Queed

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Henry Sydnor Harrison’s Queed:  A Novel was a best seller in America in 1911, and it still offers a solid escape for its readers more than 100 years later. 

Harrison’s protagonist is a twenty-something scholar who was given up for adoption as an infant.  Queed’s two life goals are to write the world’s definitive social science text and to find his father. 

Queed is an emotionless tunnel-visioned loner whose search for his father finds him living in a boarding house somewhere in the South, and working part-time as an associate editor for a local newspaper. Then the influence of his fellow boarders starts to intrude on his lifelong values.

Harrison describes Queed as:

“…a great editorial writer which was a minor but genuine activity.  He was a yet greater writer on social science, which was one of the supreme activities.  On this side, then, certainly the chief side, there was no question about the successfulness of his life.  His working life was, or would be before he was through, brilliantly successful.  But it had for some time been plain to him that he stopped short there.  He was a great workman, but that was all.  He was a superb rationalist; but after that he did not exist.”

Harrison’s style makes for an easy read with an intelligent vocabulary that enrichens the text.  There is a good deal of dialog, but it is generally clever and stimulating.  As Queed evolves a bit, Harrison stays true to some of Queed’s irascible qualities to lend it realism. And his plot has a twist or two to keep the story rolling through its satisfying conclusion. 

Queed:  A Novel is a book almost perfect as lighter fare between the heavy reads.

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