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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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1990-10-27
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23 lines
The Green Hat
(SEPTEMBER 8, 1924)
The Green Hat--Michael Arlen. Many think of Michael Arlen's
writing as "a delicious sewer." Others feel that he strains
palpably at cleverness. Neither criticism is wholly just. Arlen's
"decadence" need hardly be called sewerish for it is quite sincere,
never vulgar, anything but reprehensible to fair minds. Arlen's
"cleverness" is indisputable, save by the very dull; and it is
beside the point that his people are wholly impossible as well as
wholly charming. They are created by a sensitive person possessed
of a gorgeous sense of the ridiculous, a rare way with words, and
a perception half dissolute, half profound.
As one might imagine, Michael Arlen is no Englishman. He plays,
dines, dances and drinks with the blither young spirits of
Mayfair--the social "Mugs" as he has called them. But he is not of
them. Born on the Danube, in Bulgaria, of Armenian parents, he was
taken to Manchester, as an infant, educated in schools of the
"plebs" and in Switzerland. He became a journalist in London, knew
poverty and loneliness.