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AS BROADCAST ON NBC
BY DOROTHY THOMPSON
■ Drawn by a master — a revealing word portrait of our first lady of letters who won world acclaim in seven short years
Reprinted from one of Miss Thompson's talks on the Hour of Charm program, with Phil Spitalny and his all girl orchestra, heard every Monday night on NBC-Red, sponsored by the General Electric Company.
IT IS just fifteen years since an article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, signed by a totally unknown name. It was called "In China, Too," and the author was Pearl Buck. The editors informed the interested public that the writer was a teacher in Nanking, China.
Next year the Forum published a little story — a little piece called "Beauty in China." And, thereafter, until 1931, the name of Pearl Buck occasionally appeared in the magazine, Asia, in church publications, such as the Christian Herald and the Christian Century, but never once in a popular magazine of large circulation. So one can say that, by and large, until 1931, very few people ever heard of Pearl Buck.
Then all of a sudden, everybody who reads heard of Pearl Buck. For she wrote a novel called "The Good Earth," which was a best seller in the United States for nearly two years, making a record that had not been held by any book since "Quo Vadis," which was published in my childhood. And that book of hers went around the world. It was read in twenty languages, including the language of the country about which it was written: China.
That was only seven years ago. Seven years ago, Pearl Buck was an unknown writer. Today she is the winner of the most coveted literary prize on earth: The famous Nobel Prize. It's a very substantial reward. Its winner receives a large gold medal, a handsomely embossed testimonial, and a check. This year the check is for thirty-nine thousand dollars, and Mrs. Buck received her prize, at a great and impressive festivity, from the hands of the King of Sweden.
In the midst of war, revolution, international tensions, national, racial, and class hatreds, the Nobel Prizes seem like a curious anachronism. They were founded by a great Swedish chemist and industrialist, Alfred Nobel, who believed in science, (Continued on page 35)