Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Blandings #1

by Eric Hodgins

The classic tale of leaving the city and building a house in the country, only to find country life isn't so simple. But it is hilarious.

Mr. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to escape the confines of their tiny midtown apartment. They design the perfect home in the idyllic country, but soon they are beset by construction troubles, temperamental workmen, skyrocketing bills, threatening lawyers, and difficult neighbors. Mr. Blandings' dream house soon threatens to be the nightmare that undoes him.

This internationally bestselling book by Eric Hodgins is illustrated by William Steig and was made into a film starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy -- and a later film starring Tom Hanks called The Money Pit.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Classics, Comedy, Novels, American, Architecture

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Born 1899, Eric Francis Hodgins was the American author of the popular Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1946). Hodgins served as editor in chief of The Youth Companion, associate editor of Redbook, and then as associate editor of Fortune magazine. He became publisher of Fortune in 1937, and a vice president of Time Inc. in 1938. He quit Time Inc. in 1946 to write full-time.

His novels also included a sequel, Blandings Way, published in 1950.

He died in New York City.

Reviews

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

My initial reaction to finding out the national treasure who is Tom Hanks had been diagnosed with the Coronavirus was . . . .



But then I got distracted when the news started showing clips of some of his movies and mentioned that this fave . . . .



Was a remake of another old fave . . . .



Which I should have been smart enough to realize, but somehow never put two-and-two together. When threats of the library shutting down temporarily sprouted, I went ahead and added this oldie but goodie to my wheelbarrow of checkouts. There’s not a whole lot to say about it. Mr. and Mrs. Blandings are New Yorkers raising a couple of kids and find themselves quite comfortable financially after he strikes gold writing ad copy for a popular laxative so they decide to build a house in the country. Connecticut is where they find their money pit and it’s one disaster after another until their $10,000 dream house is complete – at the cost of approximately $55,000.

It probably goes without saying that this book is exhausting to read. While it is humorous (and was based on the author’s own nightmares of building), it will wear you out with its over-the-top-ed-ness (new word). The plus side is the weird almost affair between Muriel Blandings and the family attorney Bill Cole does not exist in the paper format. (And can we just talk about that? Who would even consider banging uggo Melvyn Douglas when Cary Grant’s delicious dimple was in bed next to you????)

Anywho, get the book or not. I’m sure the author won’t care since he’s been dead for 50 years. I highly recommend checking out both films, however.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been wanting to read this for ever (it seems), as the Cary Grant movie based on the book is one of my favorite black and white "oldie-goldies".

What a letdown the book was. Not even a fraction as funny, charming and endearing as the movie. The coarse language came as an added (and unwelcome) surprise considering this was written in the 1940's. At times, I even found it a depressive story; rather ironic considering it's supposed to be a humorous story of the trials and tribulations of home ownership - keyword here: HUMOROUS

Disappointing read. Off to watch the superior movie adaptation :D

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He tried to remember what chain of circumstances, what association of emotions, had ever persuaded him in the first place that he wanted a house in the country, a home of his own.”

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a 1946 satire about New York city slickers, Jim, and Muriel Blandings, buying a dream house in the country. The advertising exec – whose job it is to dupe people into buying stuff – gets duped by an ad himself. They buy a property for a far higher price than the going rate. Not to mention the house on it would be better off being demolished. Nevertheless, Jim and Muriel are caught up in the fantasy and don’t think clearly. It’s a case of letting dreams and emotions get in the way of common sense.

This was a charming story with lovely cartoon-like drawing by William Steig that added a humorous visual aid on occasion (in the print format – not sure about the digital). I appreciated that some situations were further explained using numbers. The figures used were laughable compared with current home prices. And sometimes, Jim or Muriel was the one who “blew the budget” because they were naïve about what a minor change in the building plan would do to the scope of the project. As absurd as their experience was, I could appreciate the ring of truth in it. Anyone that has renovated a part of their house, whether you’re a DIY type or you hired a contractor, knows that there will be unforeseen add-ons that raise the cost over the estimate. But the Blanding’s have no experiences to call upon to guide them, so they are frequently shocked as their modest dream house snowballs out of proportion.

Many years ago, I saw the 1986 movie The Money Pit starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long and thought it hilarious. It was the first thing that came to mind when I noticed this book was on Guardian’s 1000 Books to Read list and decided to read it. I didn’t realize The Money Pit was based on this book and a firsthand experience of the author when he bought a property in New Milford, Connecticut. Of course, I couldn’t pass on seeing the original 1948 film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House starring Caray Grant and Myrna Loy. I loved the black and white film, especially seeing the vintage machinery and worksite. If you are an old movie fan, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Despite the difficulties, order mix ups, cranky neighbors, legal issues, and among other problems, the Blanding’s achieve their re-envisioned dream house. Overall, it was a delightfully amusing story that could have benefited from less pages (as the math examples continued longer that I would have wished).

[Kimber · Rating 3 out of 5]

The perils of building your dream house...in the country...

Both a comedy (or tragicomedy?) and a biting satire about a couple who "decide" they want a house in the country. Do they even know what they want? They make foolish decision after foolish decision & a modern-day (by 1946 standards) comedy of errors ensues.

If only they listened to their lawyer from the very beginning but their fate is sealed as they plunge forward, head first into certain catastrophe. I was delighted by every page until the whole comedic tone changed. The denouement (the last 1/5)was abrupt. It was not funny any more. Mr. Blandings, once so relatable, and seemingly a good husband, suddenly goes for the metaphorical smackdown on his wife. Even an illustration by Steig shows Mr. Blandings looming largely and aggressively over her as she is forced to cower. The last pages of the book limp along, to its dismal (not funny) ending. The sudden change of tone, rather than keeping to the same consistency that had been established before- as well as the sudden sexism- caused the once hilarious story to all come crashing down in the end.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard book to know how to rate. It's a story of a husband and wife who decide to buy a home in the country so they can have an idyllic life away from the noise and bustle of the city. You could also say it's a book about a mid-life crisis. Their decisions are mainly emotional, hasty, and unprepared for so they get into a bunch of hassle and get taken advantage of at every turn. At times it was amusing, though most of the time I found it rather annoying. Most of their true problems could have been avoided if they had been wise, discerning (or had actually thought through things at all), and been willing to stand their ground. There was also some bad language throughout that could have easily been left out. If you like to see people make foolish decisions and make fools of themselves, then this is the book for you!

[Mo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laugh-out-loud funny. I only wish there were more entries in Mrs. Blandings Diary.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

One summer in my middle school years I frequently stayed up late, watching on television the movie being shown on "The Late Show" (there was a different movie every night). I remember seeing the film version of this book then. Cary Grant starred in it as Mr. Blandings.

This book is essentially a comedic tale of a naive advertising executive and his wife in New York City who buy an old country home in Connecticut. As things turn out they have to tear down the house and have a new one built. By the end they've spent three times as much money as they had expected to when they embarked on this adventure. In a seemingly unending stream, one disaster and frustration after another takes place. The reader comes to regularly wonder "what next?" as the story progresses.

The book is written in a wittily, heavily sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek style that some readers may find gets to be old after a while (although it didn't bother me --- I liked it). As the book ends, and the Blandings are finally living in the house that was such an incredible struggle to have built, yet another problem is looming on the horizon.

[Darla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! Just as good as the 1948 Cary Grant movie based on it. The major difference between the novel and the movie is that the movie's time line is majorly compressed (the whole story takes place in a single season) compared to the novel's (the story takes place over a few years). Also, the movie imposed a past romantic history between Mrs. Blandings and the lawyer Bill Cole, which wasn't evident in the book. Most characters in the movie were very true to their counterparts in the novel, however, with the exception of Mr. Tesander, who is hired to drill for water; in the novel he is an Eastern European immigrant, while in the movie he was a down home country character. My favorite line out of the whole book was, "In his methodical progress through the earth's crust, Mr. Tesander was encountering everything in an omnipotent God's creation except water." Great read! Looking forward to reading the sequel.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hysterical!! 1930s semi-screwball comedy of errors in which a Manhattan couple decides to build a house in the country. Everything that can go wrong...

Made me feel better about my own real estate fumblings. It was also highly quotable, as when Mr. Blandings learns that he must pay the full balance of the mortgage because he didn't get the consent of the mortgage holder before tearing down the house to build a new one:

"I make it a point not to criticize your drinking habits, even when I do not approve of them," said Mrs. Blandings, "but when you tip the bottle up and I can hear it gurgle at least three times, I think I am bound to say that it strikes me as not only unwise, but vulgar."

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if you've seen the old Cary Grant movie made from this book, but my advice is to watch the movie and not worry about the book. It was really stressful--one catastrophe after another, without all that fun Cary Grantness to give you some comic relief. There was humor, and it was pretty well-written, but I just couldn't enjoy it because it was riddled with too much swearing. It was written in the 40's, for heaven's sake! I just didn't expect it to be so foul. And I think it hit too close to home, since we've been through building our own home not long ago. . . .

Watch the movie--it's 5-star! :)

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few stylistic bits are off-putting but understandable - switching viewpoints from Mr to Mrs halfway through and a much larger vocabulary than most current authors use being the most prominent; and the narrative and timeline gets a bit fuzzy - they go to supervise construction of an unfinished house buy only mention in passing where they're living while they do this, and that only after a hundred pages of mystery; but even so the humor is still spot on and relevant today with the universal pitfalls of ballooning estimates and unexpected costs mined for all their worth.

[Lisa Brantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would be funnier if it wasn't quite as frighteningly accurate 😳
(I wonder if folks who didn't care for it ever built or remodelled a house?)

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a quirky old read. I enjoyed the first half more than the second. Didn’t appreciate and was surprised at some language. The movie is way better!!

—

“The crisis abated, but Mr. Simms needed occasional heavy drafts of self-control over the next month when Mrs. Blandings would now and again refer to ‘Mr. Simms's mistake’ in placing a handsome set of casement windows beneath the grass.”

“This phase soon passed; things became surprisingly better surprisingly soon. Mr. Blandings wondered whether everybody else's life was such a succession of roller-coaster plunges from elation to despair and swoops back to elation, or whether, as his closest friends and office mates insisted, he was a sufferer from severe emotional instability.”

“It seemed too bad, but as the years went by they could doubtless add an improvement here or there, once they had lived in the house for a couple of years and, as with a marriage, discovered the unexpected quirks, the hidden flaws, that no period of courtship, however long, could properly and completely reveal.”

“…the terrace, on which he had already, in anticipation, sat in the cool of the evening and invited his soul…”

“‘If I were you, I'd start doing things like that for myself,’ he said. ‘That's one way; the other way is to spend two hours tracing John Retch on the telephone and then waiting another three to ten days before he gets a man back here to find out what it's all about. Then you have another little extra for adjustment work that Retch can claim was outside the contract. You'll find a lot of loose screws around, here and there; you can either tighten 'em yourself or spend $25 to bring a man thirty miles with a screw driver. I know which I'd do if I were you.’”

“As part of his new responsibilities, Mr. Blandings began to contemplate his house from a new vantage point. It didn't just sit there and exist, he suddenly came to realize, but fumed and hummed like a battleship at anchor.”

[Maureen Wynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you've never seen the Cary Grant and Myrna Loy movie that is based on this book, watch the movie and give the book a pass. In fact, if you HAVE seen the movie, go watch it again - it's great! The book has some elements of the humor that makes the movie so much fun, but only if you're willing to laugh at poor, naive Mr. Blandings as he stumbles through all the trials and tribulations of home ownership. I realize that researching "the best way to dig a well" is easier now in the era of Google than it was in the 1940s, but the fact that Mr. Blandings just said "oh, dig the well there" without consulting an engineer first, just made me cringe, knowing that the well was just going to be yet another disaster, along with everything else that has gone wrong. It's not that buying land and building a house is soooooo difficult, it's that Mr. Blandings knows NOTHING about any step of the process, and refuses to admit that he knows nothing, so does no research, asks no questions, and hires no experts or consultants to help. The one expert who SHOULD have helped, the architect, does not give the Blandings the benefit of his expertise by pointing out, with each change to the plans, how much each change will add to the final cost. I guess I'm just too much of a curmudgeon, that I could not enjoy the "humor" of watching a sucker get flimflammed every step of the way.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice little trip back in time, but it also shows the more things change the more they stay the same. Home renovation/redecoration never goes the way you plan & it NEVER costs what you think it should!!!

[Watchdogg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins, William Steig (Illustrator)
First published in 1946

Thumbnail -
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a 1946 comedy novel written by Eric Hodgins and illustrated by William Steig, describing the vicissitudes of buying a home in the country. It originally appeared as a short story called "Mr. Blandings Builds His Castle" in the April 1946 issue of Fortune magazine.

The book begins in fictional rural Landsdale County, where Jim and Muriel Blandings are being shown an old farmhouse by a real estate agent. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to leave their tiny Midtown apartment, where they live with their two daughters. They fantasize that the farmhouse will meet their needs. After some negotiation, they buy the house.

They soon learn that the house is structurally unsound and must be torn down. They design the perfect home in the country, imagining an idyll, but they are quickly beset by construction troubles, temperamental workmen, skyrocketing bills, threatening lawyers, and difficult neighbors. The Blandings' dream house soon threatens to be the nightmare that undoes them.

My thoughts -
This must be the original 'money pit' story that has been repeated over and over. Although classified as humor, as the story unfolds, I could relate to the pain and agony that Mr. Blandings suffered as he felt duped by the real estate agent and seller, taken advantage of by bankers and construction company, and ridiculed by his neighbors and other townspeople. I think each of us has been in that situation one time or another whether it be looking for a home or buying a used car. Plenty of chuckles and laughs along the way, but also some strife and hard life lessons. Back in the day I would say it was a must read for all readers, but for today, an amusing and heartfelt tale. Classic illustrations by William Steig round this story out.

Four stars over Bald Mountain for this one - Very Good - better than most.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully dry humour throughout as Mr (and Mrs) Blandings encounter every sort of obstacle in the path of their dream of moving out of the city and living in a country house. Hodgins excellent writing strikes just the right tone, and although a little bit "one joke"-y the short length means the story/pages just fly delightfully by. My fave bit is when Mr Blandings burns his bridges at the local bank and ends up by telling them that he "wouldn't go back if they had a pay toilet"!

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet funny book about Mr. Blandings a man who wants a house torn down and his dream house built. Crazy things happen. The basis for the famous movie.

[Kitty Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mom and dad ran a custom home building company, one where I grew up half on job sites and the other half sitting quietly in a corner as clients discussed what they wanted. For reasons that would become apparent, the movie with Cary Grant, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, was one of their favorites.

I didn't even know it was a book until recently, and immediately checked it out from the library. If you're familiar with the movie - and liked it - take heart, because the script paid close attention to the book. As someone familiar with clients who misunderstood the nature of change-orders or that, indeed, they cost extra money, or clients who argue ferociously over whether or not an extra closet is really needed, or even a home-owner yourself, you'll laugh yourself sick.

Mr. and Mrs. Blandings naively step into home-owning, and later home-building, and find themselves stuck in the mud before too long. All of the joys and terrors of buying a home - the "other people" your real estate agent keeps ominously mentioning, the contractors, the subcontractors, the owners themselves - everyone is hilariously skewered in the most accurate account of building a home ever written; amazingly, all of this humor remains the same, even though the book was published in 1946.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no one who has ever built a home or a major addition that can't relate to this book.

Written in the mid-1940s, it was made into a movie in the early 50's with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy that virtually used the book as a script, not merely a story line. Both are hilarious.

To escape the tiny Manhattan apartment, the Blandings decide to buy a house in suburban Connecticut - a creaky old house that they quickly decide (or is decided for them) to tear down. The modest house Mr. Blandings envisions soon grows to what we'd today call a McMansion, thanks to the well-intentioned efforts of Mrs. Blandings ("it's just a little flower sink, dear"), the architect, the well driller, and all the other characters in what Mr. Blandings thinks is a great conspiracy to defraud him. All live hapily in the end, of course.

[Vasilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can say for certain that this book is utterly brilliant and worth at least 4.5 stars for sheer truthfulness and insight. Couldn't entirely appreciate this truthfulness however, as the comedy struck too close to home to be enjoyable! When you're reading about the trials of building a home and every situation seems familiar (either because you've fallen into these traps in the past, or can easily see yourself doing so in the future), the laughs become morbid.

On a more positive note, the language is wonderful. Without being too flowery, it has just the right touch of early 20th century formality. Everything Hodgins describes, even in the shortest or simplest phrases, becomes a very clear picture to you as you read. His descriptions of the country farmhouse and surroundings are especially dreamy.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really, really funny book, touching on just about every nightmare a home owner could possibly imagine. Eric Hodgins put his never-used engineering degree from M.I.T. to work overtime, to come up with dilemmas from jacking up the sagging foundation, to the famous"Taj Mahal" closet with changes totaling $1247.00. Mr. Blandings and his equally long-suffering wife are never mentioned by first name, but they still come across as the vulnerable, fallible type of people most of us are when confronted by construction madness. The illustrations by William Stieg are the icing on the cake in this highly entertaining story.

[WhatShouldIRead]

I found that I agree with some of the reviewers here. While this book was OK, it just wasn't interesting enough to finish. I read halfway through and most of it was interesting, I got a few chuckles, but then felt it bogged down in the details.

I made it to the part where Mr. Blandings is explaining to Mrs. Blandings how the well was being dug, how the expense was charged, and mathematically how much water was expected to gush forth per minute. Mr. Blandings stated that after explanation Mrs. Blandings didn't get it. Neither did I. Stopped reading after that.

Watch the movie, it is much better.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A total delight….anyone building or remodeling should read this book…it’s too hilarious and true!! As for the movie…..the original with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy was wonderful….and of course while reading I did envision Cary and Myrna. The movie was a good adaptation….if you enjoyed the movie you will love the book ..so many more laughs.

I love finding these old treasures at book sales….1946!! The illustrations (William Steig) make this book a bit more special for me.

[Anmiryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps not quite as charming as the film with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, but still a wonderfully funny and relevant read. The amounts of money involved seem trivial today -- until you begin to adjust for inflation! Seriously, if you have ever built, or even renovated, a house, this book will strike a chord that will make you laugh and cringe in equal measure.

[Leila Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is FAR better than the film adaptation.

[Deanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr and Mrs Blandings find there dream home, but it quickly turns into a nightmare. A book for anyone who's bought a house only to discover all the things the seller neglected to mention.

[Shayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fun. Please read this before you go and build a house! (Pro tip: as of 2014, multiply every dollar number in this book by 16 to adjust for inflation.)

[Shirley Yount · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the few times that the movie is better than the book.

[Rafeeq O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Hodgins' 1946 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a wry, thoroughly enjoyable 5-star tale of a well-to-do advertising executive of the innocent interwar period and his droll and long-suffering wife on the grueling, years-long quest, part Thorstein Veblen and part "ravishing desire" (1946 Simon & Schuster hardcover, page 14), for a stately property in the country such as those owned by other prosperous and self-satisfied bigwigs "finding rural escape from the advertising-agency business and the Grand Central Zone" (page 17).

Having repeatedly enjoyed the 1948 film adaptation starring Cary Grant and the placidly sly Myrna Loy, I always presumed Mr. Brandings Builds His Dream House was a contemporaneous tale of the exuberant postwar boom. It is not, however. The book tells us that the last time "a city dweller" had offered to buy the old Hackett place was August of 1929...after which, adds Hodgins dryly, "[s]ome financial trouble in the cities had then ensued, and the deal had not matured" (page 17). Although "his friends had told Eph Hackett that he would probably have to wait a long, long time now to sell his property at the price he wanted," the novel opens "less than a decade later" (page 17), and here come some city slickers again. The period, then, is something a bit earlier than 1939. The mushroom cloud of the atom bomb has not yet towered threateningly, the death camps and gas chambers are yet unknown, the fighting in China is far enough away to be ignored, and Hitler still appears just a comical little figure with a funny mustache. It is an insular, oh-so comfortable time we scarcely can imagine now.

In any event, I discovered to my surprise that a number of other very familiar and amusing things were written into the film rather than being part of the base novel itself. There is no undergraduate dating backstory between Muriel and lawyer Cole here, for example, and hence no exquisite pipe-and-bathrobe "'Cole. Bill Cole. Friend of the family'" scene after the children are kept away one night by a washed-out bridge; here Bill is only "her husband's young friend and attorney" (page 36; emphasis added) rather than a middle-aged contemporary. The thirteen- and eleven-year-old daughters being educated by the "crackpot" Miss Stellwagon (page 25) in the presumably expensive "progressive school" with its "creative, anarchistic, and sexual freedoms" (page 15), by the way, make only the briefest of appearances here, and rather than being rather being dry foils for their father's bumbling, their immaturity is mildly amusing instead. There's no live-in cook and housekeeper Gussie either, and hence no "If you ain't eatin' Wham, you ain't eatin' ham!" off-the-cuff last-minute save for the dreaded big account that means Jim's job or lack thereof.

In fact, here there is no writer's block at all, and instead the protagonist's professional success already has been ensured when, "[w]hile still a relatively young man in his profession, Mr. Blandings had been lucky enough to hit upon a three-word slogan for a laxative account that had broken four successive agency vice-presidents. So compulsive did these three simple monosyllables become, iterated and reiterated to the metabolizing public from magazine pages, billboards, radio loudspeakers (despite veiled warnings from the Federal Communications Commission), and skywriting airplanes, that within three years' time a fading cathartic had come to stand with Ivory Soap, Wrigley's Chewing Gum, and Campbell's Soup as one of the dozen most widely recognized and demanded brand names in America" (page 15). And what are those magical "three simple monosyllables" that can solidify a man's entire career? "Makes you crap!" is my hope, but Hodgins' mock-heroic coyly elides the answer.

In any event, the novel begins in medias res as Mr. and Mrs. Blandings accompany the sharp, never-named "real-estate man" casually "[u]sing a penknife as a key" (page 4) to enter the decrepit old farmhouse. The view out the back window indeed is gorgeous: "The land rushe[s] downward to the river a mile away; then it [rises] again, layer after layer, plane after plane of hills and higher hills lighter beyond them. The air [is] luminous, and there [a]re twenty shades of browns and greens in the plowed and wooded and folded earth" (page 4). Blandings may attempt the pose that "[t]he notion that might buy this old farmhouse, or any other, anywhere, ever, [i]s light, gossamer nonsense; a whimsy; a caprice" (page 6), but of course these city rubes have sold themselves.

They also, of course, are "being flimflammed" (page 40). After all, in that neck of the woods, "[w]hen the natives sell to one another it's around $40 an acre or less," and whereas "$100 is the standard top-gouge real-estate price per acre to city slickers," Blandings' already high bid combined with a reduction from a very liberally estimated 50 acres to a surveyed 35-ish acres "brings the price up to $330 an acre" (page 42). And while we initially may shrug at the $11,000 purchase price--before needing to tear down the original unsound house, then designing, building, and outfitting a new one brings the project to more like $56,263.97, which does not include ensuing "barn repair, driveways, landscaping, boughten and transported trees, lawn seed, repairs to fences, the setting out of shrubs and bushes, tree surgery, restoration of orchards, etc." (page 233)--we should remember that just as a lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1937 or '38, so has a lot of inflation. In fact, ye olde Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator might inform us that the initial 11 thou' would be akin to $202,000 today, so that 56k semi-final cost is over $1,000,000. Ouch.

As long as it's not our million smackers being spent, though, the tale is a hilarious one. At one point, even before the new hole in the ground has been dynamited from the unforgiving rock, Mr. Blandings ruefully longs for the "true privacy" and "[t]rue detachment" of "the pavements of the harsh, uncaring city, across a mile of which a man with a dagger might pursue a screaming woman with a child in her arms and evoke...no feelings other than mild wonder and philosophic speculation" (page 158). 'Tis too late to go back, though. And although he cannot quite recall how the slide into mayhem began and would prefer to blame someone--"Was Mrs. Blandings responsible? Mr. Blanings sort of thought so, but he could not exactly recall" (page 135)--he knows that he himself has also swallowed all the guff "he had ever read from the pens of all his brother copywriters" (page 135) about the joys, indeed glory, of home ownership. With a narrative that can shrug airily that "there [i]s no way on earth to cut a $31,000 house down to a $21,000 house any more than there [i]s a way of making marmosets out of a zebra by trimming down and rearranging the zebra" (page 139), Eric Hodgins in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House will carry us from one cringeworthy situation and zany piece of prose to the next, making us love every moment of it.