Book Review: Archy and Mehitabel
Author: Don Marquis
Date: 1927
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: none
Length: 252 pages
Illustrations: drawings by George Herriman
Quote: “We...discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about on the keys...We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems.”
My regular readers are already acquainted with Archy, the cockroach reincarnation of “a vers libre bard” who wanted to go on writing free verse, and with his good buddy Mehitabel, the alley cat who lives for the moment. Normal cats flatten cockroaches; Mehitabel made a pet and confidante of Archy. What can I add? At the time of writing this review I had for sale a 1930 copy in good condition. It's been sold. I can get another copy.
If you’re not familiar with Don Marquis’s animal characters, I’ll add that Archy had clear memories of being human and took an interest in human affairs. Of course, being an animal, he was particularly interested in the way humans treat animals. He wrote on behalf of chickens “that a hen regrets it / when they wring her neck / as much as an oriole...” and transcribed a “Song of Pete the Pup,” “o master let us go again / and play beside the sea,” and so on. And, in human life, Archy had been an opponent of Prohibition (like Marquis), so he wrote on that topic too...but you have to read the book.
I have a copy of that book, no caps a struggle to read . Found in an old basement.
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