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Slouching Towards Kalamazoo
Fifteen-year-old Anthony Thrasher follows his free-spirited tutor, Miss Maggie Doubloon, and their illegitimate son, Ahab, to Kalamazoo where he meets Bubbles Breedlove, Ahab's virginal nursemaid, and falls in love with her
241 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1983
About the author
Peter De Vries
55 books157 followersPeter De Vries is responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms as "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow." He was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic." “Quick with quips so droll and witty, so penetrating and precise that you almost don’t feel them piercing your pretensions, Peter De Vries was perhaps America’s best comic novelist not named Mark Twain. . .” (Sam McManis, Sacramento Bee).
His achievement seemed best appreciated by his fellow writers. Harper Lee, naming the great American writers, said, “Peter De Vries . . . is the Evelyn Waugh of our time". Anthony Burgess called De Vries “surely one of the great prose virtuosos of modern America.”
Peter De Vries was a radio actor in the 1930s, and editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944. During World War II he served in the U.S. Marines attaining the rank of Captain, and was seconded to the O.S.S., predecessor to the CIA.
He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987. A prolific writer, De Vries wrote short stories, reviews, poetry, essays, a play, novellas, and twenty-three novels, several of which were made into films.
De Vries met his wife, Katinka Loeser, while at Poetry magazine. They married and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they raised 4 children. The death of his 10-year-old daughter Emily from leukemia inspired The Blood of the Lamb, the most poignant and the most autobiographical of De Vries's novels.
In Westport, De Vries formed a lifelong friendship with the young J. D. Salinger, who later described the writing process as "opening a vein and bleeding onto the page." The two writers clearly "understood each other very well” (son Derek De Vries in "The Return of Peter De Vries", Westport Magazine, April 2006).
De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1983.
His books were sadly out of print by the time of his death. After the New Yorker published a critical reappraisal of De Vries’ work however (“Few writers have understood literary comedy as well as De Vries, and few comic novelists have had his grasp of tragedy”), The University of Chicago Press began reissuing his works in 2005, starting with The Blood of the Lamb and Slouching Toward Kalamazoo.
His achievement seemed best appreciated by his fellow writers. Harper Lee, naming the great American writers, said, “Peter De Vries . . . is the Evelyn Waugh of our time". Anthony Burgess called De Vries “surely one of the great prose virtuosos of modern America.”
Peter De Vries was a radio actor in the 1930s, and editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944. During World War II he served in the U.S. Marines attaining the rank of Captain, and was seconded to the O.S.S., predecessor to the CIA.
He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987. A prolific writer, De Vries wrote short stories, reviews, poetry, essays, a play, novellas, and twenty-three novels, several of which were made into films.
De Vries met his wife, Katinka Loeser, while at Poetry magazine. They married and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they raised 4 children. The death of his 10-year-old daughter Emily from leukemia inspired The Blood of the Lamb, the most poignant and the most autobiographical of De Vries's novels.
In Westport, De Vries formed a lifelong friendship with the young J. D. Salinger, who later described the writing process as "opening a vein and bleeding onto the page." The two writers clearly "understood each other very well” (son Derek De Vries in "The Return of Peter De Vries", Westport Magazine, April 2006).
De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1983.
His books were sadly out of print by the time of his death. After the New Yorker published a critical reappraisal of De Vries’ work however (“Few writers have understood literary comedy as well as De Vries, and few comic novelists have had his grasp of tragedy”), The University of Chicago Press began reissuing his works in 2005, starting with The Blood of the Lamb and Slouching Toward Kalamazoo.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
March 2, 2021
It is interesting to think of Peter DeVries, a fellow English graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, pal-ing around with the likes of James Thurber and JD Salinger at The New Yorker. DeVries, from Chicago's Dutch Calvinist community, became the reigning humorist in the country for many years, and fit in at The New Yorker and on the east coast generally as literate and funny. I can't imagine this book appealing to anyone who was not an English major, however, because you have to know so much about language and literature to get all the inside jokes. It helps to have been raised religious, even Puritanically, in your life, too.
This is the story of fifteen-year-old Anthony Thrasher who is more interested in James Joyce than the "chief products" of Venezuela, who impregnates his eighth grade teacher, Miss Doubloon in Ulalume, North Dakota. She then has to "slouch" home to Kalamazoo to give birth--(Literary References for $100? Yeats, "Slouching to Bethlehem"!). The book's title has a grammar mistake in it that former English majors and grammar nit-pickers will find maddening/amusing, and this kind of mistake made by Anthony and other characters is found throughout the book. Almost every sentence has deliberate, gleeful, sardonic language play in it, with a touch of blasphemy. This is less a book with a plot than a book chock-full of jokes, malapropisms, puns, language play, aphorisms, and grammar jokes, though there is also a pretty funny staged debate between the town atheist and Anthony's father, a preacher, where they convince each other, and switch positions. And the Thrasher-Doubloon relationship is meant to be pretty funny, though feels pretty dated (1983). Sort of like watching drunks on tv now; in the sixties that might have been seen as funny. Now, not so much.
Since I am an ex-Calvinist Calvin grad English teacher, I am the perfect audience for this book, so this was very funny for me, though a little too mad-cap and romp-ish than my usual read. I'd read it first in the eighties, so it was nice to return to it, but it is not the masterpiece Blood of the Lamb is. But as a comic novel focused on language play, it is terrific.
This is the story of fifteen-year-old Anthony Thrasher who is more interested in James Joyce than the "chief products" of Venezuela, who impregnates his eighth grade teacher, Miss Doubloon in Ulalume, North Dakota. She then has to "slouch" home to Kalamazoo to give birth--(Literary References for $100? Yeats, "Slouching to Bethlehem"!). The book's title has a grammar mistake in it that former English majors and grammar nit-pickers will find maddening/amusing, and this kind of mistake made by Anthony and other characters is found throughout the book. Almost every sentence has deliberate, gleeful, sardonic language play in it, with a touch of blasphemy. This is less a book with a plot than a book chock-full of jokes, malapropisms, puns, language play, aphorisms, and grammar jokes, though there is also a pretty funny staged debate between the town atheist and Anthony's father, a preacher, where they convince each other, and switch positions. And the Thrasher-Doubloon relationship is meant to be pretty funny, though feels pretty dated (1983). Sort of like watching drunks on tv now; in the sixties that might have been seen as funny. Now, not so much.
Since I am an ex-Calvinist Calvin grad English teacher, I am the perfect audience for this book, so this was very funny for me, though a little too mad-cap and romp-ish than my usual read. I'd read it first in the eighties, so it was nice to return to it, but it is not the masterpiece Blood of the Lamb is. But as a comic novel focused on language play, it is terrific.
July 14, 2023
I have a bias in favor of Peter De Vries as a result of our shared Dutch Calvinist upbringing—his in the Midwest and mine, a few decades later, on the East Coast. Although he left that religious background behind—or more accurately, because he did—it infuses his writing. So it’s fair to say that I get where he’s coming from. When he talks about “your Dutch Reformed Calvinist dragging across the darkling polder that sack of rocks, predestination,” I get the picture.
Maybe that makes me a more appreciative reader of his work than others without that shared background might be. But I do think that religious overtones aside, any reader would enjoy the wit and humor that characterize his work. Although much of the humor is erudite and full of literary allusions, it’s generally accessible to anyone who appreciates a comic situation or a good joke.
The literary allusions begin with the title’s reference to William Butler Yeats’s poem The Second Coming. The substitution of the ridiculous-sounding “Kalamazoo” (sorry, Kalamazooians, and yes, I know the name comes from the indigenous Potawatomi language) for Yeats’s Bethlehem immediately signals the reader to expect a melding of the serious and the comic.
The comic tone is confirmed in the first sentence, in which the narrator, the teenaged Tony Thrasher, tells us that his “eighth-grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by some of the brighter pupils.” When the mayor of their North Dakota town hears that Miss Doubloon has assigned The Scarlet Letter to her class, he loudly disapproves, promising, “‘We’re gonna tighten our Bible Belt! We’re gonna show ‘em we’re the buckle of that belt!’”
Because Tony is spending his second year in the eighth grade despite his obvious intelligence, his parents hire Miss Doubloon to tutor him. Not a good idea. Between her liberated ideas and Tony’s teenage hormones, let’s just say that The Scarlet Letter turns into something more than a reading assignment.
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo is a very funny coming-of-age story. Tony is always trying his best to do the right thing under the circumstances, even as he endures such slings and arrows as his Revelation-obsessed stepfather asserting that he’s the Antichrist.
De Vries has a lot of fun with the religion part, too. For instance, he describes a public debate between a Christian and an atheist, in which each convinces the other and they end up switching sides. Later on, they have a rematch in which each brings the other halfway back to his original position, so that “they both ultimately embraced and came to espouse what might be called Christian atheism.” This seems close to De Vries’s personal viewpoint too.
Along the way, De Vries also takes some shots at literary pretension, about which, as a longtime writer and editor at The New Yorker, he was certainly qualified to comment. One character in the book claims that “over lunch at the Algonquin,” Thornton Wilder told him that “‘“We need a new trash, let alone a new literature.” He went on to develop the point that in great eras, like the Elizabethan, the trash was good too. One of those—epiphanies, you know.’”
All in all, this novel is a lot of fun, with numerous thoughtful observations about the human condition that are often couched in comic situations. If you’ve never read Peter De Vries, give Slouching Towards Kalamazoo a try.
Maybe that makes me a more appreciative reader of his work than others without that shared background might be. But I do think that religious overtones aside, any reader would enjoy the wit and humor that characterize his work. Although much of the humor is erudite and full of literary allusions, it’s generally accessible to anyone who appreciates a comic situation or a good joke.
The literary allusions begin with the title’s reference to William Butler Yeats’s poem The Second Coming. The substitution of the ridiculous-sounding “Kalamazoo” (sorry, Kalamazooians, and yes, I know the name comes from the indigenous Potawatomi language) for Yeats’s Bethlehem immediately signals the reader to expect a melding of the serious and the comic.
The comic tone is confirmed in the first sentence, in which the narrator, the teenaged Tony Thrasher, tells us that his “eighth-grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by some of the brighter pupils.” When the mayor of their North Dakota town hears that Miss Doubloon has assigned The Scarlet Letter to her class, he loudly disapproves, promising, “‘We’re gonna tighten our Bible Belt! We’re gonna show ‘em we’re the buckle of that belt!’”
Because Tony is spending his second year in the eighth grade despite his obvious intelligence, his parents hire Miss Doubloon to tutor him. Not a good idea. Between her liberated ideas and Tony’s teenage hormones, let’s just say that The Scarlet Letter turns into something more than a reading assignment.
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo is a very funny coming-of-age story. Tony is always trying his best to do the right thing under the circumstances, even as he endures such slings and arrows as his Revelation-obsessed stepfather asserting that he’s the Antichrist.
De Vries has a lot of fun with the religion part, too. For instance, he describes a public debate between a Christian and an atheist, in which each convinces the other and they end up switching sides. Later on, they have a rematch in which each brings the other halfway back to his original position, so that “they both ultimately embraced and came to espouse what might be called Christian atheism.” This seems close to De Vries’s personal viewpoint too.
Along the way, De Vries also takes some shots at literary pretension, about which, as a longtime writer and editor at The New Yorker, he was certainly qualified to comment. One character in the book claims that “over lunch at the Algonquin,” Thornton Wilder told him that “‘“We need a new trash, let alone a new literature.” He went on to develop the point that in great eras, like the Elizabethan, the trash was good too. One of those—epiphanies, you know.’”
All in all, this novel is a lot of fun, with numerous thoughtful observations about the human condition that are often couched in comic situations. If you’ve never read Peter De Vries, give Slouching Towards Kalamazoo a try.
March 18, 2019
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats
Há anticristos para todos os gostos (I João 2:18). Neste livro o anticristo (o narrador) vem sob a forma de um ponto de interrogação, de uma ambivalência quase patológica. A perversão é sobretudo retórica e de piada em piada, de acidente em acidente, ele consegue ser o anticristo que a sua Ulalume merece. Acaba como o pastor inútil (Daniel 11:21) de uma religião anti-religiosa. No fundo, tanto lhe faz.
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats
Há anticristos para todos os gostos (I João 2:18). Neste livro o anticristo (o narrador) vem sob a forma de um ponto de interrogação, de uma ambivalência quase patológica. A perversão é sobretudo retórica e de piada em piada, de acidente em acidente, ele consegue ser o anticristo que a sua Ulalume merece. Acaba como o pastor inútil (Daniel 11:21) de uma religião anti-religiosa. No fundo, tanto lhe faz.
June 28, 2016
Beautifully written comic novel, with a feeling of melancholy underneath it all, which is how all great comic novels should be. I didn't want it to end. I've now read four of Peter De Vries novels. I think I have to read them all. "…She called for me at my motel early, around four-thirty, so that we might do a spot of sightseeing in her Mercedes. It was spring, and she had on what must have been a new Easter outfit. It consisted of a dusty pink linen suit and a hat like a shot fowl. It was tilted down on one side of her face at an intendedly jaunty angle, but recalling rather something plunging to earth in the autumn weather, this image to be linked with that of men crouched in duck blinds or taking aim from rowboats in the pitiless weft of things: predators themselves predestined prey in the immemorial Necessity; kin together not only with the poor feathered thing plummeting earthward in the gray dawn, but with all sentient life locked forever in communal doom. That kind of hat."
December 23, 2011
Written with the same lyrical mastery that I have come to expect from Peter De Vries, but having read "Blood of the Lamb" first, I'm a little biased toward that work. I think "Slouching Toward Kalamazoo" requires a little more working knowledge of the era in which it refers to fully understand all the references (basically if you're not as genius as De Vries, some humor will slip past, though this may be an editorial confession to being an ignoramus). Fantastic nonetheless.
January 7, 2013
De Vries may be labled a "comic author," but Slouching Towards Kalamazoo is no light reading. Told from the perspective of a genius teenager who shows off his intellectual powers to the reader in his very narration, the book is a challenge worthy of the most skilled readers. De Vries's linguistic expertise, which is rather awe-inspiring, often borders on ostentation. However, this seemingly absurd pretentiousness perfectly captures the childish mentality of his young protagonist who craves attention and praise to reassure himself of his own value. That said, make sure you have a dictionary and Wikipedia on hand when reading this book; the sheer amount of name dropping and literary references almost forces you to become an expert in British and American poetry in order to fully appreciate the work.
Despite the challenges inherent in the text, the end result is quite a work of brilliance. Slouching Towards Kalamazoo tackles issues of religion and sexuality with a voice that is both comic and intelligent. He twists elements of famous literary works to present a changing world, where secularism challenges the religious traditions of old at every corner. Whether you understand all the jokes or not, De Vries's wit alone is enough to make the book entertaining.
The story runs out of steam near the end, but it is soon replaced with a highly academic essay on a new model for religion that De Vries calls "Christian Atheism." While this little tag ending contains some fascinating ideas, I did not think it was necessary and was rather disappointing as an ending.
This book is not for everyone, but those who accept the challenge will find it highly rewarding.
Despite the challenges inherent in the text, the end result is quite a work of brilliance. Slouching Towards Kalamazoo tackles issues of religion and sexuality with a voice that is both comic and intelligent. He twists elements of famous literary works to present a changing world, where secularism challenges the religious traditions of old at every corner. Whether you understand all the jokes or not, De Vries's wit alone is enough to make the book entertaining.
The story runs out of steam near the end, but it is soon replaced with a highly academic essay on a new model for religion that De Vries calls "Christian Atheism." While this little tag ending contains some fascinating ideas, I did not think it was necessary and was rather disappointing as an ending.
This book is not for everyone, but those who accept the challenge will find it highly rewarding.
Read
November 12, 2014Dan Simmons' Hyperion is replete with literary allusions, and following one of the ones I didn't recognise led me to an interesting article on Peter de Vries, who was quoted as saying “You can’t talk about the serious and the comic separately and still be talking about life, any more than you can independently discuss hydrogen and oxygen and still be talking about water.” Which suggested to me the wry wisdom of James Branch Cabell, and straight away had me interested. This eighties novel detailing how the sixties' sexual revolution in fact began in North Dakota had an entertaining enough way with words, but really didn't live up to that (admittedly exalted) expectation. A better comparison would be Donleavy minus some of the more experimental tics, or maybe the adult novels of Lemony Snicket's associate Daniel Handler.
January 18, 2021
*4.5 stars. What a delight. So funny.
"'We're gonna tighten our Bible Belt! We're gonna show 'em we're the buckle of that belt!' Perhaps you share my secret taste for old-fashioned windbags" (4).
"Notice of a strongly sensual nature is, I think, early given. Signs of a Dionysian temperament emerged in my case as far back as high-chair days, when I took pleasure in squishing a peeled banana in my fist and watching the pulp extruded through the crevices between my fingers, which might then be licked off my hand or flung at one or another of the cautionary mottos about the walls of our house" (5-6).
"Her handwriting was like driven sleet, blown in steely diagonals off the edge of the page" (7).
"Miss Doubloon rose and walked to the window, where she stood nursing her elbows as she gazed outward into the lightly falling snow" (9). *Nursing!
"She was so tiny that on all fours that she would have made a nice trivet" (18).
"An hour, another inch of scarf later..." (57).
"On came the hypocritical apologies to which, savoring all the more his crucifixion at the hands of loved ones yet – 'Drive in the nails, send a spear home after quenching my thirst with a sop of vinegar'--…" (58).
"... whose delicate skin left her prey enough to Time's slow, remorseless scrimshaw…" (59).
"My father twisted the ends of a mustache he forgot he had shaved off..." (80).
"...catching another whiff of the scent I was in noseshot of…" (133). *Noseshot!
"We know dogs can smell fear. I shouldn't wander but they can also smell Weltschmerz, which was my prevailing mood that summer…" (137).
"'In the beginning the earth was without form and void. Why didn't they leave well enough alone? It's been all downhill from there'" (138). *Yep.
"'This marriage was worse than Abraham Lincoln's,' he said..." (139).
"The Episcopalian prissiness of the poinsettia ('With leaves like these, as you think them, you klutz, though they are in fact bracts, with leaves like these, who needs flowers? And yet I give you such a pretty little blossoms too, you undeserving clod')" (161).
"...I saw my stepfather as a lapsed atheist rather than a Christian convert" (162).
"Perhaps I would get the hang of it someday, human life, but likely not this summer" (174).
"I was by now so racked with ambivalence (my metier)..." (175).
"'Do you remember that dreary ornithological paper. All those grice peering at you through the underbrush.'
"'Grice?'
"'Isn't that the plural of grouse?'
"'Why not?'" (175).
"...and, with the aid of familiarity and some moonlight, made our way to a sofa" (191)
"...of a silken fabric so sheer it was like, well, like woven water..." (192).
"...and a hat like a shot fowl. It was tilted down one side of her face at an intentedly jaunty angle, but recalling rather something plunging to earth in the autumn weather, this image to be linked with that of men crouched and duck blinds or taking aim from rowboats in the pitiless weft of things: predators themselves predestined prey in the immemorial Necessity; kin together not only with the poor feathered thing plummeting earthward in the gray dawn, but with all sentient life locked forever in communal doom. That kind of hat" (238-239).
"'She tunes in regularly to a television preacher who says the end of the world is at hand, and listens expectantly for the last trump. You don't believe in any such thing as the last trump'" (239). *Unfortunately, this brings up something even worse for contemporary readers.
-From the "Afterword," penned by the author's son: "If there is any one group of people totally clueless as to the goings-on of kids, it's the people in charge of them" (245). *I'm thinking administrators here.
"'We're gonna tighten our Bible Belt! We're gonna show 'em we're the buckle of that belt!' Perhaps you share my secret taste for old-fashioned windbags" (4).
"Notice of a strongly sensual nature is, I think, early given. Signs of a Dionysian temperament emerged in my case as far back as high-chair days, when I took pleasure in squishing a peeled banana in my fist and watching the pulp extruded through the crevices between my fingers, which might then be licked off my hand or flung at one or another of the cautionary mottos about the walls of our house" (5-6).
"Her handwriting was like driven sleet, blown in steely diagonals off the edge of the page" (7).
"Miss Doubloon rose and walked to the window, where she stood nursing her elbows as she gazed outward into the lightly falling snow" (9). *Nursing!
"She was so tiny that on all fours that she would have made a nice trivet" (18).
"An hour, another inch of scarf later..." (57).
"On came the hypocritical apologies to which, savoring all the more his crucifixion at the hands of loved ones yet – 'Drive in the nails, send a spear home after quenching my thirst with a sop of vinegar'--…" (58).
"... whose delicate skin left her prey enough to Time's slow, remorseless scrimshaw…" (59).
"My father twisted the ends of a mustache he forgot he had shaved off..." (80).
"...catching another whiff of the scent I was in noseshot of…" (133). *Noseshot!
"We know dogs can smell fear. I shouldn't wander but they can also smell Weltschmerz, which was my prevailing mood that summer…" (137).
"'In the beginning the earth was without form and void. Why didn't they leave well enough alone? It's been all downhill from there'" (138). *Yep.
"'This marriage was worse than Abraham Lincoln's,' he said..." (139).
"The Episcopalian prissiness of the poinsettia ('With leaves like these, as you think them, you klutz, though they are in fact bracts, with leaves like these, who needs flowers? And yet I give you such a pretty little blossoms too, you undeserving clod')" (161).
"...I saw my stepfather as a lapsed atheist rather than a Christian convert" (162).
"Perhaps I would get the hang of it someday, human life, but likely not this summer" (174).
"I was by now so racked with ambivalence (my metier)..." (175).
"'Do you remember that dreary ornithological paper. All those grice peering at you through the underbrush.'
"'Grice?'
"'Isn't that the plural of grouse?'
"'Why not?'" (175).
"...and, with the aid of familiarity and some moonlight, made our way to a sofa" (191)
"...of a silken fabric so sheer it was like, well, like woven water..." (192).
"...and a hat like a shot fowl. It was tilted down one side of her face at an intentedly jaunty angle, but recalling rather something plunging to earth in the autumn weather, this image to be linked with that of men crouched and duck blinds or taking aim from rowboats in the pitiless weft of things: predators themselves predestined prey in the immemorial Necessity; kin together not only with the poor feathered thing plummeting earthward in the gray dawn, but with all sentient life locked forever in communal doom. That kind of hat" (238-239).
"'She tunes in regularly to a television preacher who says the end of the world is at hand, and listens expectantly for the last trump. You don't believe in any such thing as the last trump'" (239). *Unfortunately, this brings up something even worse for contemporary readers.
-From the "Afterword," penned by the author's son: "If there is any one group of people totally clueless as to the goings-on of kids, it's the people in charge of them" (245). *I'm thinking administrators here.
May 15, 2019
This is fast-paced, funny, intelligent, and irreverent. A big part of the humor derives from De Vries' richly allusive writing, which plays perfectly into the protagonist's main strength: He's uncannily well-read while yet being a well-known (even to himself) underachiever; plus, he's just a kid (15 as the story unfolds) with no real-world experience but sardonic wit to spare.
At one point, late, he refers to the mostly by now unfolded tale as "'twisted' theatre," and it is that, but reading it in 2018, it is also a throwback in an odd way to a seemingly simpler or more naive and definitely more chauvinistic time--e.g., the jokey situations and observations revolving around, say, women's rights and sloganed T-shirts are funny in part just because they even merit mentioning, much less having the story built around the topics. For another example: In act one, a teacher has sex with an eighth-grader (albeit an older eighth-grader--the underachieving kind who was previously held back and can give vocabulary lessons to said teacher), and the main concern surrounding the resulting pregnancy has more to do with the disapproval of the moral majority about an unwed woman being knocked up and not with the adult's actions having criminal repercussions, which are ubiquitous today. That said, the book's not a serious treatise on that subject and never pretends to be. You do get a sense that De Vries does take "Christian atheism" at least a little more seriously, though.
In short, the more well-read you are, the funnier you're likely to find this book. It has Easter eggs on pretty much every page.
First line:
"My old eighth-grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by some of the brighter pupils."
At one point, late, he refers to the mostly by now unfolded tale as "'twisted' theatre," and it is that, but reading it in 2018, it is also a throwback in an odd way to a seemingly simpler or more naive and definitely more chauvinistic time--e.g., the jokey situations and observations revolving around, say, women's rights and sloganed T-shirts are funny in part just because they even merit mentioning, much less having the story built around the topics. For another example: In act one, a teacher has sex with an eighth-grader (albeit an older eighth-grader--the underachieving kind who was previously held back and can give vocabulary lessons to said teacher), and the main concern surrounding the resulting pregnancy has more to do with the disapproval of the moral majority about an unwed woman being knocked up and not with the adult's actions having criminal repercussions, which are ubiquitous today. That said, the book's not a serious treatise on that subject and never pretends to be. You do get a sense that De Vries does take "Christian atheism" at least a little more seriously, though.
In short, the more well-read you are, the funnier you're likely to find this book. It has Easter eggs on pretty much every page.
First line:
"My old eighth-grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by some of the brighter pupils."
January 20, 2011
Hmm. Well it's certainly an erudite book. But I didn't really buy that an 8th grader was quite as sophisticated a thinker as was portrayed. And I found some of the supposed erudition to be really authorial showing off (which I found off putting). The story is o.k. but it didn't really grab me and I didn't come away thinking that I really needed to read more by this author. Given that he's apparently someone others consider to be quite literary, I'm wondering if it's the author or just this particular work. Perhaps his other works are more engaging???
November 24, 2008
This book is both more ambitious as literature and less funny as entertainment than I remember. There are lots of literary and Biblical allusions, and De Vries even gets whimsical about "Christian atheism," Voltaire's notion of creating a nonexistent God out of necessity. Call it Christian Existentialism and you have a fairly serious discussion going.
Gerald.
Boychik Lit
Gerald.
Boychik Lit
May 22, 2023
de Vries knows how to turn a phrase and work in a literary reference, but that's about all. Style-over-substance, with the few plot elements used in the first half bizarrely re-cycled in the latter, as though he'd run out of ideas (surely not?)
March 6, 2022
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter de Vries is worthy of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list and is indeed one of the best comedy books you can find https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
10 out of 10
When we reach Singularity, Artificial Intelligence will have taken over many tasks, if not most, that humans perform – there are glimmers of hope for archeologists, because as one of the most prominent luminaries of the age, Yuval Harari, explains in his stupendous Homo Deus http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/h... this is a profession where investment in replacing earthlings would not bring savings, nobody is interested in the relics uncovered by these people to the point where they would automate the activities involved… hence we could say the paleontologists are safe too – and maybe we would be reading Perfect Flexible Personalized Novels that would exhilarate us (individually, if there would be mass market blockbusters like Fifty Shades of Grey remains to be seen, writers’ creativity remaining undisputed notwithstanding)
Indeed, in A Brief History of Tomorrow we find that experiments with Operating Systems creating both literature and music have been around for some time and people are unable to tell the difference between music by Bach and that created by Artificial Intelligence, so in a few ways, the under signed wishes the AI of the future would be here, so that I could immerse in music, literature created for yours truly, for algorithms know us better than we do – you find this from reading the aforementioned magnificent work – and this would be spectacular – I have been trying for years to find music similar to some Buddha Bar tunes I adore, but though there have been several discs, similar sounding fare is there, I have not been able for the past twenty years to get the same effervescent, dazzling, enrapturing, luminescent, radiant musique, which a clever AI would provide presto…
However, Slouching Towards Kalamazoo -and to give just one other glorious example Quarantine by marvelous Jim Crace, a chef d’oeuvre which has nothing to do with recent lockdowns, but tells instead a possible tale of Jesus and some people he meets http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/q... - is so close to the perfect combination of humor and sophistication that this reader wonders where the AI improvement would come in – but then we can envisage that there would be, this is Singularity we are talking about here, the moment when the computer mind will have surpassed all that humanity is capable of thinking, when added together, so there will be things happening that go beyond not just my single, feeble comprehension, but will just speed by All of us, out together – what characters can be changed and how…
This fabulous book is excellent at inviting readers to enjoy themselves – impressive joie de vivre and some French jokes too – and at the same time, challenge them with important – indeed, nothing beats those – themes like Christian Atheism – the provocations bring us to Optimum Experience as explained in the fundamental, life changing Flow http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/f... -a new ‘religion’ that combines elements of the opposites, making us think of Aristotle and his Golden Mean – the notion that one has to avoid excess, we must avoid being a miser, but the alternative of giving all away and putting family on the street is also excessive…
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo is brimming with spectacular moments of jest, joy, educational insight, sophisticated images ‘Long Utrillo street…My old eight- grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by the brighter pupils…Dog smells existential dread close to fear’…satire is surely intended and we can think of the intense consumerism of these days – this the moment to pitch my own ‘invention’ SSW Stoicism Saving the World, the idea that we need to adopt Stoic principles and fast, for otherwise the planet is doomed…in a recent article in The Economist (in fact it was the week of February 10, my birthday and yes, thank you) Yuval Harari talks writes about the peril that the Ukraine crisis presents, which if it brings a paradigm shift, by making states nervous about being swallowed (something that after the WWII catastrophe has tended to disappear) and thus bringing about a death spiral, with armament race and neglect of Climate Change, which could well lead to the disappearance of Homo Sapiens…
Anthony Thrasher, a fifteen year old at the beginning of the tale, is the hero of the book and tells us that ‘I have been kept back a year in the seventh grade thanks to time spent reading Joyce and Proust that should have gone into homework, and so here I was in the eighth grade still, at age fifteen’ – he is superbly gifted, knows that ‘All hell broke loose is from Paradise Lost of John Milton’ and so much more (not to the level of Singularity AI, to refer again to the leit motif of contemporary notes) that is seems incredible that he is kept back by such obstacles as tests in geography – what is the main export of Venezuela escapes him
His teacher, twenty nine years old Maggie Doubloon, summons his parents to tell them that their son is too much distracted by Joyce and Proust to bother with quite a few other subjects – and who can blame him, indeed, Joyce is still inaccessible to this reader, albeit he holds Proust to be the best author he has ever engaged with – and then she accepts to become his tutor and the two have a brief sexual intercourse, the teacher is pregnant and that results in humorous and quite dramatic incidents…the father, who is a minister in the church, tells the tutor that his son had told him ‘everything’, which Maggie Doubloon takes literally and then a small debacle ensues, there is the attempt to get from the pharmacy something that will end the pregnancy, but finally, a boy is born and he is named Ahab…
A jocular, satirical and intellectual delight is offered through the debate that matches the mister with the dermatologist, doctor Mallard, where faith and atheism are facing each other ‘the doctor is Bertrand Russell to father's C. S. Lewis’ in the intellectual fight, which will result comically – but then this is but the more visible intent, there are other, more subtle implications here – in the conversion of both pugilants, the minister becoming an atheist and the doctor a fervent believer, albeit they would later have a rematch and each will convince the other to make the return trip, but only half way, thus they both become Christian Atheists…here are some notes made while reading, they are not exact quotes, but close enough, Insha’Allah
‘Scarlet Letter is not about adultery at all, it's about hard core chastity and the cruelty of vindictive Puritanism…memory isn't just memory but a selective principle, offering a key to the personality…
Sovereign cure for the woes of man, the pagan dignity of mating...Father is convinced by the doctor and talked of Luke as the only one who says this is my body and he wasn't even present, wasn't a disciple only Matthew and John were, and John doesn't even mention any such supper
The Church took over its chief rival, the Persian cult of Mithras...who was the Sun God, whose birth was witnessed by shepherds, and who was annually commemorated with a ceremonial meal'
Omnivorous erotic athleticism is the precise opposite of what it appears to be…’
10 out of 10
When we reach Singularity, Artificial Intelligence will have taken over many tasks, if not most, that humans perform – there are glimmers of hope for archeologists, because as one of the most prominent luminaries of the age, Yuval Harari, explains in his stupendous Homo Deus http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/h... this is a profession where investment in replacing earthlings would not bring savings, nobody is interested in the relics uncovered by these people to the point where they would automate the activities involved… hence we could say the paleontologists are safe too – and maybe we would be reading Perfect Flexible Personalized Novels that would exhilarate us (individually, if there would be mass market blockbusters like Fifty Shades of Grey remains to be seen, writers’ creativity remaining undisputed notwithstanding)
Indeed, in A Brief History of Tomorrow we find that experiments with Operating Systems creating both literature and music have been around for some time and people are unable to tell the difference between music by Bach and that created by Artificial Intelligence, so in a few ways, the under signed wishes the AI of the future would be here, so that I could immerse in music, literature created for yours truly, for algorithms know us better than we do – you find this from reading the aforementioned magnificent work – and this would be spectacular – I have been trying for years to find music similar to some Buddha Bar tunes I adore, but though there have been several discs, similar sounding fare is there, I have not been able for the past twenty years to get the same effervescent, dazzling, enrapturing, luminescent, radiant musique, which a clever AI would provide presto…
However, Slouching Towards Kalamazoo -and to give just one other glorious example Quarantine by marvelous Jim Crace, a chef d’oeuvre which has nothing to do with recent lockdowns, but tells instead a possible tale of Jesus and some people he meets http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/q... - is so close to the perfect combination of humor and sophistication that this reader wonders where the AI improvement would come in – but then we can envisage that there would be, this is Singularity we are talking about here, the moment when the computer mind will have surpassed all that humanity is capable of thinking, when added together, so there will be things happening that go beyond not just my single, feeble comprehension, but will just speed by All of us, out together – what characters can be changed and how…
This fabulous book is excellent at inviting readers to enjoy themselves – impressive joie de vivre and some French jokes too – and at the same time, challenge them with important – indeed, nothing beats those – themes like Christian Atheism – the provocations bring us to Optimum Experience as explained in the fundamental, life changing Flow http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/f... -a new ‘religion’ that combines elements of the opposites, making us think of Aristotle and his Golden Mean – the notion that one has to avoid excess, we must avoid being a miser, but the alternative of giving all away and putting family on the street is also excessive…
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo is brimming with spectacular moments of jest, joy, educational insight, sophisticated images ‘Long Utrillo street…My old eight- grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by the brighter pupils…Dog smells existential dread close to fear’…satire is surely intended and we can think of the intense consumerism of these days – this the moment to pitch my own ‘invention’ SSW Stoicism Saving the World, the idea that we need to adopt Stoic principles and fast, for otherwise the planet is doomed…in a recent article in The Economist (in fact it was the week of February 10, my birthday and yes, thank you) Yuval Harari talks writes about the peril that the Ukraine crisis presents, which if it brings a paradigm shift, by making states nervous about being swallowed (something that after the WWII catastrophe has tended to disappear) and thus bringing about a death spiral, with armament race and neglect of Climate Change, which could well lead to the disappearance of Homo Sapiens…
Anthony Thrasher, a fifteen year old at the beginning of the tale, is the hero of the book and tells us that ‘I have been kept back a year in the seventh grade thanks to time spent reading Joyce and Proust that should have gone into homework, and so here I was in the eighth grade still, at age fifteen’ – he is superbly gifted, knows that ‘All hell broke loose is from Paradise Lost of John Milton’ and so much more (not to the level of Singularity AI, to refer again to the leit motif of contemporary notes) that is seems incredible that he is kept back by such obstacles as tests in geography – what is the main export of Venezuela escapes him
His teacher, twenty nine years old Maggie Doubloon, summons his parents to tell them that their son is too much distracted by Joyce and Proust to bother with quite a few other subjects – and who can blame him, indeed, Joyce is still inaccessible to this reader, albeit he holds Proust to be the best author he has ever engaged with – and then she accepts to become his tutor and the two have a brief sexual intercourse, the teacher is pregnant and that results in humorous and quite dramatic incidents…the father, who is a minister in the church, tells the tutor that his son had told him ‘everything’, which Maggie Doubloon takes literally and then a small debacle ensues, there is the attempt to get from the pharmacy something that will end the pregnancy, but finally, a boy is born and he is named Ahab…
A jocular, satirical and intellectual delight is offered through the debate that matches the mister with the dermatologist, doctor Mallard, where faith and atheism are facing each other ‘the doctor is Bertrand Russell to father's C. S. Lewis’ in the intellectual fight, which will result comically – but then this is but the more visible intent, there are other, more subtle implications here – in the conversion of both pugilants, the minister becoming an atheist and the doctor a fervent believer, albeit they would later have a rematch and each will convince the other to make the return trip, but only half way, thus they both become Christian Atheists…here are some notes made while reading, they are not exact quotes, but close enough, Insha’Allah
‘Scarlet Letter is not about adultery at all, it's about hard core chastity and the cruelty of vindictive Puritanism…memory isn't just memory but a selective principle, offering a key to the personality…
Sovereign cure for the woes of man, the pagan dignity of mating...Father is convinced by the doctor and talked of Luke as the only one who says this is my body and he wasn't even present, wasn't a disciple only Matthew and John were, and John doesn't even mention any such supper
The Church took over its chief rival, the Persian cult of Mithras...who was the Sun God, whose birth was witnessed by shepherds, and who was annually commemorated with a ceremonial meal'
Omnivorous erotic athleticism is the precise opposite of what it appears to be…’
February 6, 2009
This book was personally recommended to me by Christopher Hitchens. Seriously. Now, Christopher Hitchens is pretty much my idol. Which is why I found it so odd that this book was so boring. It's obviously supposed to be a comedic novel and it has its moments(in fact, the reason Hitch recommended it to me because in the book there is a scene where a priest and an atheist debate the existence of God, only to finish the debate by convincing each other that the other is correct), but that great scene lasts about a page and the rest of it is so slow and so tedious that I would never recommend this book to another human being. This is probably the only time I felt that Mr. Hitchens was wrong. Wait, strike that. He voted for Obama. So that's two times he was wrong.
March 2, 2016
A challenging book to get through but extremely witty and worth the convoluted journeys to each punch line. I can see why DeVries was chummy with the likes of JD Salinger and was admired and quoted by Kingsley Amis. DeVries was no doubt influenced by Amis's "Lucky Jim" and Waterhouse's "Billy Liar". Tony Thrasher is the extreme underachiever- a genius still in the eighth grade at age 15. I enjoyed slogging through the book.
I must add a postscript to this review: the subject matter of an affair between an eighth grade boy and his teacher was definitely looked at entirely differently in 1983 as it would be in 2016. I suppose it's not so surprising but I did not find one review that commented on this.
I must add a postscript to this review: the subject matter of an affair between an eighth grade boy and his teacher was definitely looked at entirely differently in 1983 as it would be in 2016. I suppose it's not so surprising but I did not find one review that commented on this.
May 31, 2011
Some funny one liners does not make a comedy. Really disappointing as had heard great things about the book. not sure what went wrong, in general i feel like comedy ages worse than any other genre and this felt super dated. Also the plot in this case kid growing up in north dakota is secondary to forcing a funny line every five pages. Unfunnily enough there is a character in the book who would nudge people very hard every time he came up with a bad pun, by the end i could fully appreciate how annoying that must have been.
January 20, 2012
I had reallly high hopes for this book because I knew that De Vries had written for the New Yorker for so long and that Christopher Hitchens loved this book. My expectations were not met. It is funny, but not that funny; and clever, but not that clever. Perhaps had I gone in with lower expectations, I would have enjoyed it more. I would say that this a funny little fluffy book for the beach--although the atheist v christian parts do give some interesting things to think about--the main character, Tony, becomes a Christian-atheist...
January 30, 2018
I re-read this after 25 or 30 years only because I could not find his The Mackerel Plaza at the library. I'm too prudish to have enjoyed the main plot, but the book improved my English, made me laugh/squirm, and had an interesting take on the role of religion in modern society. Still wish I hadn't culled my copy of The Mackerel Plaza.
November 25, 2009
There is no other comic writer that I can think of that sends me to the dictionary more than Peter De Vries. I met him at his home in Westport, CT. as a friend of his son, Derek in 1993. We had a short chat in the kitchen. I thoroughly enjoy his writing and now market a double CD of an address he made to the students of his Alma Mater, Calvin College in 1979.
The Hopwood Lecture series - Peter De Vries at his alma mater, Calvin College in 1979.
The Hopwood Lecture series - Peter De Vries at his alma mater, Calvin College in 1979.
October 2, 2015
Talk about a book that started with great promise then fell flat and boring - this is it. DeVries introduces us to a child prodigy who is widely read but fails at school assignments. This leads him into a liaison with his teacher, who tutors him. It is all downhill from there, except for a great sequence in which an atheist debates a Baptist preacher. Their arguments are so good that the atheist and preacher are changed forever.
August 23, 2008
I loved it. Typical De Vries -- funny, ironic, unexpected, unpredictable, outrageous situations and reactions, and great style that is so unique in today's world. (Very high-brow, with many jokes that you have to dictionary.com a word or two to get... but after all, he works for the New Yorker, so...)
November 12, 2014
Peter De Vries worked with J. D. Salinger at the New Yorker. As I read this book I kept thinking that the lead character reminded me of something I had read in the past when suddenly a bright white light flashed inside the darkened cloud of my brain and stepping out from the glare appeared the image of Holden Caulfield.
November 23, 2015
I found Slouching entertaining,especially to the lit major who will recognize the many literary allusions in the text. The narrative is a bit dense, but the narrator is fascinating in that he breaks all acceptable norms (getting his junior high teacher with child) but prevails as an interesting character.
There's much humor here as well.
There's much humor here as well.
June 16, 2016
Intelligent and comic. The humour in the book is ironic and occasionally delves into the surreal. Written in a style which no doubt allowed De Vries to be a successful New Yorker writer. The prose is ambitious and intelligent but i found it difficult to get through (maybe more suited to article writing rather than novels).
October 16, 2007
Eighth grade intellectual Anthony Thrasher, held back for another year of eighth grade, predates nearly every legendary underachiever from Bart Simpson to Max Fischer. Better treatment of sex and adolescence than "The Rachel Papers" and more theological too. Probably my new favorite book.
July 22, 2015
I find the best humor places you into a state of slight discomfort. Maybe that's why we can usually only handle our comedy in 30 minute standup increments.
But this book, while uncomfortable at many times, went beyond the standup length. And did it well. And it's funny. And punny. And fun.
But this book, while uncomfortable at many times, went beyond the standup length. And did it well. And it's funny. And punny. And fun.
November 14, 2012
Peter De Vries is brilliant. Along with Tunnel of Love, this is one of his best.
Shelved as 'maybe-someday'
October 5, 2007This doesn't look like it should take forever to read, should I get motivated?
July 23, 2010
really brilliant book -- incredibly witty, clever, hilarious, the sort of book i would love to be able to write ... will immediately start looking for other books by him ....
April 1, 2010
Peter De Vries is brilliant. Along with Tunnel of Love, this is one of his best.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews