The Maimie Papers: Letters from an Ex-Prostitute by Maimie Pinzer (review)

54Rocky Mountain Review of truth and the individual's part in its realization permeated his thinking and found their way into nearly all his major work" (71-72). Twain's Joan is in essence a (William) Jamesian heroine whose "submission to [her inner] voices constitutes an embodiment and not an avoidance of authentic action and independent thinking" (104). Horn's third chapter, on The Mysterious Stranger, is perhaps his most sound. It provides the best evidence for real interpénétration between the two writers, because Twain worked on his Stranger manuscripts when he actually knew James, and Horn had occasion to examine Twain's own annotated copy ofJames's The Varieties ofReligious Experience. Horn's theoretical-methodological problem is that the connections between James and Twain are slim indeed, sometimes arcane as well as interesting. It might have been easier for the reader to make such connections if the author had placed passages from, say, Pragmatism and Joan ofArc in parallel conjunctive position as often as possible. Too often the reader is forced to unpack and distill several pages ofargument on James and relate it ten pages later to Twain. Ideas wander, and premises become tangential. Yet the comparison is interesting and quite unexpected. Few besides specialists in the period would have guessed that the philosopher-brother of a writer Twain purported to despise as effete would exercise any kind of influence on him. And the trajectories that Horn traces are worth investigating. The best written part of the book is the Afterword, "Further Soundings," in which Horn reaches his conclusions. For those who wish to read this book, this chapter might be the best place to begin. M. L. STAPLETON Stephen F. Austin State University MAIMIE PEVZER. The Maimie Papers: Letters from an Ex-Prostitute. NY: Feminist Press, 1997. 463p. In reprinting this 1977 publication that features the 1910-1922 correspondence of a literate "reformed" prostitute, the Feminist Press adds a brief afterword by Ruth Rosen and a "Literary Afterword" by Florence Howe. Unfortunately, these do not acknowledge the explosion of scholarly interest in women's studies; Rosen's statement that "the majority of historical studies on prostitution have tended to be weak in conceptualization as well as anecdotal" (xl) is disproved by such works as Anne Butler's Daughters ofJoy, Sisters ofMisery: Prostitutes in theAmerican West, among others. Howe's comments in the "new" afterword originated from a 1978 lecture. Occasioned by the endowment of the Helen Rose Scheurer Jewish Women's Series, this reprint of The Maimie Papers includes correspondence from 934 typescript pages of 143 letters located at Radcliffe College. Maimie's correspondent, Fanny Quincy Howe, a Bostonian, was inspired to Book Reviews55 begin the epistolaryjourney of 12 years by social worker Herbert Welsh. As textual editor, Sue Davidson chose those letters that provide a window on the social history of the early twentieth century. "Maimie" (a pseudonym) was able to write at length and with clarity and grace because she grew up in a middle-class Jewish home in Philadelphia, a comfortable childhood until the murder ofher father when she was 13. Forced into employment to help family finances, Maimie did housework and clerking at a department store, the latter leading to "going out with the boys" (xlix). When Maimie stayed away nights, her mother—with the assistance of an uncle who probably sexually abused her earlier—had her placed in prison and then in the Magdalen Home for wayward girls. When she was released from the home at century's end, Maimie left her family, moving to Boston with a lover and working as an actor and nude model. By 1905, Maimie had spent almost an entire year in a charity hospitals in New York and Philadelphia, the victim ofvenereal disease that caused the removal ofher left eye and over 30 surgical procedures, which, in turn, led to morphine addiction. Even with this disfigurement, she married Albert Jones in 1906, an off-again/on-again relationship that lasted some ten years when she divorced and then married Ira Benjamin, a "sweetheart from adolescence" (1). Within that time frame, Maimie took on various jobs, ranging from soliciting ads, doing secretarial work at a meat...