America has a genius for celebrating the eccentricities of family. There are always aunts and uncles coming out of the woodwork with strange fancies and occluded mindsets; cousins who are occasional jailbirds and/or lunatic backpackers; and don't forget the siblings that join cults or found them.
Parents and grandparents appear as buffoons or throwers of gasconades. And that doesn't even begin to cover the faux ancestors that humorists like to invent; horse rustlers who wound up as guests at a necktie party or sea captains that braved the Straights of Malacca for jewel-encrusted jade Buddhas or to bring home an exotic spouse with batik tattoo.
It's a fabulous tradition that possibly reached its height back in 1934, with the publication of James Thurber's brief autobiography and family bestiary, "My Life and Hard Times".
Thurber details, with a reporter's dispassionate eye, the eccentricities and downright lunacy of his immediate family. With chapter headings such as "The Night the Ghost Got In" or "The Night the Bed Fell Down", you get the feeling that the Thurber household had few restful evenings -- and you'd be right. The book, which runs only 138 pages, runs the gamut from city panics to gun play to rogue pets. Thurber wastes little time or energy with run-on sentences or big words. His prose bristles with brief declarative sentences. A semi colon is as rare in his writing as a pork chop at a Jewish wedding.
What this means is that the reader is treated to a glimpse of many fanciful characters without any fanciful prose.
This would be a hard book to dislike for any reason. The humor is robust at times, at times rather sly and coy. But it's written without an iota of malice or venom, just lots of homespun bewilderment. This is how America used to laugh at itself -- and it's sorely missed in today's supercharged environment.
Copies on Amazon.com are available for as little as one cent (plus shipping and handling).
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