I had intended to review some new books by now, but guess what happened just after the week with no laptop at all? Next Kindle "updated" in such a way that even the new book I had made time to read, review, and schedule a review for its actual publication date in May, was suddenly "old, incompatible," and unable to be opened. So here is a nice review of a vintage book.
Title: The View from Chivo
Author: H. Allen Smith
Date: 1971
Publisher: Trident (Simon & Schuster)
ISBN: none
Length: 275 pages
Quote: “Their festivals were organized...around the most important industrial or agricultural products of their areas. Chivo County didn’t have any.”
H. Allen Smith was a comic writer who enjoyed great success in the mid-twentieth century. It’s not hard to guess why he fell out of favor. He could be comical on many levels at a time, but his comedy always relied on politically incorrect stereotypes.
Since my stereotype is that Texans consider themselves above whining about being ridiculed, in the way members of some other groups might whine, I propose as an example this wisecrack: “The four greatest pleasures afforded by life, in the code of the Texan (according to a study made by Dr. Dewey D. Mook, the distinguished Oklahoma psychotechnologist) are (1) outsmarting an opponent, preferably a close relative, in a business deal; (2) being seen in church; (3) sexual gratification, and (4) full participation in community festivals.”
As late as 1971 the code of the American Who Wished to Be Credited with a Sense of Humor, which was just about every American, mandated that Texans must laugh first, loudest, and longest at this kind of jokes. Social change took place rather quickly. Smith had similar jokes about other demographic groups, too. As long as people were being stereotyped as quirky but not, y'know, loathsome, it was all supposed to be funny.
Anyway, The View from Chivo is one of a series of slapstick comedies describing the adventures of a super-rich cat, his young-rich-and-gorgeous human guardians, and the small-town types they meet while travelling with the cat, and they’re all stereotyped in what have since become offensive ways. Of course, stereotypes aren’t the only jokes. There are literary jokes, mock histories, mock quotations. There are awful puns, as when an old man doesn’t react to being called a “windbreaker,” so the rude person elucidates further: “old gasbag.” There are oldfashioned “dirty jokes,” as told by middle school boys who lump sex, digestion, and all bodily illnesses together as gross-outs. There are perhaps unintended anachronisms: a character described as young in 1971 was deploring an Italian tour guide’s unfamiliarity with American authors in 1951. There’s some classic vintage ridicule of rock music, and scenes and lyrics to prove that if this book had been made into a movie the soundtrack would have contained plenty of rock music.There are author-intrusive self-deprecations: an elaborate description of scenery ends with “It takes a lot out of a man to write like that!”; a compound-complex sentence segues into “look at that sentence if I’m not careful I’ll start writing like that guy Faulkner and win the Nobel Prize...” Eventually all these jokes coalesce into a sort of slapstick-comedy plot, although it remains, consistently, more slapstick than plot.
It never happened, never could have happened, and wasn’t even made into a movie...but if you enjoy totally unfashionable jokes, The View from Chivo should be good for several days’ worth of chuckles.
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