What do you think?
Rate this book
How to Scrape Skies
- GenresHumor
123 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
1 person is currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
George Mikes
143 books53 followersGeorge Mikes (pronounced Mik-esh) was a Hungarian-born British author best known for his humorous commentaries on various countries.
Mikes graduated in Budapest in 1933 and started work as a journalist on Reggel ("Morning"), a Budapest newspaper. For a short while he wrote a column called Intim Pista for Színházi Élet ("Theatre Life").
In 1938 Mikes became the London correspondent for Reggel and 8 Órao Ujság ("8 Hours"). He worked for Reggel until 1940. Having been sent to London to cover the Munich Crisis and expecting to stay for only a couple of weeks, he remained for the rest of his life. In 1946 he became a British Citizen. It is reported that being a Jew from Hungary was a factor in his decision. Mikes wrote in both Hungarian and English: The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, Encounter, Irodalmi Újság, Népszava, the Viennese Hungarian-language Magyar Híradó, and Világ.
From 1939 Mikes worked for the BBC Hungarian section making documentaries, at first as a freelance correspondent and, from 1950, as an employee. From 1975 until his death on 30 August 1987 he worked for the Hungarian section of Szabad Európa Rádió. He was president of the London branch of PEN, and a member of the Garrick Club.
His friends included Arthur Koestler, J. B. Priestley and André Deutsch, who was also his publisher.
His first book (1945) was We Were There To Escape – the true story of a Jugoslav officer about life in prisoner-of-war camps. The Times Literary Supplement praised the book for the humour it showed in parts, which led him to write his most famous book How to be an Alien which in 1946 proved a great success in post-war Britain.
How to be an Alien (1946) poked gentle fun at the English, including a one-line chapter on sex: "Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles."
Subsequent books dealt with (among others) Japan (The Land of the Rising Yen), Israel (Milk and Honey, The Prophet Motive), the U.S. (How to Scrape Skies), and the United Nations (How to Unite Nations), Australia (Boomerang), the British again (How to be Inimitable, How to be Decadent), and South America (How to Tango). Other subjects include God (How to be God), his cat (Tsi-Tsa), wealth (How to be Poor) or philosophy (How to be a Guru).
Apart from his commentaries, he wrote humorous fiction (Mortal Passion; The Spy Who Died of Boredom) and contributed to the satirical television series That Was The Week That Was.
His autobiography was called How to be Seventy.
Serious writing included a book about the Hungarian Secret Police and he narrated a BBC television report of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Mikes graduated in Budapest in 1933 and started work as a journalist on Reggel ("Morning"), a Budapest newspaper. For a short while he wrote a column called Intim Pista for Színházi Élet ("Theatre Life").
In 1938 Mikes became the London correspondent for Reggel and 8 Órao Ujság ("8 Hours"). He worked for Reggel until 1940. Having been sent to London to cover the Munich Crisis and expecting to stay for only a couple of weeks, he remained for the rest of his life. In 1946 he became a British Citizen. It is reported that being a Jew from Hungary was a factor in his decision. Mikes wrote in both Hungarian and English: The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, Encounter, Irodalmi Újság, Népszava, the Viennese Hungarian-language Magyar Híradó, and Világ.
From 1939 Mikes worked for the BBC Hungarian section making documentaries, at first as a freelance correspondent and, from 1950, as an employee. From 1975 until his death on 30 August 1987 he worked for the Hungarian section of Szabad Európa Rádió. He was president of the London branch of PEN, and a member of the Garrick Club.
His friends included Arthur Koestler, J. B. Priestley and André Deutsch, who was also his publisher.
His first book (1945) was We Were There To Escape – the true story of a Jugoslav officer about life in prisoner-of-war camps. The Times Literary Supplement praised the book for the humour it showed in parts, which led him to write his most famous book How to be an Alien which in 1946 proved a great success in post-war Britain.
How to be an Alien (1946) poked gentle fun at the English, including a one-line chapter on sex: "Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles."
Subsequent books dealt with (among others) Japan (The Land of the Rising Yen), Israel (Milk and Honey, The Prophet Motive), the U.S. (How to Scrape Skies), and the United Nations (How to Unite Nations), Australia (Boomerang), the British again (How to be Inimitable, How to be Decadent), and South America (How to Tango). Other subjects include God (How to be God), his cat (Tsi-Tsa), wealth (How to be Poor) or philosophy (How to be a Guru).
Apart from his commentaries, he wrote humorous fiction (Mortal Passion; The Spy Who Died of Boredom) and contributed to the satirical television series That Was The Week That Was.
His autobiography was called How to be Seventy.
Serious writing included a book about the Hungarian Secret Police and he narrated a BBC television report of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 1, 2021
George Mikes was a Jewish Hungarian who emigrated to England in 1938. Eight years later, he published How to be an Alien (see my review HERE), which was a light-hearted look at the absurdities of the English. A year later, after only two months in America, during which he “talked (personally) to many people”, he published his American equivalent.
“My vision and judgement were not obscured by any previous knowledge of the United States, personal or otherwise”.
He writes with self-conscious wit, and it’s mildly amusing to see how many of the obvious targets are still true today: huge cars and food portions, the love of gadgets (which actually work), smart but loud attire for men (this is primarily a book by a man, about men, for other men), soap operas, extravagant funerals, everyone being in a rush, consumerism driven by ubiquitous advertising, informality and friendliness, price tags not including sales tax, and adults cutting their food into small pieces and then eating one-handed, like a British child.
Image: The land of reinvention, whether by necessity or choice.
“Black and White”
What made this impulse purchase worth more than its two pounds was the section on race. He looks at colourism within black communities, but the passion burns with quiet anger when describing the injustices Negroes [sic] endured, and the hypocrisy used to defend it. It is hard-hitting, especially for 1947: segregation was legally enforced in the South, and although we never had that on UK shores, it was 21 years before it was illegal for British landlords to put up signs saying “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs”.
Seventy four years later, the laws have changed, but some of the arguments have not:
But perhaps there’s nothing to worry about:
“Of course, there is no persecution at all. The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution declares:
‘The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous, condition of servitude.’”
He then casually mentions poll tax and white primary laws as indirect ways of breaching that, and saying:
“There is segregation in the South but the principle is: separate but equal.”
By changing the conjunction from “but” to “and”, he exposes the real truth:
“Separate and equal: all Negroes are quite separate and all Negroes are equal.”
Finally, he cites a shocking case:
“In May 1947 twenty eight white men were indicted and tried (for the first time in the history of the South) for lynching a Negro youth. Sixteen persons out of twenty eight had admitted in signed statements that they had taken part in the lynching, but an all-white jury acquitted all the defendants on every one of the ninety eight charges.”
Note: Nicholas Bentley’s illustrations in this section feature the thick lips and wide noses of offensive caricature, but Mikes’ message is unequivocally one of acceptance and equality.
To lift the mood, the final section could be a BuzzFeed listicle: “Looney Laws” that were still on the statues in various states.
Image: Adverts and background radio are inescapable
Quips
• “Baseball - which is cricket played with a strong American accent.”
• Cauliflower (over)cooked in a pressure cooker “really was exactly like the best cabbage I have ever tasted.”
• “Is there anything more exciting, inspiring and - should I say - manly than winter in England?” (because of the certainty of pipes bursting, fetching coal, smoke coming down the chimney etc)
• “New York is incomparably the most expensive town in the world, not because prices are so high but because you cannot resist buying anything and everything.”
• “Parallel streets were discovered in England in 1923, but most of the towns had already been built.” (There is a long, detailed, and funny chapter about the confusing geography of London in How to be an Alien)
• “It was decided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out.”
“My vision and judgement were not obscured by any previous knowledge of the United States, personal or otherwise”.
He writes with self-conscious wit, and it’s mildly amusing to see how many of the obvious targets are still true today: huge cars and food portions, the love of gadgets (which actually work), smart but loud attire for men (this is primarily a book by a man, about men, for other men), soap operas, extravagant funerals, everyone being in a rush, consumerism driven by ubiquitous advertising, informality and friendliness, price tags not including sales tax, and adults cutting their food into small pieces and then eating one-handed, like a British child.
Image: The land of reinvention, whether by necessity or choice.
“Black and White”
What made this impulse purchase worth more than its two pounds was the section on race. He looks at colourism within black communities, but the passion burns with quiet anger when describing the injustices Negroes [sic] endured, and the hypocrisy used to defend it. It is hard-hitting, especially for 1947: segregation was legally enforced in the South, and although we never had that on UK shores, it was 21 years before it was illegal for British landlords to put up signs saying “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs”.
Seventy four years later, the laws have changed, but some of the arguments have not:
The Southerners are the great experts on the Negro problem and they will explain to you that the crimes of Negroes are terrible and manifold and their persecution justified.
(1) First of all, the Negro is black… I must admit there is a great deal of truth in this very able observation…
(2) They are illiterate or at least uneducated… It is a very old recipe to exclude people from schools or keep them in utmost poverty so that they should be unable to go to school and then accuse them of being uneducated.
(3) They are over-ambitious and pushing - they learn too much.
(4) They are full of racial prejudice. Millions of them are satisfied with their situation, they believe in their own inferiority and have a strong dislike of Negroes coming from the North and talking about a real abolition of slavery. I should go so far as to state that some of them even like being lynched. Not all of them and not all the time - just a few Negroes, every now and then, let us say twice a year, in the height of the season.
(5) They do not ‘keep in their place’. So-called fair-minded Southerners told me that they have nothing against those Negroes who know their place, they only object to the ‘uppity’ ones. In other words they are perfectly adorable as long as they remain servants, janitors, waiters, sewage cleaners, boot-blacks, unskilled manual workers (preferably receiving very low wages)...
(6) They stink… I met a great number of white Southerners who were too busy to spend much time in washing and I dare say I could tell them without difficulty from a rose in full bloom.
(7) Their fathers were slaves. Note: this is the shame of the Negroes and not of their masters.
(8) They have criminal tendencies. There are indeed some ugly crimes - lynching for instance - in which Negroes are involved without fail, in one way or another.
But perhaps there’s nothing to worry about:
“Of course, there is no persecution at all. The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution declares:
‘The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous, condition of servitude.’”
He then casually mentions poll tax and white primary laws as indirect ways of breaching that, and saying:
“There is segregation in the South but the principle is: separate but equal.”
By changing the conjunction from “but” to “and”, he exposes the real truth:
“Separate and equal: all Negroes are quite separate and all Negroes are equal.”
Finally, he cites a shocking case:
“In May 1947 twenty eight white men were indicted and tried (for the first time in the history of the South) for lynching a Negro youth. Sixteen persons out of twenty eight had admitted in signed statements that they had taken part in the lynching, but an all-white jury acquitted all the defendants on every one of the ninety eight charges.”
Note: Nicholas Bentley’s illustrations in this section feature the thick lips and wide noses of offensive caricature, but Mikes’ message is unequivocally one of acceptance and equality.
To lift the mood, the final section could be a BuzzFeed listicle: “Looney Laws” that were still on the statues in various states.
Image: Adverts and background radio are inescapable
Quips
• “Baseball - which is cricket played with a strong American accent.”
• Cauliflower (over)cooked in a pressure cooker “really was exactly like the best cabbage I have ever tasted.”
• “Is there anything more exciting, inspiring and - should I say - manly than winter in England?” (because of the certainty of pipes bursting, fetching coal, smoke coming down the chimney etc)
• “New York is incomparably the most expensive town in the world, not because prices are so high but because you cannot resist buying anything and everything.”
• “Parallel streets were discovered in England in 1923, but most of the towns had already been built.” (There is a long, detailed, and funny chapter about the confusing geography of London in How to be an Alien)
• “It was decided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out.”
February 1, 2022
3.5 ⭐ George Mikes was a Hungarian emigre to the U.K. and a satirist. The subject of his first book, a bestseller, was the U.K. Next in line for Mikes's treatment was the United States and subsequently he wrote books on France, Germany, Italy, Australia, et cet, and other humor. It's all in the back of the book, and on Wikipedia. He was talented.
How to Scrape Skies is wry, humorous and occasionally hilarious. The title comes from his material on New York City, which is balanced between skewering the tourist and the natives. Mikes traveled to different regions, saw and satirized some of the absurdities, vanities and cruelties of America in the 1940s, especially the racism. It's dated in some places; in others the language has changed but it's still spot on.
There were two things he wrote that appalled me. One seemed to be a result of honest ignorance, as opposed to willful ignorance, or of poor judgment. The other, which made me gasp audibly, is not so easily explained but for me they're not disqualifiers. I'm glad I read it and I'll read it again.
This is not a book for flag wavers (or beaters) who don't want to read a furner making fun of their country. Nor is it for anyone who can't, or doesn't want to, separate content from historical context. It's got elements of Twain's early travel writing, Spy Magazine and Politically Incorrect. No school board will have to remove this from its curriculum. And no one can have my copy to burn. I had a good time with it. Good thing it's still legal to laugh.
How to Scrape Skies is wry, humorous and occasionally hilarious. The title comes from his material on New York City, which is balanced between skewering the tourist and the natives. Mikes traveled to different regions, saw and satirized some of the absurdities, vanities and cruelties of America in the 1940s, especially the racism. It's dated in some places; in others the language has changed but it's still spot on.
There were two things he wrote that appalled me. One seemed to be a result of honest ignorance, as opposed to willful ignorance, or of poor judgment. The other, which made me gasp audibly, is not so easily explained but for me they're not disqualifiers. I'm glad I read it and I'll read it again.
This is not a book for flag wavers (or beaters) who don't want to read a furner making fun of their country. Nor is it for anyone who can't, or doesn't want to, separate content from historical context. It's got elements of Twain's early travel writing, Spy Magazine and Politically Incorrect. No school board will have to remove this from its curriculum. And no one can have my copy to burn. I had a good time with it. Good thing it's still legal to laugh.
December 25, 2018
I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as Mikes’s trilogy about Englishness, but 70 years on many of his observations about America still hit home: the oversized cars, the informality and outward friendliness, the love of gadgets and shopping, and the profligate habits. “England, as a rule, is a rather warm but very draughty country; America is cold but well-heated. In fact, over-heated. On the coldest days, people sit in shirt-sleeves in front of the open windows. Not only the whole of Britain but the whole Continent could be nicely heated with the energy that escapes through the windows in the U.S.” Section III, on race relations, is very telling.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews