Description:A 1949 reprint of a 1928 classic by Joseph Moncure March, with illustrations by Steele Savage, and an introduction by Louis Untermeyer.
Louis Untermeyer says: I've read The Wild Party three times — once to myself, once out loud to a poet, once (even louder) to a gang of mere human beings. ... All I am certain of is that this is one of the most rapidly moving, vividly projected, highly exciting manuscripts I have read in years. It is frankly vulgar, but rightly so; for the people and the scene it depicts are the very essence of vulgarity. It is brutal, cynical, ugly, sensational — but so is the milieu with which it deals. And, first and last, it lives. Wildly, cheaply, drunkenly, filthily, and accurately, it lives. ... It is, I repeat, both repulsive and fascinating, vicious and vivacious, uncompromising, unashamed . . . and unremittingly powerful.
Technically, it is an amazing tour de force. There is not a soft spot anywhere, nor weakness either of speech or situation. It never lets down; the tempo alone would carry any reader along. I have only one fear: that the Purity League will get after the volume in detail if not in toto.
Not that I would recommend any general toning down. . .