that they both broke away from traditional types and created "real types." Cobb's greatest contribution was in his "interpretation of South to North and of generation to generation" (83). Robert H. Davis, writing in the January 1913 Current Opinion, felt that if Cobb were not an American, his "genius" would be recognized, but that Americans fail to take literature seriously. To Davis, Cobb's attributes were "style, restraint, narration, dialog, wit, subtlety, naturalness, and convincingness of plot" (57). The March 1913 Bookman called Cobb "someone who must be regarded rather seriously." Referring to Davis's lavish praise, The Bookman said that Davis had "probably read, or at least accepted or rejected more fiction," as editor of Munsey 's Magazine, "than any other editor on earth," and so his opinion should count for something ("Concerning"). In a review of the volume The Escape of Mr. Trimm in 1914, the London Bookman called Cobb "proficient in humour and tragedy." It found the "Mr. Trimm" story "haunting in its grimness," and "Occurrence Up a Side Street" to be "worthy of Poe" and "suggestive of Maupassant."

By the 1920s a growing sophistication and a change in literary tastes, at least among critics, began to manifest itself in unfavorable reviews of Cobb's books. The characters Cobb and others had seen as "real" were beginning to seem superficial, and the humorous stories hardly worth a smile. Rather than growing and changing as a writer, Cobb simply sat still and turned out more of the same. H. L. Mencken's criticisms of Cobb's work began innocuously, but grew more sarcastic as time passed. Of Back Home, he said that "one feels that the author knows these people perfectly and what is more, that he loves them well." To Mencken, the result was "an excellent row of portraits, a bit old-fashioned, but altogether attractive" (qtd. in Neuman 98-9). By 1919, however, when Mencken reviewed Those Times and These, he found only one "excellent comic story, 'Hark From the Tomb'," lying in the book "like a Smithfield ham between two slabs of stale store-bread" (Prejudices 98). He saw nothing else even remotely good about Cobb in general, except a smile credited to Cobb—"no more privacy than a goldfish." Mencken said, "Here, at last, is something genuinely humorous. Here, moreover, is something apparently new" (103-4). Mencken claimed that this was his only detailed description of Cobb and that Doran, Cobb's publisher, had not sent him any of Cobb's books to review since then (Letter).

Some critics found fault in Cobb's readers, expressing disappointment that regardless of the quality of his work he still had a "large and devoted following," ("More of Cobb"). Others criticized Cobb for appealing to this mass audience by writing for magazines and characterized his readers as a "large, more or less heedless, public more anxious to be temporarily diverted than really entertained" ("Prose and Cons"). Occasionally, a particular piece of Cobb fiction met with the approval of the critics and the "heedless mass."Red Likker sold well and received praise as a firstrate book, full of "wisdom" and "intelligence" and "intimacy," a book that might "someday become an American classic" ("Red Likker").

Reviews by individual newspapers may have little or no meaning when viewed alongside judgments made by a publisher's own professional staff. The archives of Bobbs-Merrill, Cobb's last publisher, contains readers' reports, inter-office memos, and publicity campaigns which, when combined with favorable reviews, throw a rather perplexing light on the reviewing process. A Bobbs-Merrill critic called Cobb's "Choice of Jello or Rice Pudding" about "as vapid as a title might be" (Memorandum). He or she rejected Cobb's next suggested title of "To Make a Long Story Short," but soothed Cobb's ruffled feathers by saying that they were looking for the right "commercial angle" in the title (Letter). Bobbs-Merrill wanted to cut Cobb's advance of $1000 on the book, eventually titled,Faith, Hope, and Charity, until reminded that "Cobb short stories sell better than ordinary short stories" (Note).

In promoting Judge Priest Turns Detective in 1936, Bobbs-Merrill turned the negative criticisms of their readers reports into positive aspects in their advertising. One reader noted that "if this book didn't bear the name of Cobb, it wouldn't get to first base with a publisher." Another complained that it was not a novel, as it claimed to be, but two long short stories or novelettes—and "just plain not very good." Cobb's well-known local Kentucky color seemed "all too familiar," and the "female impersonator device" and the "guilty friend of the family" were "such outworn gags that the modern detective story reader is apt to turn his nose up very high at them." The critic saw "no profit in publishing this book." Bobbs-Merrill publicity translated all this into: "Cobb paints with marvelous artistry the Kentucky scene he loves," scenes "delightfully familiar" to all Cobb's readers. The book was a "double-barreled thriller"; the plot a "complicated yarn of who was murdered and why," and a "tasty and different dish for the jaded detective story fan" (Publicity layout). Unbelievably, highly favorable reviews came in to the publisher from daily papers in Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, Miami, Boston and New York (Collected reviews).

If reviews are a questionable measure of success, are sales any better? Cobb's autobiography made the bestseller list in 1941, the first of his books to do so, although alongside this listing, he is referred to as a "longtime favorite author and humorist" (Hackett 132). The little book Speaking of Operations, his humorous treatment of the care and non-feeding of the typical surgical patient and the original home of the goldfish simile, sold 300,000 copies in the first five years and had annual sales of 25,000 per year for the next five ("American Humorists"). All of his collected stories had previously been published in popular magazines, and, according to the Bobbs-Merrill memo, still sold well. George H. Lorimer claimed to have asked a newsdealer how his magazine was selling and the reply was, "They ask me if there is anything in it by Cobb. If there is, they buy it. If there isn't, they don't" ("Cobb, Literary Heavyweight").

Perhaps Lorimer's comment explains why in 1925 Cobb was renowned as the world's highest paid short story writer, receiving $3500 to $4000 per story rather than the standard $500 to $1000 ("Cobb, Highest Paid"). A pure dollars and cents measure of success gave Cobb a lifestyle he desired, even down to a liveried, white Cadillac with his initials in gold on the door. It also gave him a sometimes begrudged, sometimes enthusiastic recognition from fellow writers. In Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, a young boy, hawking his wares, extolled the virtues of the Saturday Evening Post, saying, " .. . on page 29 you have a story by Irvin S. Cobb, the gg-g-greatest living humorist" (99).

Early in his writing career Cobb faced the changes inherent in the modernization of literature. His use of forms and structures did not reflect the change, as that of other writers did. Cobb disapproved, as well, of the use of the "sensuous" aspects of life as topics of rhetorical invention. He refused to see the Babbits and the Elmer Gantrys as important; his Main Street represented hearth and home, not pettiness and ennui. Yet, he was no Pollyanna, he saw and wrote about injustice, the problems of the poor and the powerless. He looked at America, at small towns, at the South, at New York and New Orleans. He made fun of people and institutions and himself. He was a local colorist in its least flattering sense, but he was also more than that. In its diversity of settings, points of view, purposes, choices of language style, genre and impact, his work was multicolored.

Although Cobb has been neglected for most of the forty years since his death, the Popular Press has recently published a new biography by Anita Lawson, a professor at Murray State University near Cobb's hometown of Paducah. If this book succeeds in renewing an interest in Cobb's work, what will a new generation of readers find? At a glance Cobb seems to reflect only the bigoted opinions of his time. Those who use specific racial terms and write or speak in dialect are labeled racists, and rightly so, because changes in American attitudes have resulted in revision of what is considered appropriate language. His harshness toward immigrants, a common American affliction after World War I, conflicts with his reverence for the poor and downtrodden. His anti-intellectualism, so simplistic and so unyielding, makes Cobb a perfect target for intellectual critics today.

Cobb's lengthy sentences, his word pictures that describe scenes and people down to the last detail, his slowly evolving plots and his digressions from "the point" combine to render his stories too time-consuming for modern readers who want the details cut to a minimum, leaving "just the facts." The change to the visual medium of television has reduced the need for lengthy descriptions and encouraged a preference for being "shown" rather than "told." It has also lessened an appreciation for a wellturned phrase, or a cleverly and laboriously thought out metaphor. Even Cobb's horror stories hold no terror for those accustomed to the Jaws or Friday the Thirteenth variety. However, Judge Priest, minus Jeff Poindexter, could have been Marcus Welby or Grandpa Walton, or any of the other paternalistic television heroes. Indeed, the "heedless mass" with the need to be "diverted" rather than "entertained" perfectly describes the intellectual view of today's television audience, with the half-hour situation comedy the equivalent of the humorous short story.

Like all those who struggle with change, Cobb had choices to make. He chose to adapt in ways that proved to be beneficial. He fully embraced the new media perhaps because they were geared toward satisfaction of a mass audience. Cobb was highly motivated to speak directly to the people. He chose to oppose cynicism about the common man and about life's potentialities that typified the modernist era. He rejected changes in form and literary style as he rejected irreverence for older values. He was a true conservative in his plodding, methodical effort to preserve the status quo, but a progressive in his campaigns for social justice. The laws of nature mandate that a species must change or die. In the areas of his work in which he refused to change, Cobb is dead today, but if one scrapes away the remnants of nineteenth-century thinking, the man stuck between times still lives.