Description

James Thorne Smith, Jr. (1892-1934) was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for his two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking, and ghosts, the racily illustrated editions of which sold in their millions in the 1930s, becoming equally popular when released as paperback editions in the 1950s. The son of a Navy commodore, Smith attended Dartmouth College, spent time in Greenwich Village as a part-time advertising agent, and then achieved meteoric success with the publication of Topper (also known as The Jovial Ghosts) in 1926. As hard-drinking as his famous characters, he was an early resident of Free Acres, a social experimental community in Berkeley Heights, NJ, and died of a heart attack while vacationing in Florida. The Night Life of the Gods (1931) narrates the story of quirky inventor Hunter Hawk who strikes gold when he invents a device that enables him to turn living matter into stone, and to reverse the process at will. After a chaotic field test he meets the stunning 900-year-old Megaera who teaches him how to turn stone into flesh, and together with a group of friends they set their sights on bringing to life the Roman gods in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among other comic incidents, Mercury shows himself to be an expert pickpocket, and Neptune wreaks havoc in the fish market.