Various

“ To be a New York newspaperman it is necessary to know Doc Perry’s and the fact that Cobb was born in Paducah.
There’s a reason for it other than the fact that Cobb is a big writer and a well-beloved man. That is: Cobb has made Paducah, and all the other Paducahs—in Kentucky, and Minnesota, and California, and Vermont—from which the rest of us came, live for us, in fiction which gets us as no foreign tale ever can. He makes one smell the soil—a thing that has been said of him so often that it is a platitude. ”

“ If, however, there is some idea in the proceeding of giving the lie to the ancient calumny that no one loves a fat man, then the occasion may serve a useful purpose. If it goes still further and seeks to establish affirmatively that every one loves one particular fat man, I heartily endorse the undertaking. If this is the theory, a number of dinners should be given to Irvin Cobb, and I should be glad to attend every one of them. ”

“ Irvin Cobb! Gentle, keen, loyal and truth-telling—the best ever.
—Wm. Travers Jerome
Certainly I appreciate Cobb! I appreciated him long before the mob got on to him. But the thing that galls me is—why the wrist watch? He came among us out west here, wearing a 27-jewelled, steam-heated, forty-dollar wrist watch and I assure you it is not being done here at all—at least not in our set. Shall we blame the Germans for this, or is Old Irv slipping? From my heart, I ask you to reason with him.
—C. E. Van Loan
This is the first time in five years I’ve regretted not being in New York. ”

“ We had—we still have—been letting England and France and Kulturland beat us ten to one in fiction. We had—we still have—a number of expert penmen who could do well with a wealthy young Yale grad. in a motor car; others, largely feminine, who could cheer our hearts with sweet stories about the Little Woman Who Always Smiled. But where were the writers who could go out on the street, really see the folks going by, and present them truthfully and interestingly in fiction? ”

“ Irvin is a true humorist in that he knows when not to be funny. In addition to numberless works of irresistible joviality, he has contributed to American literature some of its most serious notes, including stories of pathos and also of gruesome power, almost unrivalled. ”

“ With one lone short story, Cobb had elected himself as one member of that missing and much needed class of geniuses.
Stories of the South followed; other stories, too, of New York. The mere list of them, as they appear in the two books called “Back Home” and “The Escape of Mr. Trimm” is enough to bring thrills to every reader of fiction: The Belled Buzzard, An Occurrence up a Side Street, Another of Those Cub Reporter Stories, Smoke of Battle, The Exit of Anse Dugmore, Fishhead ”