SOURCE: "A Riot of Obscene Wit," in Columbia Library Columns, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, May, 1982, pp. 19-28.

In the following essay, Cohen discusses the merit and notoriety of Painted Veils.

"The other day Huneker came into my office with the ms. of his novel," wrote H. L. Mencken in 1919 about Pointed Veils, the holograph manuscript of which is now in the Solton and Julia Engel Collection. "The thing turned out to be superb—the best thing he has ever done. But absolutely unprintable. It is not merely ordinarily improper; it is a riot of obscene wit." The novel was the work of James Gibbons Huneker, the well-known journalist and critic who at age sixty-two had written his first full-length work of fiction. "The old boy has put into it every illicit epigram that he has thought of in 40 years," Mencken went on, "and some of them are almost perfect...