SOURCE: “Ben Hecht: Pagliacci of the Fire Escape,” in Midwest Portraits: A Book of Memories and Friendships, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1923, pp. 305–57.

In the following essay, Hansen presents biographical information and personal recollections of Hecht, finding such literary influences in Hecht's fiction as Wyndham Lewis, James Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

I

“Ben Hecht is an iconoclast,” says one, “a smasher of idols”; “Ben Hecht is an intellectual mountebank, an insincere fiddler,” says another. “Ben Hecht tramples on that which men have built up through the centuries and hallowed with their tears,” says one; “and destroys shams and that which is foul and diseased,” says another. “Ben Hecht is a combination of street urchin and skeptical intellectual,” says a poet; “he is the incomprehensible lover,” says his friend, “the man who hovers always between ecstasy and disillusionment; who welcomes the dawn with a sneer and folds away the twilight with...