"Erik Dorn" was published. "Gargoyles" took form. Hecht wrote a play in
eight days. He experimented with a long manuscript to be begun and
finished within eighteen hours. "One Thousand and One Afternoons"
continued to pour out of him. His letter-box became too small for his
mail. He was bombarded with eulogies, complaints, arguments, "tips," and
solicitations. His clipping bureau rained upon him violent reviews of
"Dorn." His publishers submerged him with appeals for manuscript.
Syndicates wired him, with "name your own terms." New York editors tried
to steal him. He continued to write "One Thousand and One Afternoons." He
became weary, nervous and bilious; he spent four days in bed, and gave up
tobacco. Nothing stopped "One Thousand and One Afternoons." One a day, one
a day! Did the flesh fail, and topics give out, and the typewriter became
an enemy? No matter. The venturesome undertaking of writing good newspaper
sketches, one per diem, had to be carried out. We wondered how he did it.
We saw him in moods when he almost surrendered, when the strain of
juggling with novels, plays and with contracts, revises, adblurbs,
sketches, nearly finished "One Thousand and One Afternoon." But a year
went by, and through all that year there had not been an issue of _The
Chicago Daily News_ without a Ben Hecht sketch.
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