"Roast Beef, Medium," by Edna Ferber (1911-1913)

"Roast Beef, Medium is not only a food. It is a philosophy..."

So begins one of the earliest and (unjustly) least known of the works of Edna Ferber. This is a book about a confident, poised saleswoman at the turn of the century--a time when sales was strictly "men's work." But that doesn't matter to Emma McChesney, because she knows what she's selling, she knows how to sell it, and she makes all her (chiefly male) competitors tremble in their macho-looking, tough leather boots!

Although this is not really a novel, it does read like one, (which is why many recent reviewers mistook it as such.) It was actually a series of short stories that were serialized in The American Magazine between 1911 and 1913, (when it finally appeared in book form. Yaaayyyy!!) Edna Ferber was only in her mid twenties when these stories came out, but they were already inviting her comparison to the newly-deceased O. Henry, (who died a tragic, lonely death at his apartment in 1910.) Although Edna Ferber had written short stories, as well as one novel, ("Dawn O'Hara, or The Girl Who Laughed," 1911,) it was the Emma McChesney stories that put her on the map for good and all. When you read them, it's easy to see how they could have that kind of effect. Her massive fan-base even included the one and only Theodore Roosevelt, (although he was not satisfied with the way the stories ended.)

The inspiration for Emma McChesney came from Ferber's mother, Julia, (who was so flattered that she often jokingly referred to herself as Julia McFerber.) Julia Ferber was an equally confident and head-strong woman, facing the same kinds of adversity that McChesney faces, and triumphing in the same way, which Edna Ferber found to be a big source of comfort and inspiration during a somewhat difficult youth.

I never like to give a lot away, but I still can't resist sharing at least a couple of the highlights of this book as I saw them.

• At the beginning, Emma McChesney starts getting friendly with a young man she meets in a restaurant, but when this young man (who is married) tries to kiss her, she spends the rest of the story reminding him of his duties as a married man. He is stunned at the reproach, and is sheepishly apologetic, but McChesney is so offended that she does not accept his apology. I know the way I worded it sounds mundane, but this is a laugh-out-loud part of the book. Always leave it to the sharp-tongued Emma McChesney to come up with lines like, "I don't mind telling you that I've got neuralgia from sitting in that park with my feet in the damp grass. I can feel it in my back teeth, and by eleven o'clock it will be camping over my left eye, with its little brothers doing a war dance up the side of my face," and "I've talked until I'm so low on words that I'll probably have to sell featherlooms in sign language to-morrow."
•  Jock, Emma McChesney's son, tricks her arch-nemesis, Ed Meyers of the Strauss Sans-Silk Skirt Co., into letting his mother make a sale before he even has the chance to. (And "stepped on both of Ed's feet, jabbed his elbow into his stomach, and dropped his hat" in the process.) The illustration of this scene, (drawn by James Montgomery Flagg, of Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster fame,) is alone worthwhile, not to mention how Ed verbally reacts to this unexpected assault.

A big reason why this book is so often mistaken for a novel is that the end of the book is climactic in a way that you wouldn't expect from a disjointed set of stories. If you want an easy novel to start off with, this would not be a bad choice, since it only has ten chapters, (err... stories,) and they are pretty easy to read, even though they are a tad long. That, and also, the language is distinctly different from most books that were written at that time. Most of them sounded very formal and stiff, whereas the loose, relaxed vibe of this book is suggestive of an Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant flick.

And now it's time for dinner. (No roast beef, medium for me, but I consider that a good thing. ;) )