Synopses & Reviews
Harking from the golden age of fiction set in American suburbiathe school of John Updike and Cheeverthis work from the great American humorist Peter De Vries looks with laughter upon its lawns, its cocktails, and its slightly unreal feeling of comfort. Without a Stitch in Time, a selection of forty-six articles and stories written for the New Yorker between 1943 and 1973, offers pun-filled autobiographical vignettes that reveal the source of De Vriess nervous wit: the cognitive dissonance between his Calvinist upbringing in 1920s Chicago and the all-too-perfect postwar world. Noted as much for his verbal fluidity and wordplay as for his ability to see humor through pain, De Vries will delight both new readers and old in this uproarious modern masterpiece.
Review
"A complete delight from beginning to end." The New York Times
Review
"Classic humor writing from a fantasy slumber party of writers." Vanity Fair
Synopsis
When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he called it a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founders description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists in the modern era—among them Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Calvin Trillin, Garrison Keillor, Ian Frazier, Roy Blount, Jr., Steve Martin, and Christopher Buckley. Fierce Pajamas is a treasury of laughter from the magazine W. H. Auden called the “best comic magazine in existence.”
Synopsis
Without A Stitch in Time is a collection of articles written for The New Yorker: gently satirical stories about Peters childhood in Chicago, his various jobs, the move East to new York, and family life in suburbia and beyond. The stories date from 1943 to 1873 and give readers a sense of where De Vries strangely nervous wit comes from: verbal sparks from the cognitive dissonance between his strict and abstemious Calvinist upbringing in the 1920s and the world of 1950s Mad Men suburbia.
About the Author
Peter De Vries (191093) was the man responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms as Nostalgia aint what it used to be” and Deep down, hes shallow.” He was the author of many books, including the classics Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
A Hard Day at the Office
Slice of Life
Flesh and the Devil
Mud in Your Eye
Afternoon of a Faun
Interior with Figures
Good Boy
Tulip
Every Leave That Falls
Compulsion
Scene
A Crying Need
In Defense of Self-pity; or, Prelude to Lowenbriiu
The High Ground; or, Look, Ma, I'm Explicating
The Independent Voter at Twilight
The Conversational Ball
Adventures of a People Buff
Heart
Requiem for a Noun; or, Intruder in the Dusk
The House of Mirth
Split-level
Till the Sands of the Desert Grow Cold
From There to Infinity
Overture
Reuben, Reuben
Touch and Go
Fall Guy
You and Who Else?
Nobody's Fool
Block
Double or Nothing
Journey to the Center of the Room
Different Cultural Levels Eat Here
The Man Who Read Waugh
The Art of Self-dramatization; or, Forward from Schrecklichkeit
The Children's Hour; or, Hopscotch and Soda
The Irony of It All
Laughter in the Basement
Part of the Family Picture
You Know Me Alice
A Walk in the Country; or, How to Keep Fit to Be Tied
The Last of the Bluenoses
Scones and Stones
Forever Panting
James Thurber: The Comic Prufrock
Exploring Inner Space