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I Hear America Swinging
Bound in the publisher's original black boards with the spine stamped in red. Previous owner's bookplate on the front free endpaper.
- GenresHumor
211 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Peter De Vries
55 books166 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 22, 2024
De Vries was a guilty pleasure that I indulged in from time to time. He came recommended by George Will. If I recall correctly, this book was about a guy who worked as a mover but he had some fairly refined tastes. For example, on one of his jobs he wore a T-shirt that had a picture of Proust on it. A good deal of the humor was of that kind: juxtapositions of very different things.
September 15, 2020
Thoughtful, witty and highly entertaining.
January 24, 2013
Peter De Vries is an author who deserves to be better remembered and more widely read. During his career from the 1940s through 1980s, he was popular as a short-story writer, essayist, and reviewer for The New Yorker, and a couple of his books inspired movies or Broadway plays. But all 23 of his novels were out of print by the time he died in 1993. If you happen upon one in a used book store, though (which is no sure thing), I recommend giving it a try. You may find yourself delighted enough to seek out the other 22.
Why is De Vries not more widely read today? His central concern is usually the predicament of men and women (especially men) amid the rapidly changing sexual mores of his era, and I guess this aspect of his writing can seem a little dated. Another dynamic he often uses for laughs in his books – heartland or blue-collar wisdom versus urban sophistication, or at least a grasping for it – also seems a window to a bygone decade, much as an episode of All in the Family does today. Finally, the teasers on the Popular Library paperback edition covers are so bad they almost seem designed to discourage reading of the books. But all of these are peripheral to what makes his writing so good; like any great satirist, De Vries deftly exposes absurdity and pretension. He had the humorist’s eye for the hilarious aspects of everyday life, and few writers have been able to depict them with as much dexterity or wit. He wrote with such verve that the reader has to be constantly alert for the next zinger.
De Vries was a compulsive punster, and for better or worse his one-liners populate just about every chapter of his books. In his stronger novels they are an adornment to the plot; in the weaker ones the effort to weave a coherent story and develop characters to any depth tends to stagger somewhat under the weight of the jokes. I Hear America Swinging is in the latter category. The story is about a marriage counselor’s attempt to assist an Iowa farm couple, which comically dissolves into a sort of experimental open-marriage commune. If that plot doesn’t grab you, I completely understand, but it’s fairly inconsequential to the book, other than as a device to let De Vries work his magic. Modern art and art criticism get a skewering. One of the commune residents gets hired by the local paper to be a “primitive” art critic, visiting exhibits in overalls and giving the colloquial take on progressive art. He’s a hit at first, but gets fired after the intellectual terminology of the professional art critic begins to infect his writing, creating wildly discordant prose: “mangled perspectives and anatomical deformities serve to rout any lingering aesthetic pieties you or me or Aunt Frigadella might harbor, seems like.” De Vries also delivers a jab against literary standards; in the first chapter the narrator’s doctoral dissertation into “Causes of Divorce in Southeastern Rural Iowa” gets rejected by the Social Sciences Department because the data fail to support meaningful conclusions, at which point he resourcefully gets it published as an avant-garde novel.
There are better De Vries novels: Comfort Me With Apples, The Mackerel Plaza, The Tents of Wickedness, and – unlike all the others and in a category by itself – The Blood of the Lamb. But even one of the less successful De Vries efforts rates 3 stars for me, offering plenty of witticisms to relish and wordplay to marvel at.
Why is De Vries not more widely read today? His central concern is usually the predicament of men and women (especially men) amid the rapidly changing sexual mores of his era, and I guess this aspect of his writing can seem a little dated. Another dynamic he often uses for laughs in his books – heartland or blue-collar wisdom versus urban sophistication, or at least a grasping for it – also seems a window to a bygone decade, much as an episode of All in the Family does today. Finally, the teasers on the Popular Library paperback edition covers are so bad they almost seem designed to discourage reading of the books. But all of these are peripheral to what makes his writing so good; like any great satirist, De Vries deftly exposes absurdity and pretension. He had the humorist’s eye for the hilarious aspects of everyday life, and few writers have been able to depict them with as much dexterity or wit. He wrote with such verve that the reader has to be constantly alert for the next zinger.
De Vries was a compulsive punster, and for better or worse his one-liners populate just about every chapter of his books. In his stronger novels they are an adornment to the plot; in the weaker ones the effort to weave a coherent story and develop characters to any depth tends to stagger somewhat under the weight of the jokes. I Hear America Swinging is in the latter category. The story is about a marriage counselor’s attempt to assist an Iowa farm couple, which comically dissolves into a sort of experimental open-marriage commune. If that plot doesn’t grab you, I completely understand, but it’s fairly inconsequential to the book, other than as a device to let De Vries work his magic. Modern art and art criticism get a skewering. One of the commune residents gets hired by the local paper to be a “primitive” art critic, visiting exhibits in overalls and giving the colloquial take on progressive art. He’s a hit at first, but gets fired after the intellectual terminology of the professional art critic begins to infect his writing, creating wildly discordant prose: “mangled perspectives and anatomical deformities serve to rout any lingering aesthetic pieties you or me or Aunt Frigadella might harbor, seems like.” De Vries also delivers a jab against literary standards; in the first chapter the narrator’s doctoral dissertation into “Causes of Divorce in Southeastern Rural Iowa” gets rejected by the Social Sciences Department because the data fail to support meaningful conclusions, at which point he resourcefully gets it published as an avant-garde novel.
There are better De Vries novels: Comfort Me With Apples, The Mackerel Plaza, The Tents of Wickedness, and – unlike all the others and in a category by itself – The Blood of the Lamb. But even one of the less successful De Vries efforts rates 3 stars for me, offering plenty of witticisms to relish and wordplay to marvel at.
January 15, 2008
I know I read this in high school, but I can't imagine what I got out of it.
August 12, 2009
Disappointing period piece satirizing the sexual revolution & intellectual pretentiousnes of the 60s.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews