I decided to abuse the #1930club, this round of the semi-annual reading club organized by Kaggsy and Simon Thomas’, as an excuse to read something by Maurice Dekobra.
Dekobra was hugely successful — successful not just in his native France but among readers all over the world. He came up with his pen-name after seeing a snake-charmer’s act and he was something of a snake-charmer himself. His material was exotic, risky (or risqué and often both), quick-paced, and rarely more than an evening or two’s read. In a way, he made the same kind of appeal to wannabe sophisticates as Esquire later in the 1930s and Playboy in 1960s. You can see how Dekobra himself played this charade in his preface to the English edition of Venus on Wheels:
A philosopher once said, “The world is a great book, and one has merely read the first page when one has only lived in one’s native town.” I would add when one has only loved women of one nation.
“How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?” asked a popular Tin Pan Alley song from World War One. For some ex-doughboys, I suspect the answer was, “Keep feeding them Maurice Dekobra.”
Many of Dekobra’s books take place in the mysterious East — India or China; the rest in Paris or on the Riviera. All of them involve sex. Or rather, broad, obvious, and leering hints at sex. Everyone keeps their clothes on. But Dekobra does not deny the existence of lust, infidelity, and prostitution — hell, he hammers away at the fact with Stakhanovite zeal. He knew the material would appeal to American readers in particular: “Americans are enchanted here in Paris to find no detectives in the hall, asking haughtily, ‘Is the lady with you your wife?'” he once told an interviewer.
The most admired figure in the book, Monsieur Maline, the grand old man, is respected not for his age and wisdom but for the 88 conquests he has detailed in his little green notebook: “To deceive one’s wife, well anybody can do that. To deceive her so that she has not the slightest suspicion, that is better. But to deceive her fifty-three times without her knowing, that is indeed high art. The work of a virtuoso … the Paganini of the Quai de Passy.” Dekobra has read just enough Freud to believe that sublimation is worse than its cure: “A little five to seven o’clock every now and then has its good points,” one his characters offers in the way of homeopathic advice.
Dekobra’s prostitutes do not have hearts of gold. They would, however, like to have pockets of gold. He spends a fair amount of space in Venus on Wheels defending the professionalism of his pros. What they do, one explains, takes skill:
“It is not enough to be just pretty. It is necessary to know your job.”
“How? Explain yourself, Pauloche. I am interested.”
“You’ve got to have the flair, the tact. You must know what men like. For example, if you are accosted by a sentimental man, puffed up with illusions, first drop a discreet tear, a mother in hospital, a consumptive little sister. Play the ‘Clair de lune’ of Werther until the fellow forks out for a nicely enamelled bedroom suite or pays your rent a month in advance. If, on the other hand, he is a degenerate who is looking for sensations, trot out the drugs. A pinch of cerebos sniffed gently up the nose, or a little Vittel syringed into the thigh. Then the fellow between a couple of pipes of opium (a little Virginia tobacco mixed with apricot jam) will write you a cheque and give you a pearl necklace, gurgling that life is a dream. That’s the way to succeed in business!”
A fair cross-section of the demi-monde, including some demimondaines, are wrapping up their nights when in walk two proper society ladies. We soon learn that one of them, Madame Lorande, has decided to carry out a social experiment. She wants to adopt another sort of lady and see if she can turn her into the legal type of working girl. To house her, feed her, re-clothe her, and train her in all the basic secretarial skills. Dutch readers would have been saved the trouble of reading most of the book from its translated title, Als Venus wordt een typiste (trans.: If Venus became a typist). Père Cassis quips, “Here, Madame, folks don’t generally come to lift women up — but rather to pick them up.” Still, one of the girls in the bar, Palouche (not, Dekobra tells us, one “who dispenses sensual pleasure like a Chicago pork-packing machine”), finds the idea interesting. Coming off a rough and unprofitable night, she agrees to the deal. End of Act One.
In Act Two, set in the respectable home of Madame Maline (Madame Lorande’s mother), characters wander in and out of the room where Palouche sits practicing typing. By the end of the act, at least three assignations involving at least four different married people have been arranged. And in Act Three, set in the flat shared by Palouche and her friend Lily, there’s as much coming and going as in Grand Central Station, but in the end I’m not sure anybody actually hootchied or cooed. There was, however, so much eyebrow-arching going on that Maurice Dekobra’s poor forehead must have been exhausted by the time he finished the book.
I’m sure that every other book written about for #1930club is far more substantive, far worthier, far less telling of its reader’s character flaws than Venus on Wheels. I betcha I had the most fun, though.
Santé!
Venus on Wheels is available free on the Internet Archive — but it’s a horrid scan, I’m afraid.
Fascinating find! 1930 was an *incredibly* varied year!!!
Haha! Yes, there’s something to be said for a fun read over a substantive one, sometimes…
Love those covers! ‘A professional sweetie’ — indeed.
Acts 1 and 2, yes, but not Act 3. Shaw would not have tolerated such silliness.
“the three-act structure of a farce by another French bard of infidelity, Georges Feydeau. ”
It sounds like an adaptation of Pygmalion, actually.