Fannie Hurst

Star-dust: a Story of an American Girl Fannie Hurst

Publisher Marketing: When Lilly Becker eked out with one hand that most indomitable of pianoforte selections, Rubinstein's "Melody in F," her young mind had a habit of transcending itself into some such illusory realm as this: Springtime seen lacily through a phantasmagoria of song. A very floral sward. Fountains that tossed up coloratura bubbles of sheerest aria and a sort of Greek frieze of youth attitudinized toward herself. This frieze was almost invariably composed of Estelle Foote, a successful rival in a class candidacy for the sponge-and-basin monitorship; Sydney Prothero, infallible of spitball aim; Miss Lare with her spectacles very low on her nose and a powdering of chalk dust down her black alpaca; Flora Kemble with infinitely fewer friendship bangles on her silver link bracelet; Roy Kemble, kissing her yellow, rather than yanking her brown, braids. And then suddenly, apropos of nothing except the sweet ache of Lilly's little soul, the second movement would freeze itself into a proscenium arch of music, herself, like a stalagmite, its slim center. At this point, "Melody in F" veils itself in a mist of arpeggios, and Mrs. Becker, who invariably, during the after-school practice hour, sat upstairs with Mrs. Kemble in her sunny second-story back, would call down through the purposely opened floor register. "Lilly, not so fast on that part." Contributor Bio:  Hurst, Fannie Fannie Hurst (1889-1968) was born in Ohio, grew up in St. Louis, and spent her adult life in New York City. She is the author of seventeen novels and more than 250 short stories, as well as plays, screenplays, memoirs, essays, and articles. Her best-remembered works are those turned into films, including Imitation of Life, Back Street, Humoresque, The Younger Generation, and Young at Heart. She was also active in a variety of progressive Jewish, social justice, labor, peace, and women's organizations.