Message from a Stranger

by Marya Mannes

Olivia has died. But her next year is one of "close involvement with the living, a year of visitation and observance, of succor and guidance, of examination and trial."

232 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1948

About the author

Mannes lived most of her life in New York City, where she was born.[1] Her brother was musician Leopold Mannes. Her parents, Clara (Damrosch) Mannes and David Mannes, founded the Mannes College of Music in New York. Her maternal grandfather was conductor Leopold Damrosch, and her maternal uncles were conductors Walter Damrosch and Frank Damrosch. Her father was Jewish; her mother was from a mostly Lutheran German family (and was of part Jewish descent through her own grandfather).[2]
Mannes was an editor at Vogue and later wrote prolifically for the magazines The Reporter and The New Yorker. Mannes published a number of books of essays, sharply and wittily critical of American society, including More in Anger: Some Opinions, Uncensored and Unteleprompted. She was a much-sought-after social commentator on radio and television.She hosted her own television show in 1959, "I speak for myself".[citation needed]
Other books by Mannes included Subverse (1959), a satirical verse, Out of My Time (1971), an autobiography, and two novels, Message From a Stranger (1948), and They (1968).
Married three times, Mannes had one child (David R. J. Blow) who survived her.
She died in San Francisco, California. (Wiki)

Reviews

[Bryan Singleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Message from a Stranger, published in 1948, has elements of sci-fi, horror and fantasy. It's hard to pigeon-hole it in one genre. Until I started reading it, I didn't notice the woman on the front cover is a ghost (the book is a take on the afterlife). Although written more than seven decades ago, I want to share a quote from this book that is relevant to our current world:
"If you took a thousand people, then, and put them together in a crowd, their combined emanations would become a thick miasma. For some reason, this miasma was usually of a base and anarchic nature. The only 'good' crowds I ever saw in life were those dedicated to music or to certain forms of sport. All other mass gatherings (and I witnessed a number after death) threw up a spiritual stench. I remember particularly some political rallies where hate rose like a black cloud to the sky, and where the heat generated by the words of some demagogue consumed what innocence and reason there was in the head of any single being.
Max could talk reverentially as he might about the 'masses'; I found them often the agents of evil. That was the danger of cities. The poisons generated by the crowds in any one block in New York were powerful enough to assail and corrode the spirit of any man, alive or dead. They assailed me, and I was dead."

[Donnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting companion piece to "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. This book is published thirteen years later, after WWII, yet sees a bleak public and a not-so-great-future.

Fun to get the point of view of a dead-narrator view who gets to see what people really think of her. Also fun to read her catty comments about rich people, especially rich women.

Some quotes--and remember this author died long before the 2016 election cycle:

"The Magna Charta, the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence? Were they not based on trust in the dignity and virtue of man?" p. 135 And these are the foundations of our system of governance which therefore, in turn, is based on the "trust and dignity and virtue of man." But when someone is elected as the enforcer of this system who can not be trusted and has not dignity and virtue, what then?

How easy was the formula to oppose the status quo: "All you had to do was to sit at a desk, disagree with the government, and talk about the man in the street. For facts you could substitute indignation, for information a self-righerous dogmatism just as inflexible as" the opposition's equivalent. p. 137

At a political rally: "Control and moderation...were greeted with coldness and indifference. Excess and violence--the instruments of ignorance--fired their blood." p. 156. Cf Senator Schumer's words delivered with control and moderation yet greeted with boos at the Trump Inauguration.

"I feared the dominations of physical objects, for I had seen how craven they could make their owners, how unfree. Human progress has so often been checked by those who were afraid of losing what they had. The more they had, the greater was their fears; and the greater their fear, the more blind and deaf they became to the voice of ordinary human need. The insulation of the rich, Brian had called it." p. 201

"Live so the pattern you make of your life is a work of art in itself. You don't have to write or paint or compose to do that." p. 211

"Contrary to popular belief and few exceptions, the lives of creative people are not inclined to be sensational in the external sense. They are too busy either contemplating or working to indulge in colorful gestures, in audacious social episodes. A reporter, an actor, a fashionable artistic dabble, may get drunk every night, perform outrageous deeds, embroil himself with a series of noteworthy people, and make, in short, good human copy. But the serious writer, painter, composer, the research scientist are far more likely to lead lives of bourgeois regularity. The passions and conflict reside in their work more than in their actions, and to endure the productive strain they need some degree of form and tranquility in their pattern of existence." p. 226.

Many U.S. Senators, in 1948, according to Mannes were: "small-souled stupid men who wouldn't pass a third-grade test; fat flabby old men with corrupt baby mouths; crooked politicians who use the American flag as a slip-cover for their venality!"p.239 Sigh. Have times changed?

[Donnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

For what I think about this book, see my review of the hardcover edition. Wanted to include this versions well because of the cool, period illustration on the cover.