The Devil & James Street

At a publisher's Christmas party in Manhattan, the Devil, who is everywhere, found himself cornered by a critic from a Little Magazine. The critic thought that the Devil looked too forceful for an intellectual, too thoughtful for a book publisher, and decided at first that he must be somebody high up in cinema. So he began to tell him about the esoteric first novel he hoped to sell to Hollywood.

The Devil broke in rudely: "Have you read The Gauntlet?"*

"Certainly not," said the critic. "Have you?"

"Certainly," said the Devil. "In my line we try to keep up with all the latest religious fiction. Rather a bore these days. But The Gauntlet has something special."

"What?" asked the critic.

"For one thing, a two-month sale of some 800,000 copies," said the Devil. "Why, more than a million people must have read the book."

"So what?" asked the critic.

"Instinctively, I might even say professionally, I am democratic," said the Devil. "When I see that many people reading a book, I want to know what they are reading about besides a hero named the Reverend London Wingo."

The critic groaned. "Now The Gauntlet" said the Devil, warming up, "is about Baptists. Who but me, with my intense interest in religion, would ever read about Baptists except in a novel? This one takes you right into a Baptist seminary, shows you the callowness, the shallowness, the dingy personal problems of the young men who will become fishers of souls. It takes you into a small Baptist church in a small Missouri town, shows you the political shenanigans, the scandalous gossip, the social going-over every minister and his wife have to take. Even I learned something from it."

"You pronounce the word Baptist like an Anglo-Catholic." said the critic.

"Quite unintentional," said the Devil. "I have no religious prejudices. When The Gauntlet opens, this Wingo is studying at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has married 'a tiny, merry raindrop of a girl' who has bobbed hair (it is 1923) and insists on being called Kathie instead of Katherine. She is also pregnant, and the Reverend Wingo is wondering where he is going to get the money for the delivery. So he goes to his friend, the Reverend Page Musselwhite, and tells him: 'I want to find Truth. It seems to me that at times my mind, my reason, is challenging my spirit, throwing down a gauntlet and daring my spirit to pick it up!'"

"I suppose," said the critic wearily, snatching a highball from a passing waiter, "that is why the novel is called The Gauntlet."

"Yes," cried the Devil with mounting enthusiasm. "(No thanks, I never touch liquor.) So this Musselwhite tells him to get out of the seminary and earn a regular salary in this small Missouri church. There are the usual long-faced deacons, and two frowsy but folksy women who run the choir and the Baptist Young People's Union. They gossip about Kathie's bobbed hair and her abbreviated name and the fact that she immediately makes friends with the undertaker's exuberant wife whose first child was born six months after her marriage. But the Reverend Wingo, who likes to fly kites, inaugurates Kite Day and wangles the town into building a hospital and a new church. He plays a shrewd game of politics to oust the old guard and get control of the various organizations away from the deacons and their wives. It sounded to me just like the usual polite parish cat-&-dog fight, but suddenly. . . ."

"You have a phenomenal memory," said the critic desperately.

"So many people have found out," said the Devil and continued: "But suddenly when Kathie is carrying her second child, a big kite manufacturer tries to buy out the Reverend's kite-making establishment and exploit Kite Day commercially. The deacons want to sell. Then I learned to my surprise that the Reverend Wingo is a symbol in the struggle against those forces . that are always attacking democracy. In the showdown vote, a big tribe of peckerwoods come in from the backwoods to support Wingo on principle. He wins, but the strain has been too much for Kathie. She, she. . . ."

"What's the matter?" asked the alarmed critic, for the Devil, who like many hellions is a great sentimentalist, was choking up.

"Kathie," said the Devil, "dies. At that moment the Reverend Wingo is offered a big church in Kansas City. Instead, he decides to remain as the pastor of the people who made his wife's life (as you people say) a Hell."

"So what?" asked the critic. "Why should a book like that sell 800,000 copies? Most of the parishioners and even the Reverend Wingo seem to have I.Q.s of not overbright twelve-year-olds."

"Precisely," said the Devil, "that's why The Gauntlet charms me. It reduces religion to the lowest common denominator. That's one reason why it sells. The other is its message. You see, when the Reverend Wingo decides to stay on in the village he has found God. That's the novel's message: 'God is humanity.'" He cackled derisively. Then, leaning confidentially toward the critic, he whispered: "Imagine how He will like that one--being identified with . . ."--he included everybody in the room in a sweeping gesture.

"Why not?" said the critic. "Wouldn't you like to be a little human?"

The Devil drew himself up to his full height. "Good Heavens, no," he said. "What do you take me for? I may be a fallen angel and an unsuccessful revolutionist, but we must have some standards. Merry Christmas, young man."

* By James Street; Doubleday, Doran ($2.75).

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