Mysterious, ambiguous, sensational, ridiculous

[sovay]

The fantasy-prone heroine of Elmer Rice's Dream Girl (1945) is an aspiring novelist and not very successful proprietor of a small bookshop which is lately out of copies of the best-selling bodice-ripper Always Opal, an obvious riff on Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber: "I was appreciating Opal's hot affair with Monseigneur de Montrouget and you interrupted me just as they were about to—" Alternatives proposed to a disappointed customer do not meet with success. The new Russian novel The Dniepier Goes Rolling Along is equally kidding Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don/The Don Flows Home to the Sea, but I have no idea what My Heart Is Like a Trumpet is riffing on. "Mary Myrtle Miven's latest . . . a sort of idyllic love story about two horses. Very tender and poetic." I feel I should be able to detect the joke from the available information, but I got nothing. When the love interest entered the scene with an armload of unwanted ARCs, I was faintly surprised I had never encountered a copy of Fun with a Chafing Dish at a library sale myself.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I wonder! When I type "My heart is like" into Google, it offers up "a truck," "a zoo," "a wheel," "a stallion," "a river," "a singing bird," "an open highway," " house," and "paper" ... which shows a good range, but not a single musical instrument! Where are the lutes, pianos, drums? Never mind the more violent, dramatic metaphors... where are the fires, volcanos, and hurricanes?

Fun with a Chafing Dish seems like something one could induce a right-wing civic group to ban...

[davidgillon]

You'd get most of them irate with just the fun!

[asakiyume]

LOLLL so true.

[ethelmay]

My first thought was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers (1940). Not a great match, but Hunter is an assonance with Trumpet, sort of. ("Don't ask him what an assy-thingummy is. He's only longing to be asked.")

[sovay]

My first thought was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers (1940).

It was mine, too, but I couldn't make the horses fit.

(My second was E.B. White, but not in 1945.)

[sovay]

"an open highway," " house,"

In my sleep-deprived condition, I ran these two phrases together and now I feel My Heart Is Like an Opera House is a legitimately intriguing title. I would want to know how!

Fun with a Chafing Dish seems like something one could induce a right-wing civic group to ban...

It really does. Perhaps we should astroturf it.

[ethelmay]

Well, there's a hunter as in a horse used for hunting, and the horse in - Job, is it? - whose neck is clothed with thunder and who saith Ha, ha, among (amid?) the trumpets. But all those seem too vague. I am just Dowager-Duchessing at it.

[asakiyume]

My Heart Is Like an Opera House really needs to be on the pile of ARCs along with Fun with a Chafing Dish

[rushthatspeaks]

No, I think you're right, my initial thought was The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and therefore the romance of two horses being a literalization joke on the pun meaning of the phrase.

[rushthatspeaks]

Which is to say, these hunters are not lonely.

[cynthia1960]

The pearl clutchers would probably go ban Sterno.

[asakiyume]

😂😂😂

[ethelmay]

I wonder who Mary Myrtle Mivens is riffing on. Most of the three-barrelled lady-author names of the period that I remember involved two surnames, like Mary Roberts Rinehart and Inez Haynes Irwin.

[sovay]

the romance of two horses being a literalization joke on the pun meaning of the phrase.

I admire the distance of this joke.

[sovay]

I wonder who Mary Myrtle Mivens is riffing on.

It didn't ring any bells with me, either, which makes me feel there must be an obvious clanger waiting around the corner.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

but I have no idea what My Heart Is Like a Trumpet is riffing on. "Mary Myrtle Miven's latest . . . a sort of idyllic love story about two horses. Very tender and poetic."

I saw this post on the "latest things" page, and I immediately thought of "National Velvet", which is probably wrong, but I can't unsee it, so I had to share it!

[sovay]

I saw this post on the "latest things" page, and I immediately thought of "National Velvet", which is probably wrong, but I can't unsee it, so I had to share it!

Fair enough!

[nineweaving]

A quick check of recent bestsellers with vaguely similar titles or by triple-named or alliterative women yields The Sun Is My Undoing by Marguerite Sheen (1941 and 1942); Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham (1945); A Lion Is in the Streets by Adria Locke Langley.

Nothing that makes me go "Aha!"

Nine

[sovay]

vaguely similar titles or by triple-named or alliterative women

One of those was made into a movie, one was supposed to be, and one I've never heard of!

Your librarianship is much appreciated.

[galdrin]

I got most of those as well plus ... wait for it ... a flute.

[galdrin]

So what was the title of Mary Myrtle Miven's idyllic love story?

[asakiyume]

All right! An actual musical instrument!

[kitewithfish]

My Heart Is Like a Trumpet sent me down a WorldCat research rabbit hole, and I still haven't figured out what the book is.

I vaguely suspect it might be Moyra Charlton, who wrote several horse books in the 1930s including Tally Ho!, Echoing Horn, and Three White Stockings, which is horse POV story that does involve two horses. She was English, which feels like it relates the trumpet to a hunting horn reference.

But there's hardly any information about her except for people who collect rare horse books, and I'm probably missing something that would be obvious to someone who went thru a real horse phase.

[selkie]

"Don't ask him what an assy-thingummy is. He's only longing to be asked."

This line lives in my head rent-free and is 100% responsible for my not ranting about rhyme scheme much of the time, thus sparing the general population. Rhyme scheme is definitely one of my "Who put a quarter in THAT jukebox" special interests.

[selkie]

I think it's got to be Mary Roberts Rinehart? She was so prolific, for a person who was always writing the same book.

[sovay]

So what was the title of Mary Myrtle Miven's idyllic love story?

It's the elusive My Heart Is Like a Trumpet. Any thoughts?

[sovay]

I think it's got to be Mary Roberts Rinehart? She was so prolific, for a person who was always writing the same book.

Hey, I liked the hospital melodrama!

[sovay]

I vaguely suspect it might be Moyra Charlton, who wrote several horse books in the 1930s including Tally Ho!, Echoing Horn, and Three White Stockings, which is horse POV story that does involve two horses. She was English, which feels like it relates the trumpet to a hunting horn reference.

I don't think I know her at all! And I read a lot of Marguerite O'Henry at the appropriate developmental phase. That's great. Thank you for throwing her name into the ring, horse-POV and all.

[galdrin]

Hmm - coulda been worse.
It could have been a viola.

[kitewithfish]

I really thought it was Marguerite O'Henry! Timeline doesn't work out, her horse books come out after 1945, but it's almost perfect. I more I think, the more I suspect there really is some niche joke being made there that we're just never going to find. Sigh.

[nineweaving]

Oh, of course the chafing dish is suggestive! It features in that fine old sea-song:

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light
And he slept with a mermaid one fine night
Out of this union there came three
A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!

Of the alliterative pair,

One’s on exhibit as a talking fish
The other was served in a chafing dish.

So there you have it; sex with an unnaturally natural being. I think chimeric counts as Queer.

And I want Edward Gorey's illustration of that Chafing Dish.

Nine

[ethelmay]

Miven, not Mivens, sorry. I was thinking she might actually have been called Niven, but Google gives me a whole lot of David Niven and Bring On the Empty Horses (which I remember greatly enjoying when I was in middle school - it came out when I was around twelve or thirteen).

[sovay]

David Niven and Bring On the Empty Horses (which I remember greatly enjoying when I was in middle school - it came out when I was around twelve or thirteen).

Ten years ago I picked up at a copy at, actually, a library sale and gave it to spatch. (I have since read it myself, of course.)

[sovay]

And I want Edward Gorey's illustration of that Chafing Dish.

One of Ogdred Weary's finest.

[asakiyume]

"... when does the chafing dish arrive?"

[vr_trakowski]

Grace Livingston Hill is a long shot - but she wrote romances (mostly Christian-flavored), including The Sound of the Trumpet, published in 1943. Unfortunately it's not one I've read, so I don't know if it includes any horses.

Her Wikipedia page doesn't have a complete list of titles, but the fan site has quite a few.

[ethelmay]

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/the-woman-who-crossed-the-cascades-and-inspired-batman/ is interesting. (I got there because horses are mentioned in the context of Mary Roberts Rinehart.)

[sovay]

Grace Livingston Hill is a long shot

I have definitely never heard of her! I love the writers this conversation is bringing out of the woodwork.

I like the sound of By Way of the Silverthorns (1941), even though I am sure I would have been allergic to the spirituality. I barely manage Elizabeth Goudge.

[sovay]

is interesting.

It is! Thank you for the pointer. I'd heard the claim about Batman, but never encountered any of her travel writing, or even any of her nonfiction. "The Middle Boy, who is by way of being a chemist and has systematically blown himself up with home-made explosives for years—the Middle Boy found at least a dozen silver mines of fabulous value, although the men in the party insisted that his specimens were iron pyrites and other unromantic minerals."

[vr_trakowski]

Yes, I wouldn't necessarily recommend her stuff - some of it is quite thoughtful and some of it is appalling - but I do enjoy several of them.

There's a few that are non-spiritual, like The Best Man or Aunt Crete's Emancipation, but they're all very much of their time (period-typical sexism and racism). Though it is fun sometimes to read about an era when small planes were unrestricted and one could take a train almost anywhere.

It's such an interesting puzzle you've found and I hope someday you can find a pointer to the actual book! There must be a bit of trivia hidden somewhere...