The Right to Be Wrong

New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Very Good. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [nice-looking copy, front endpaper neatly removed but no other significant wear, although there are small ink scribbles on the front pastedown and on pages 4 and 5 (why?), plus a one-time owner's single name written in pencil on the half-title page]. A "rollicking story of love, high finance and jealousy" (per a contemporary review), this novel traces the exploits of Ariel Adams, an orphan who's been brought up by her guardian "according to his own ideas," and has reached young adulthood having lived "under a code contrary to the established conventions of society." This results in her taking a peculiar moral stance, one that's not completely obscured by the peppy jacket blurb: "With more than the average advantages, attractive and endowed with a strange nature and philosophy, her exceptional tutoring enables her to practice her own conception of what is good and bad." (This is quoted from another copy; there is NO jacket on this book.) So while she's not exactly amoral, neither does she let the "established conventions of society" get in the way of her pursuit of happiness. (For example: at one point she establishes a fake identity for herself and forges a signature on a letter of recommendation, then muses to herself: "Why not? I have devised an excellent, perfectly simple and absolutely harmless way of getting a job.") She finally gets a good tongue-lashing, near the end of the book, from the poor schmuck who's been in love with her all along (which hasn't stopped her from doing him wrong), and who excoriates her as "nothing better than an abominable parasite -- just a clever, female extortionist! -- the master crook of them all." In the hands of a better writer, this might have been a more compelling saga, but unfortunately Mr. Goring (who, unsurprisingly, never seems to have written another book) had no facility at all for writing believable dialogue. .