Best Seller

[DonH]

Why write a book?
To impart knowledge or your ideas, to earn a living, or win public
acclaim?
Beware! It can become a drug of addiction, and many a prolific author has
died, typewriter in hand - just to prove he/she can still do it.
But "Best Seller" is name of a short story in the Mulliner collection,
more specifically in "Mulliner Nights", where nephew Egbert discovers, to
his horror, that his romancing of Evangeline has been committed to paper, in
form of a novel.
Yes, "Parted Ways" had extended a 20-minute tiff into a ten-year split,
and the public, sick of straight sex, and opting for good old romance, had
seized on this first attempt, with gusto.
Well, the trouble is, can a first-time author sustain the effort? Read,
and find out.
It is said that the one book everyone can write is - their autobiography.
(In my own case, having led an uneventful life, it would be full of blank
pages.)
Wodehouse, to his credit, did not step outside personal experience, but,
having a lot of good data to draw on, succeeded wonderfully.
The Mulliner tales, being tales told in a pub, gave imagination full
flight.
As for Mr.Mulliner, an amateur fisherman who had never told a lie in his
life, and having eyes of childlike candour, you'd be safe buying oil stock
from him without a tremor.