I read this book for the Mount
TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.
Sauce for the
Goose – Peter DeVries
DeVries (1910 - 1993) had his heyday as a popular writer of
comic novels from about 1956 (Comfort
Me with Apples) to the early 1970s (Mrs.
Wallop), after which his writing probably suffered from the typical shock
of turning sixty, “What the hell is happening? Could you tell me what is
happening? What the hell?”
This comic novel is from 1981, so it feels dated in 2018
naturally, but one wonders if it felt dated even in 1981. Its view of “Women’s
Lib” seems cantankerous, though DeVries had sympathy for women and their
dealing with the nonsense and rubbish that men routinely fork out. He also
tosses around the n-word in way that makes us wince in 2018, though one
suspects that DeVries wasn’t a racist, casual or otherwise.
As in many comic novels, the beginning is the high point,
with the heroine comparing dull rustic Terra Haute with the fleshpots of Grand
Rapids. The plot, however, never takes off. The best thing going for the book is
DeVries’ dazzling way with words. On Thomas Wolfe’s Of Time and the River: “a fat slob of a book.” On diction: “You can’t
be happy with a woman who pronounces both d’s in Wednesday.”
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