As you may remember, in my last post, I said that I was reading, and would soon complain about Excuse Me!, a 1911 novel by Rupert Hughes. The other day, I finished reading it, and my opinion of it didn't improve any as I was reading, so I at least have plenty to say while I'm complaining. My problem with the novel wasn't at all that the plot and all of the convoluted rubbish that it was made of were dated. I have no problem reading about people who travel by train as a matter of necessity, and I'm smart enough to use a magical Internet machine to find out about the turn-of-the-century American divorce laws that so much of the novel hinges on. In fact, if you're interested in that sort of thing, you may even find the book interesting, which is why I brought it up.
As interesting as the uniquely old-fashioned parts of Excuse Me! were, they couldn't at all outweigh the things that I disliked about the book. The worst part of it, I think, is how wildly hateful it was. In 1911, the whole thing may have been par for the course, but the author seems to have been not only incredibly racist towards African Americans and Jewish people, but also had a deep, abiding distaste for British people. Whether this was all meant satirically or not, it was nearly unreadable by today's standards, partially because it was shockingly mean, and partially because the author was terrible at writing dialects.
The other thing that inflicted massive harm on the novel was the fact that Marjorie, the female lead, is a fictional character that I hated more intensely any other. She's supposed to be cute, sweet and demure, a shining example of comedic womanhood, but instead, she came off as a jealous, racist, and perhaps schizophrenic idiot. She fawns over a stupid little dog in a basket, throws hissy fits because her fiancee had a girlfriend before her, and has to steel herself for the possibility that she may have to be married by a Jewish justice of the peace. This statement may not mean much to a lot of people, but when I read, I pictured her as Katherine Heigl, which is not a compliment to either the character or the actress.
To make the whole thing even more ridiculous, Excuse Me! isn't just an idiotic romantic comedy with an improbably convenient ending. Excuse Me! is an idiotic romantic comedy where the improbably convenient ending is a train robbery.
If you really want a short romantic comedy in the public domain to fill some space on your Kindle, I haven't come across that many yet, but I can't imagine many of them being worse than Excuse Me! was. Even though I read it quite a while ago, though, I can say that The Wall Street Girl by Frederick Orin Bartlett is a much more readable alternative, without all of the weird and unnecessary plot complications involving unlikable characters that the reader barely knows. It isn't an amazing, life-changing book, but it's at least as good as a pleasant, watchable romantic comedy that might pop up on cable TV on a Sunday afternoon. Both novels are available at Project Gutenberg, and The Wall Street Girl can also be downloaded for free from Amazon.com.
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