Q MY OWN STORY BY Fremont Older Editor The San Francisco Call THE CALL PUBLISHING CO., 1919 66 M By JOHN D. BARRY Y OWN STORY" could hardly have been a simpler or a more appropriate title for the series of reminiscences by Fremont Older, following as it did so many stories about other people that he had helped to inspire. Those stories prepared the way for this swift narrative, scene after scene almost bewildering in variety and interest. Whatever else life may have been for Older it has never been dull. The excitement and the glow are reflected in every chapter. Writing about oneself is pretty difficult business. There are so many pitfalls. Few could hope to escape them all. Older wrote as if he thought very little about them one way or the other. He was concerned mainly with the story as something to be told concisely, directly and frankly. There were times when another writer would have spared himself and he spared himself not at all. Each scene he described as he saw it and felt it and he let it go at that. There are not many who would have dared to speak so freely. And yet it was this freedom that did most to make his work valuabble. He wrote out of a full mind, like one that found expression easy. Long before "My Own Story” was begun some of us had tried again and again to persuade Older to write his memories. But he never showed much interest. When he withdrew from the Bulletin, however, he felt that he had made a break in his career. He had reached a point where he was tempted to look back. His quarter of a century spent in building up the paper was full of dramatic incidents. They were associated with an important period in the history of San Francisco. They involved the earthquake, the fire, the political corruption that led to the graft prosecution, the emancipation of California from forces that had so long preyed on her political and social life, the imprisonment of Ruef. For Older all the incidents had a deeper meaning than was revealed on the outside. They helped to open his eyes. They trained his understanding. They widened his sympathies. They gave him his social vision. Any self-revelation worth being published at all has two phases, the one that presents the outer circumstances and the one that gives the inner reactions. Many autobiographies are insignificant because they have one of these two phases only. In "My Own Story" both phases are remarkable. The surface narrative alone is absorbingly interesting. It offers us intimate glimpses into public characters and public events associated with San Francisco during the past twentyfive years. Every figure presented is lifelike. Every incident rings true. The conversations are to the last degree realistic. The refer ences to McKinley early in the book give a remarkably vivid reflection of his character, seen through an observer whose insight was made all the clearer by his humor. In Older a mind naturally receptive and keen had been made impressionable by training in newspaper reporting. Moreover, it was capable of retaining impressions. But for this faculty, these records could not possibly have been made so lifelike. If Older had not gone from reporting into editing he might have developed into a writer of distinction. He had all the qualities requisite for the making of a novelist. Those first chapters show how strongly life attracted him, how he reveled in it as he sought his material for writing. Chance that made him a reporter with a nose for news might just as well have made him a story teller with a genius for characters that expressed themselves in dramatic plots. But if he had became a story teller he would probably have withdrawn from active participation in public life; he would have missed much of the experience that made this record so rich. While the story ran in The Call it was interesting to all of us associated with the paper to observe the way it affected readers. As might have been expected, it attracted notice at the start and had a wide reading. No surprise was felt at the excellence of the narrative style. Hadn't Older been a newspaper man all his life? Yes, but for many years he had been concerned mainly with planning for his paper and directing the work of others. Only those on the inside knew that in an almost incredibly short time he had dictated most of the narrative to a stenographer. He had gone at the job like a whirlwind, as he usually did when he became interested in any job. His newspaper sense made him feel that he must keep it moving and moving fast. Only an accomplished writer could have reached such speed and, at the same time, kept the continuity so clear and the incidents so realistic. Throughout the reader could have the feeling of intimacy, always so attractive in writing, as if the writer were addressing the talk to him personally. As the story went on public interest grew. Those who missed issues of the paper began to ask for back numbers at the office. Readers who began late wanted to go back to the start. Then some of us suggested that the series ought to be brought out in book form. But Older didn't agree. Newspaper publication was enough, he insisted; the book wouldn't make any appeal. Already he was planning for the next serial feature, to be started soon after his story ended. As usual, his mind was galloping ahead. From day to day his argument was refuted by the letters that came in expressing interest and urging book publication. It became plain that this record would have to be preserved. I don't think that Older had any idea, as he wrote, of working for cumulative interest. While the chapters toward the end were running, those about his interest in prisoners and his efforts to understand them, he was astonished by the public response. Of all the chapters they made the biggest hit and caused most discussion. |