HOBSON, Laura (Keane) Z(ametkin)

Born 18 June 1900, New York, New York; died 1986

Also wrote under: Peter Field

Daughter of Michael and Adella Kean Zametkin; married Thayer Hobson, 1930 (divorced 1935); children: Michael, Christopher

Most of Laura Z. Hobson's childhood was spent on Long Island with her mother and father, a Russian émigré. Stefan Ivarin, the hero of her 1964 novel First Papers, closely resembles her father, who felt he must earn the right to his naturalization papers as a liberal editor of a Yiddish newspaper and an adamant labor leader. The warm portrait of the Ivarin family is simultaneously accurately detailed and sentimental in its evocation of the lower East Side life as it moved from the relative calm at the turn of the century to the exciting, overcrowded pre-World War I period.

Hobson's background in advertising and publishing greatly influenced her fiction. She worked as an advertising copywriter, as a reporter with the New York Evening Post, and until 1940 as promotion director of Time, as well as writing short stories for popular magazines such as Collier's, Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, and Cosmopolitan. With her husband, Thayer, Hobson wrote two westerns. Divorced in 1935, she lived with her adopted sons Michael and Christopher in New York City, where she continued to contribute to popular magazines and newspapers as well as to publish short fiction throughout her career as a novelist.

Hobson's first adult novel written on her own, The Trespassers (1943), establishes the liberal tone and controversial subject matter of all of her work. The double plot involves both a love story and a moral stand on the part of a strong, successful woman and a powerful radio tycoon. Hobson is quite adept at presenting the minutia of the well-to-do New York liberal, including the psychological intricacies of the male/female relationship as the lovers take opposing sides on the issue of the quota system that prevented refugees from immigrating to the United States. One of the fascinating aspects of Hobson's fiction is the consistent appearance of a strong-willed liberal female career woman who endangers her love relationship by supporting a cause—in this case the liberalization of the immigration laws.

Gentleman's Agreement (1947) analyzes the social and economic effects of anti-Semitism by tracing the experience of Phil Green, a Gentile magazine writer, pretending he's a Jew to gather material for a series on anti-Semitism. Hobson dramatizes so sharply the pain caused by anti-Semitism in the lives of Phil and those involved in his research that the reader identifies with and understands the subtle permeation of prejudice throughout the American culture, particularly in the liberal Eastern establishment. The weakest element of the novel is the formulaic melodrama of the love relationship between Phil and Kathy Lacey, his editor's niece.

Her most successful novel, Gentleman's Agreement sold millions of copies and was translated into many languages. The film version received the New York Film Critics Award and the Academy Award for best picture of 1947. The effects of the notoriety surrounding the literary success, including the Hollywood ordeal, supplied much of the subject matter and insight for Hobson's 1951 novel, The Celebrity.

Hobson's Consenting Adult (1975) manifests the same optimistic liberal philosophy as her other work, and thereby allows for the same personal identification with the protagonist, Tessa Lynn, the mother of a homosexual son, Jeff. After extensive attempts to change Jeff, Tessa discovers she is the one who must change. Consenting Adult, however, does not have the powerful impact of Gentleman's Agreement. The reader can readily empathize with Tessa and marvel at the exhausting research she does to publish a book for gay people and their parents. But Hobson's style, the slick prose of popular magazines, still tends toward righteous passion, a sentimental if sincere cry for tolerance that might sear the conscience if it were not for the necessary pat ending: "Consenting adults, she thought, and a fullness rushed to her heart. To consent, to assent, to be in harmony, to give your blessing. I give my blessing, all my blessings. Then I am a consenting adult too."

Hobson's fictional concerns reflect her personal zeal for tolerance and understanding. Her novels are for the most part propaganda novels and suffer artistically from the strength of the message overpowering the style. But Hobson is an effective storyteller, and Gentleman's Agreement, though somewhat dated, still succeeds in creating a sharp awareness of the insidiousness and pain of bigotry.

Other Works:

Dry Gulch Adams (with T. Hobson, 1934). Outlaws Three (with T. Hobson, 1934). A Dog of His Own (1941). The Other Father (1950). I'm Going to Have a Baby (1967). The Tenth Month (1971). Over and Above (1979).

Bibliography:

Reference works:

CA (1976). CB (Sept. 1947). TCAS.

Other references:

Chicago Sun Book-Week (2 Mar. 1947). Life (27 Nov. 1964). NYHTB (9 Mar. 1947, 8 Nov. 1964). Saturday Review (27 Feb. 1965). Time (29 May 1950, 9 Nov. 1953).

—SUZANNE ALLEN