Question

Write essay the surprise guest.

Answer 1

just finished reading Edgar A. Guest: A Biography—Royce Howes's very swell, 1953 account of the one-time Detroit Free Press copy boy who went on, in Horatio Alger-like fashion, to become probably the most prolific and popular poet in U.S. history. I'm certainly no stranger to Guest—check out an Edgar Guest Calendar here, Chrysler's Edgar Guest television spot here, and a scrapbook full of Guest's poetry here—but the biography stunned me nevertheless. In telling the story of how Guest's "ascent to fame has kept absolute step with Detroit's march from provincial city to industrial capital of the world," Howes (a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and crime novelist) is at points possibly even more saccharine than the "people's poet" himself was, but the facts are simply astonishing.