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Elementary , My Dear
Literary Detective Tracks Down Harben
There are many different
kinds of detective stories. On
one hand there is Sherlock
Holmes with his analytical
British mind; on another are
the shoot-first-reason-later
characters of Mickey Spillane.
There is also the gin-guzzling,
wise-cracking Nick Charles who
sprang from the pen of Dashiell
Hammett. But that’s not all.
Dr. James K. Murphy,
assistant professor of English,
has been involved in his own
detective story for the past four
years. His story centers around
the search for an elusive
literary figure named Will N.
Harben.
Dr. Murphy has covered a
good deal of the eastern United
States in his quest for the
writer, doing research in places
ranging from Dalton, Ga. to
Harper and Row publishers in
New York. This detective story
should come to an end next
year, though, when the
assistant professor adds a book
about Harben to the Twayne
Series of American Authors, a
collection of critical
biographies about literary
figures.
Harben is, according to Dr.
Murphy, a “somewhat ob
scure” writer who produced
mainly regional novels and
short stories. Bom and raised
in Dalton, the author reached
the peak of his popularity from
about 1890 until his death in
1919, and has been largely
forgotten since.
What, then, would cause an
ordinarily sane assistant
professor to spend four years
researching a writer like
Harben?
For Dr. Murphy there was a
lot of sleuthing to be done
between his initial acquain
tance with Harben and the
Twayne series manuscript.
Most of the writer’s 30 novels
and numerous short stories had
been out of print for several
years, which, to say the least,
made finding his work difficult.
“It was in Dalton,” the
assistant professor said, “that I
found a Harben gold mine. Will
N. was something of a local-boy
made-good in that town, and the
public library had almost all of
his books. In fact, it was in
small northern Georgia towns
like Dalton that Harben set
most of his better works. He
could depict the mountain folk
of his day very accurately.”
It was also in Dalton that Dr.
Murphy met several people who
had known Harben personally.
He talked to Harben's old
friends, most of whom were in
their eighties, and visited the
writer’s family home.
Harben's relatives told Dr.
Murphy that the writer had
been a notorious practical joker
and related how he had once
surprised his ill-tempered in
laws with a complete set of his
works. When the in-laws got
around to opening the books
they found that they had a set of
publisher’s dummies with
totally blank pages inside.
Another anecdote described
how Harben had once gone to
the luvre in Paris and begun
talking in Choctaw dialect to
rid himself of a pesky French
guide.
The assistant professor’s
search for Harben had other
lighter moments. In Dalton he
met an old gentleman who was
fond of a potent drink made
from bourbon and cranberry
juice. He also became
acqauinted with Harben’s
daughter who had never read
her father’s works. He con
vinced her to read some of the
novels, and she is now
researching her family tree.
Dr. Murphy discovered a
number of insights into Har
ben’s character too. He found
that the writer had been quite a
ladies’ man, and that he
preferred the company of a
group of Bohemians to that of
the literary society of the day.
The Harben trail carried Dr.
Murphy to “dusty libraries all
over the Southeast,” and he
spent days in the rare book
rooms at Emory, Vanderbilt,
and other universities.
Doing more literary detective
work, the assistant professor
went to Harben’s publisher’s,
Harper and Row in New York
City. He spent several days
there, “skulking about in the
bowels of the place," searching
for Harben’s old publishing
contracts.
“Harben’s contracts had been
misplaced over the years,” he
said, “but we finally found them
in a dustry corner deep inside
Harper and Row. Harben was a
very popular writer during his
time, and had a number of best
sellers. They even made’cheap
editions’ of his books to sell at
railroad stations.”
“I first became acquainted
with Will Harben while I was
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DR. JAMES K. MURPHY
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THI WIST GIOROIAN. MARCH 7, 1471
looking around for a doctoral
dissertation subject,” Dr.
Murphy said. “Dr. Mathews
(head of the English depart
ment) mentioned Harben to me
and said that very little had
been written about him. I got
interested, and since the field
was wide open, wrote my
dissertation on the man.”
While working on the
dissertation, Dr. Murphy wrote
to the Twayne series and
suggested a book on Harben
The publishers of the series
said, “no,” adding that he
should try again later. Three
years later Dr. Murphy wrote
the Twayne people again and
this time was accepted. The
manuscript of the book is due
at the publishers this Sep
tember, which means that the
assistant professor’s work
should hit the streets in one or
two years.
“Harben is a minor figure in
American literature and no
attempt is made to promote him
to major stature,” Dr. Murphy
said. “But after all my research
I have found that his work has
merit and should be at least
familiar to Georgians."
7