In 1921, Ben Hecht wrote a column for the Chicago Daily News that his editor called "journalism extraordinary; journalism that invaded the realm of literature." Hecht's collection of sixty-four of these pieces, illustrated with striking pen drawings by Herman Rosse, is a timeless caricature of urban American life in the jazz age, updated with a new Introduction for the twenty-first century. From the glittering opulence of Michigan Avenue to the darkest ruminations of an escaped convict, from captains of industry to immigrant day laborers, Hecht captures 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdity.

“Humpty Dumpty” is the story of the defeat of passion. In this novel our civilization with all its biological and psychological ancestry laid bare, rises to overpower one of its supermen. Savaron, the man, with a skyrocket for a soul, hurls himself against the invisible monster—the lifeless decaying thing he identifies as society. Genius holds carnival in Savaron's mind. Brilliantly and futilely he struggles to extricate himself from the grip of the crowd-men of his day. His brain for a little while illuminates the way for him. Love corrupts him, conventions repudiated by his mind steal into his heart, confusion begins to knock his brain and Savaron, the gay and unscrupulous giant, finds himself fastened to the earth of Lilliput. In this Novel Hecht has outwritten the promise of Erik Dorm and Gargoyles. More epithetical than the former and vaster in scope and clearer in detail than the latter, “Humpty Dumpty” emerges as one of the most vivid and daring of modern excursions into the soul of man. Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. In the 1910s and 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, and literary figure. In the late 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. American Screenwriters calls him “one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures”. Hecht received the first Academy Award for Best Story for Underworld (1927). Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics.

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