Description
Near Fine dust jacket illustrated with anniversary cake, very slight rub wear to upper front corner and upper spine, some soiling to inside edges. A mylar dust jacket has been added. The Near Fine binding is black cloth over boards, blue lettering on spine. Name written on front free end paper. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The book measures 8.2″ tall x 5.8″ wide.
About the book (from the dust jacket)
De Vries has done it again. Not that that should surprise any of us, considering his consistent record of high comic achievement. This differs from his other novels in that the setting is no longer Decency, Connecticut with its nearby industrial blot, Chickenfoot. Instead it is a Massachusetts mi-summer resort, to which Mrs. Marvel summons an ill-assorted family clan to celebrate fortieth wedding anniversary. On the old New England homestead, therefore, descend her four offspring, whose own marital records must be regarded as a testimonial to something other permanence
There is daughter Clara, who considers sexual intercourse an unnatural act; and her- let’s see- second husband, Harry Mercury, a TV comedian whose publicity agents are busy trying to arrange a feud with another comic, which blows up when the principals start fighting with one another over the repartee being prepared; Cotton Marvel, whose marriage went sour in one of those accent-on-living houses, with a stream running through it into which a family member has fallen and drowned, another son, Bushrod, militant liberal who can be coaxed back to the old home town only with the promise that he will find anti-Semitism there to fight, and who rides dramatically in to rescue a poor merchant named Aronson, who isn’t a Jew at all but a Swede, and lastly Evelyn Marvel, a bit of serious relief, who seems to have made it on the second try with a chap named Johnny Glimmergarden, who works off his sexual steam conducting long imaginary dialogues with Ibsen on what has happened to Woman since Nora slammed the door on the Doll’s House.
The New Order for sex brings with it a new kind of child. The Marvels’ grandchildren are split sets of kids who are shuttled among ex-mates for custodial week-ends under the watchful eyes of train conductors and airline stewardesses who can’t be everywhere at once, so some of the youngsters turn up missing for the “celebration.”” Current child guidance is illustrated by what happens to Beau Marvel when he tries to burn down his grandparent’s summerhouse: he is given a special treat as a means of correcting
the basic insecurity that made him do it.
The decline of mating among the second generation is deepened in a sub-plot concerning the third. Granddaughter Lee Mercury and one of her father’s writers, whom she sees while they are all in town, are both candidates for inversion, who save one another in a precariously tender union that launches us on into the future.
This dose of modernity nearly wrecks the marriage it has collected to celebrate. No trot through fields of clover for the old folks, but a great lark for the fortunate enough to accompany Mr. De Vries—on another has his generation’s number—on another of his satiric looks at things today.
