Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers

by Don Marquis

A collection of deliciously satirical sketches showing people's pretense in discussing things of which they knows nothing.

Excerpt from Hermione: And Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers
Prison Reform and Poise; An Example of Psychic Power; Some Beautiful Thoughts; The Bourgeois Elements and Background; Taking Up the Liquor Problem; The Japanese are Wonderful, If You Get What I Mean; She Refuses to Give Up the Cosmos; The Cave Man; The Little Group Gives a Pagan Masque; Sympathy; Blouses, Bulgars, and Buttermilk; Twilight Sleep; Stimulating Influences; Politics; Hermione on Psychical Research; Envoy - Hermione the Deathless

182 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Donald Robert Perry "Don" Marquis was a newspaper columnist as well as a playwright, novelist, and poet, best known for his "Archy and Mehitabel" free verse and his "Old Soak" anti-Prohibition play.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this from Amazon... it turns out to be a book where someone has taken the Project Gutenberg text and printed it, "typist's note' and all. And demonstrated that simply Print on demanding Project Gutenberg text does not give you a book, especially when nobody's bothered to lay it out. Every paragraph double spaced. no publication info. Avoid. Sorry.

[Mary Grace McGeehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of columns by Don Marquis, better known as the creator of the cockroach-and-cat duo archy and mehitabel. Hermione, an affluent young New Yorker, recounts her life as a wannabe Greenwich Bohemian. She and her little group "take up" various interests--feminism and the war and transmigration of the soul--but she generally gets distracted and ends up talking about hats. A hilarious book that deserves to be better known.

I read this book as part of my My Year in 1918 project (myyearin1918.com).

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's wonderful; - just simply wonderful!

[R.B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have the feeling you're supposed to read between the lines here, which is something I'm unable to do most of the time. I did find some of the stories amusing but mostly I just didn't understand.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, bitchy slander of the hippies and pseuds of a century ago. Vague, snobbish, hypocritical, self-congratulatory, appropriative: that is, not much has changed in our New Agers.

Repetitive – too many puns about howdahs, etc – and more than three-quarters of it assumes the voices of rhythmically insufferable idiots.

Anyway its real value, apart from hammering home the difference between Marquis’ own true poetic voice and the banal vers libre he merely uses here, is as history lesson. Orientalist, relativist bohemian mysticism was far from an innovation of the Sixties, since the cant and conceit of Hermione's guests is a perfect match.

Notice that, even while despairing of Hermione, Marquis hangs around her all the same, a hanger-on to hangers-on. Give it an hour.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A spoiled rich young lady narrates her innermost thoughts which are very superficial and idiotic. This is humorous but there are strange interludes written by her friends, or by the omniscient narrator that I had to skip.

[tib · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snarky, funny, timeless...well, at least timeless from 1900 on.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly entertaining and rather short, I read this book online while waiting for experiments to finish at work. I'm going to have to read some more of Don Marquis!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like this sort of thing--American character humor, in this case the character in question being a featherbrained society girl from circa 1915--this is just the thing you'll like.