Michael Arlen

Michael Arlen – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Discover the life of Michael Arlen (November 16, 1895 – June 23, 1956): his journey from Dikran Kouyoumdjian to celebrated novelist, his signature style, major works like The Green Hat, and some of his poignant quotes that capture the disillusionment and glamour of the early 20th century.

Introduction

Michael Arlen was a novelist, essayist, short-story writer, playwright, and scriptwriter whose work came to define a certain mood of the 1920s: the smoky elegance, social desperation, glamour tinged with alienation. Though he is less widely read today, in his time he influenced both popular and literary spheres. His best-known novel, The Green Hat, became a bestseller and was adapted into films and stage plays, helping to cement his reputation across the Atlantic.

Early Life and Family

Michael Arlen was born Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian on November 16, 1895, in Ruse (also known as Rousse) in Bulgaria.

In 1901 the family moved to England to escape persecution in the Ottoman Empire and for better prospects.

As a young boy in England, Arlen experienced a form of cultural dislocation: Armenian roots, Bulgarian birth, British upbringing. That tension between belonging and exile would subtly color much of his sensibility as a writer.

Youth, Education & Literary Beginnings

Arlen attended Malvern College in England. Edinburgh University in Scotland, studying medicine initially, though he did not complete that path. London in the mid-1910s to pursue a writing career.

By about 1916, he was contributing essays, short pieces, and journalistic material to London journals and periodicals under his birth name, before later adopting “Michael Arlen” as his pen name.

His early literary publications include The London Venture (1920) (a book of essays / autobiographical London-inspired pieces) which helped position him in literary London.

Career and Major Works

Style & Themes

Arlen’s writing is often described as “Arlenesque”—characterized by vivid colloquial prose, a certain emotional detachment, ironic wit, elegant cruelty, and an awareness of social facades.

He moved in the circles of modernist writers and London society, and his work often dramatized the tension between inner lives and social display, the gap between appearance and feeling.

Breakthrough: The Green Hat

His signature success was The Green Hat (published in 1924). A Woman of Affairs, was released in 1928 (with Greta Garbo) with alterations to accommodate censor norms.

Arlen also wrote The Romantic Lady (1921), Piracy (1922), These Charming People, Young Men in Love (1927), Men Dislike Women (1931), among others.

He didn’t restrict himself to social novels. He explored gothic and psychological themes (e.g. in Ghost Stories), political and speculative ideas (e.g. Man’s Mortality), and even detective / mystery writing (e.g. “The Gay Falcon”).

One of his plays is Good Losers (1931), co-written with Walter Hackett, which enjoyed a theatrical run in London’s West End.

Later Career & Exile

By the 1930s and 1940s, his popularity waned somewhat, and he attempted to pivot to more political commentary. Tatler) and eventually relocated to the United States.

In his later years, he faced creative and personal struggles, health issues, and diminished literary acclaim. He died on June 23, 1956 in New York City, aged 60.

Historical & Cultural Context

• Arlen’s rise coincided with the 1920s, when post-war disillusionment, urban modernity, the Jazz Age, and shifting social mores created fertile ground for literature that probed beneath glamor.

• He participated in London’s literary modernist circles and was associated (or at least in conversation) with figures like D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Nancy Cunard, and others.

• His work reflects the tensions of identity, exile, and alienation that many writers of immigrant or diasporic backgrounds confronted.

• The popular fascination in his era with celebrity, glamour, scandal, and nightlife gave his novels broader appeal. But the moral undercurrent and emotional cost in his characters often challenged shallow readings.

Legacy and Influence

• In his own time, Arlen was one of the most commercially successful novelists in Britain; his novels sold widely and were adapted to stage and film.

• Though his reputation declined later in the 20th century, literary critics and modernist scholars continue to reexamine his work as emblematic of 1920s consciousness, exile literature, and social psychological drama.

• His stylistic influence—wry diction, social irony, blending of upper-class settings with emotional darkness—resonates in writers who explore the gap between appearance and interior life.

• Some of his works (especially The Green Hat) remain of interest to students of 20th-century literature, particularly those investigating the “bright young things” era or interwar social life.

Personality and Traits

Arlen cultivated a persona of elegance, sophistication, and cosmopolitan sensibility. He was known for his impeccable manners and style—some accounts mention a yellow Rolls-Royce and a dandy’s attention to dress.

Yet beneath the surface, his work reveals a more melancholy sensibility: often a sense of estrangement, moral ambiguity, disillusionment with ostentation. He could depict social glitter with critical distance.

His immigrant background, shifting national identities, and outsider status likely contributed to his keen observations of belonging and exclusion.

Famous Quotes by Michael Arlen

Here are some memorable quotes attributed to Michael Arlen:

• “It is amazing how nice people are to you when they know you're going away.”

• “Surely one of the most visible lessons taught by the twentieth century has been the existence, not so much of a number of different realities, but of a number of different lenses with which to see the same reality.”

• “She not only expects the worst, but makes the worst of it when it happens.”

• “English is the great Wurlitzer of language, the most perfect all-purpose instrument ever invented.”

These lines reflect both his wit and his awareness of human fragility, perception, and social theater.

Lessons from Michael Arlen

1. Surface glamour often conceals deeper conflict
   Arlen teaches that fascination with appearances can mask emotional estrangement, hypocrisy, and longing.

2. Perception is subjective
   His quote about multiple lenses underscores that we each see reality filtered through personal experience—literature can help us confront that.

3. Belonging is complicated
   As someone with immigrant and diasporic roots, Arlen’s life and work show that identity is layered; acceptance often comes with alienation.

4. Style and sincerity can coexist
   He was a stylist, but his style often served emotional truth, not just decorative flair.

5. Adapt to change, but hold your voice
   In shifting from social romances to political and speculative work, he tried to remain relevant—even if less commercially successful.

Conclusion

Michael Arlen was neither American (as you initially noted) nor exclusively “modern” in facile ways—but as a British novelist of Armenian heritage who was born in Bulgaria, he defies easy categorization. His life and writing reflect the tensions of cosmopolitan modernity: glamour and alienation, facade and interior. The Green Hat remains his greatest claim to fame, but his broader oeuvre and his stylistic legacy continue to reward readers curious about the early 20th century’s social and emotional undercurrents.