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What Ho!
242 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1937
About the author
Richard Connell
115 books111 followersRichard Edward Connell, Jr. was an American author and journalist, best known for his short story "The Most Dangerous Game." Connell was one of the best-known American short story writers of his time and his stories appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly. Connell had equal success as a journalist and screenwriter. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942 for best original story for the film Meet John Doe.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 5, 2012
At the time of making my last decision on which of my many unread books I should read next, I had just watched and been enthralled by two Myrna Loy movies, and still excited to have discovered that there is a lot more to Clark Gable than 'Gone with the wind'; I really couldn't get these movies out of my mind and, with an older book next in line, I searched through the mysterious unknowns randomly plucked from Oslo fleamarkets and took the plunge with Richard Connell's 'What Ho!'
It turns out that, whilst not being the most satisfying or sophisticated piece of literature ever written, it certainly was the most appropriate choice given my lust to saturate my MGM inspired good mood.
Connell, it turned out, was not the most prolific author, neither were novels his staple medium, Connell was predominantly a screenwriter, with an Academy Award nomination to boot.
Unsurprisingly, What Ho! could quite easily have been one of Connell's screenplays, certainly it would easily qualify as a screen story had an option ever been taken out on it - from the awkward but well meaning leading man, Ernest, through the convenient and implausible series of events that draw him deeper and deeper into a near farcical web of secrets and misdirections, to the romantic 'The End' scene on a foggy bench by the Thames, this has Thirties Hollywood romcom written all over it.
And it would have made a great movie. As a book, well, it is lightweight, but decently written; although some of Connell's overwritten linguistic adventures felt almost dragged straight from Roget's, as Connell desperately tries to satisfy his own apparent Wodehouse obsession.
Clearly Connell was very much an anglophile, and does a very admirable job of catching a very British mood (our hero, obsessed with England, and sharing a surname with an English Earldom, sells his taxidermy business in Iowa to allow him to rent the ancestral home for a month - great movie, right?).
There are moments of mirth, some acceptable characters and some decent puns from the predictably scatty old Earl; the formula is straight out of the Wodehouse textbook - underlining his popularity in the USA at that time - and whilst Connell doesn't share the same genius, or Wodehouse's actual talent for writing in general, it's not a bad stab at cracking into the British-country-house-comedy niche.
A pleasant, if unremarkable, read - I look forward to it finally hitting a movie screen near me any time soon.
It turns out that, whilst not being the most satisfying or sophisticated piece of literature ever written, it certainly was the most appropriate choice given my lust to saturate my MGM inspired good mood.
Connell, it turned out, was not the most prolific author, neither were novels his staple medium, Connell was predominantly a screenwriter, with an Academy Award nomination to boot.
Unsurprisingly, What Ho! could quite easily have been one of Connell's screenplays, certainly it would easily qualify as a screen story had an option ever been taken out on it - from the awkward but well meaning leading man, Ernest, through the convenient and implausible series of events that draw him deeper and deeper into a near farcical web of secrets and misdirections, to the romantic 'The End' scene on a foggy bench by the Thames, this has Thirties Hollywood romcom written all over it.
And it would have made a great movie. As a book, well, it is lightweight, but decently written; although some of Connell's overwritten linguistic adventures felt almost dragged straight from Roget's, as Connell desperately tries to satisfy his own apparent Wodehouse obsession.
Clearly Connell was very much an anglophile, and does a very admirable job of catching a very British mood (our hero, obsessed with England, and sharing a surname with an English Earldom, sells his taxidermy business in Iowa to allow him to rent the ancestral home for a month - great movie, right?).
There are moments of mirth, some acceptable characters and some decent puns from the predictably scatty old Earl; the formula is straight out of the Wodehouse textbook - underlining his popularity in the USA at that time - and whilst Connell doesn't share the same genius, or Wodehouse's actual talent for writing in general, it's not a bad stab at cracking into the British-country-house-comedy niche.
A pleasant, if unremarkable, read - I look forward to it finally hitting a movie screen near me any time soon.
Displaying 1 of 1 review