Book Review: The Late George Apley, by John P. Marquand (1937)

Original dust jacket of The Late George Apley, by John P. Marquand, 1937.

Author John P. Marquand, 1893-1960.

John P. Marquand was an author who was critically and commercially successful during his lifetime, but since his death in 1960, he has not had a posthumous career revival. Marquand is probably best known for his series of spy novels featuring the Japanese agent Mr. Moto, and for his novel The Late George Apley, which won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  

When I came upon a reference to Marquand in the book F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship, I thought to myself, “I’ve heard of Marquand, but I don’t really know what he wrote.” I read his Wikipedia biography, and I was intrigued. Right away, I thought to myself that John P. Marquand and F. Scott Fitzgerald would have had a lot to talk about. (Marquand and Fitzgerald met at least once, in Paris during the 1920’s, but they never became close friends.) I wanted to read some of Marquand’s work, so I started with The Late George Apley. It did not disappoint.  

Marquand’s early biography has a lot of similarities to Fitzgerald’s. Marquand graduated from Harvard in 1915. He then worked as a reporter. He saw active service in France during World War I. After the war, he worked as a reporter for the New York Tribune, and then at an advertising agency. In 1921, he became a full-time fiction writer. Fitzgerald would have graduated from Princeton in 1917, had he finished in four years. (Fitzgerald never finished his degree at Princeton.) He enlisted in the Army in 1917, but never saw active service—he was about to be sent overseas when the Armistice was signed. After the war, he tried to get a job as a reporter in New York City but settled for working at an advertising agency. In 1919, he became a full-time fiction writer. Fitzgerald’s publisher for his entire life was Scribners, and his editor there was Maxwell Perkins. Marquand published his first two novels with Scribners, where his editor was Maxwell Perkins. Marquand’s first two novels were published in 1922 and 1925, the same years that Fitzgerald published his second and third novels.  

The Late George Apley is an exquisite work of satire. The framing device of the novel is that George Apley’s son has asked the narrator to write a biography of his father, a leading citizen of Boston. Marquand threads the needle perfectly, as his narrator/author takes us through the events of George Apley’s life, much of it reconstructed through primary sources such as letters. The narrator/author is a blowhard named Willing, which seemed to me to be a joke about how “willing” he is to always give Apley’s behavior the benefit of the doubt. It takes a special skill for a writer to write in the guise of a boring writer, and Marquand nails Willing’s dull, overexplanatory style. 

George Apley was born in 1866 into one of Boston’s leading families. The Apleys run the Apley mills, which has provided their income for decades. However, it’s decided that George doesn’t quite have a head for business, so he goes to law school and obtains a cushy job. Just after college, Apley took the “Grand Tour” of Europe. I love the metaphor that Apley uses in writing about the trip in a letter: “It seems to me that all this time a part of Boston has been with me. I am a raisin in a slice of pie which has been conveyed from one plate to another. I have moved; I have seen plate after plate; but all the other raisins have been around me in the same relation to me as they were when we were all baked.” (p.102)  

Many times during the novel George Apley expresses concern or dissatisfaction with the course his life is taking, but he seems unable or unwilling to fully break away from it.  

I found this letter that Apley writes to his son to be quite hilarious: 

“As you know, for a number of years I have been making a collection of Chinese bronzes. I have tried to inform myself fully about these things, and I have spent much time with wily Oriental dealers. I have not done this because I particularly like these bronzes...I have made this collection out of duty rather than out of predilection, from the conviction that everyone in a certain position owes it to the community to collect something.” (p.162-3)  

It’s a noble goal to collect something and share it with the community, but rather ridiculous to collect something that you don’t actually get any pleasure from. Marquand is excellent at highlighting Apley’s somewhat misguided sense of duty.  

Marquand also captures George Apley’s voice perfectly, highlighted by this letter written to his son John when John enters college that is both funny and sad: 

“There is a great deal of talk about democracy. I thought there was something in it once but now I am not so sure...Do not try to be different from what you are because in the end you will find that you cannot be different. Learn to accept what you are as soon as possible, not arrogantly but philosophically.” (p.216-7)  

George Apley has resigned himself to his position in life, but his position in life does not seem to fulfill him. He advises his son John not to have too much money in the bank and suggests to him “you start a collection of something, let us say of tapestries...I have found it very important to avoid criticism, and it does not look well to be extravagant.” (p.255) I found it quite humorous that George was suggesting that John start collecting something, but also sad how George feels this relentless pull and tug of status, of caring so much what other people think.  

As America fights in World War I and then enters the glittering Jazz Age of the 1920’s, George Apley feels distinctly left behind. He begins a letter to John: “I wish there weren’t quite so many new ideas. Where do they come from?” (p.294) I suspect that many of us have felt that way at times.  

Marquand pulls off a tricky feat in this novel—he is able to make you laugh at George Apley and also have sympathy for him. The Late George Apley launched Marquand as a serious novelist, and for the rest of his life his novels garnered critical acclaim as well as high sales.  

The Late George Apley was the subject of much controversy in Boston after its release. Marquand said in an interview shortly after the novel’s publication: “Boston is the only city in America you could satirize. No other city has enough solidity, is complete enough...There are really only two things a writer can satirize in the American scene today. One of these is the small town, and Sinclair Lewis has done that in Main Street and Babbitt. The only other place static enough and finished enough to write a novel about is Boston.” (Marquand: An American Life, by Millicent Bell, p.252-3) Marquand makes an interesting point—that for a work of satire, you need a place with culture and customs that are fixed enough to sustain the satire.  

The Late George Apley is an excellent novel that would appeal to fans of Edith Wharton and other novelists of manners.