Among the Literati by George Joel

The real name of Barnaby Ross, the detective novel writer who discovered that the letters of the alphabet could be used as titles of books, is definitely Semitic. He was born in Elmira, N. Y., and has that upstate twang in his voice. By profession he is an advertising man and is now living in upper Manhattan. He is married. His ambition is to have a book of verse published under his own name. He is short, slightly bald, wears glasses and looks just a little like Webster’s “Timid Soul.” His constant companion is Ellery Queen, the author of many successful detective stories. Queen, a psuedonym, is the Jewish writer who wears a mask whenever he appears in public under that name.

Lowell Brentano, of the family whose famous chain of bookstores just went the way of the Irving Trust Company, almost became a rabbi. While a student at Harvard; where he won high scholastic honors, he got the call. The only reason he didn’t answer it was because he was never able to decide whether he wanted to be a rabbi or a minister.

When Meyer Levin sold his novel, “The New Bridge,” to Gollancz of London he was told that he would have to change the name of his chief character, Simon Marks, to something else. It seems that one of Mr. Gollancz’s closest friends bore that name.

After a long siege of illness, Sydney Silverman, editor of Variety, is back at his desk at West 46th Street. … A new Jewish writer is about to pop over the horizon in the person of Meyer Berger, crime reporter on the New York Times, now at work on a book…. Another writer who will bear watching is A. J. Liebling of the World-Telegram…. Despite the many Jewish novelists, only one has won a Pulitzer Prize award, and that was in 1925 when Edna Ferber’s “So Big” won the honors…. Rumors to the contrary, Hal B. Sims, the bridge player, is not a Jew … Norman Klein, star reporter of the New York Evening Post, whose “No No the Woman” enjoyed a healthy sale last season, will burst forth with another detective yarn next month.