By the author of “God and My Father,” “Life with Father,” “Life With Mother,” “The Crow’s Nest,” etc.
The author of “Life With Father” takes a thoughtful look at the ape-like aspects of humanity and offers witty speculations on a world dominated by other species. This 1920 work features humorous, provocative insights into the nature of the evolutionary pyramid. 10 of Day's Thurberesque black-and-white line illustrations enhance the text.
—Publisher’s description
The first half of the book speculates on humanity's future if it had descended from cats, elephants, or cows. The second, and better, half is some of the saddest and best writing on the human condition produced in the 20th century. I never tire of reading this book and often give copies to friends. It is a joy to see it back in print.
It is better written and funnier than all of the top selling 'humor' books on the bestseller lists.
—Nancy Beiman, review at amazon.com
“The most amusing little essay of the year. We like best his picture of the cat civilization. It is even finer than Swift’s immortal description of a country governed by the super-horse.”
—The Independent (1920 ?)
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A couple of excerpts:
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...Every civilized simian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever older facts he has picked up, will wish to know all the news of all the world. If he felt any true concern to know it, this would be rather fine of him: it would imply such a close solidarity on the part of this genus. (Such a close solidarity would seem crushing, to others; but that is another matter.) It won’t be true concern, however, it will be merely a blind inherited instinct. He’ll forget what he’s read, the very next hour, or moment. Yet there he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature, reading of bombs in Spain or floods in Tibet, and especially insisting on all the news he can get of the kind our race loved when they scampered and fought in the forest, news that will stir his most primitive simian feelings — wars, accidents, love affairs, and family quarrels.
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Quote:
In their efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly simian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair? The Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their nature, and who could control that!
And Satan in the Bible is distinctly a simian’s devil. The snake, it is known, is the animal monkeys most dread. Hence when men give their devil a definite form they make him a snake. A race of super-chickens would have pictured their devil a hawk.
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10 half-page line drawings, all centered.
Decorative font for drop-caps --- I had to cheat on the capitalization --- initial letters are actually in lower-case in order to make that font display the way I wanted it. Ugly coding! Can someone tell me a better workaround for this kind of situation?
A Large-caps version also available.
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