A Stumbling Block

by Justus Miles Forman

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316 pages, Paperback

First published December 16, 2009

About the author

Justus Miles Forman (November 1, 1875 – May 7, 1915) was an American novelist and playwright.

His only play, The Hyphen, appeared in 1915 but did not receive the success Forman expected. The Hyphen was a topical drama about "German-Americans" and "Irish-Americans" whose patriotism and fidelity to the United States is questioned due to events in Europe during World War I. Forman hoped that the drama would do better business in a production in London and decided to book a first-class passage aboard the RMS Lusitania. Days before he was to board the liner, however, he received a mysterious phone call from a man with a thick German accent who warned him not to board the Lusitania[citation needed]. Forman ignored the phone call and embarked on the Lusitania on May 1, 1915. The Lusitania was torpedoed on May 7, 1915, and Forman was among the 1,198 passengers who perished in the sinking. His body was never recovered.

Reviews

[Sophie]

The egomania of this author is truly awe-inspiring. He pens a novel where the main character is a writer who also trained as an artist (just like Forman):

for he had, like many writer-people, a by no means despicable talent in the sister art, which he had more or less trained in America at the college art-school.

Endows his fictional counterpart with exceptional talent:

So David's little tales—the only work he had done during his travels—possessed a certain freshness of theme as well as his eternal freshness of treatment.

Has him write a first novel, The Walls of Destiny, that is described in a way that sounds remarkably like Forman's own first novel, The Garden of Lies:

A man's soul and a woman's soul stirred and shaken to their very nethermost depths because honor stood in their way.

Gives him a career that follows the trajectory of his own: serialized stories that are later published as novels, etc. and similar kinds of success:

The story...was an immediate success both with critics and public. The critics, for the most part, said that it showed a very considerable growth towards maturity, without the sacrifice of the peculiar idyllic charm which Mr. Rivers had made his own, and the public seemed to think something of the kind also, for it bought the book in flattering numbers...

And then, well, then, I hope the similarity to Mr. Forman's career ends, because in this novel, everyone around this writer is willing to sacrifice everything—their happiness, their health and even their lives to the transcendent wonder that is the author's career:

It was for her to decide whether David, the artist, the creator, should give out to the world of that richness God had put into him, or should creep through the remainder of his life dumb, silent, unfruitful.

Pardon me while I vomit. There are two female characters in the book who love and influence our superhero. One of them leads him to the dark side, and the other sacrifices everything to keep him on the side of the angels. In fact, I think she might be an angel:

"Oh, who are you, Rose-Marie? What are you, that no other woman is or ever was?" He dropped to his knees before her like a worshipper before a shrine, and she laid her cool hands over his face, looking down upon him.

"I am Love, Davie," she said. "I am Rest and Peace and Understanding. I am the Heights and the Depths. I am the Sweetness that makes life sweet."

Imagine writing lines like that and still considering yourself an exceptionally talented author deserving of fictional representation.

In A Stumbling Block, the main character's (but really Forman's) first novel is given short shrift as a threadbare pseudo-romance, and he quickly moves on to more serious work. Another parallel with Forman's career apparently, because although I enjoyed Forman's first novel a great deal, I haven't found any other of his works that I find anywhere near as charming. And this is the second novel I've read that seems like a treacly rehash of his own life. So, after slogging through The Unknown Lady and this current exercise in ego stroking, my enthusiasm for his work has just about dissipated.