Peter De Vries - Reuben, Reuben

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

1956, 1962, 1964 by Peter De Vries

All rights reserved

Originally published in 1964 by Little, Brown and Company

Paperback edition 2015

Printed in the United States of America

22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-0-226-17056-5 (paper)

ISBN: 978-0-226-17073-2 (e-book)

DOI: 10.728/chicago/9780226170732.001.0001

Parts of originally of this novel have appeared in the New Yorker in slightly different form.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 64-10471

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

De Vries, Peter, 19101993, author.

Reuben, Reuben : a novel / Peter De Vries. Paperback edition.

pages cm

Originally published in 1964 by Little, Brown and Company. Title page verso.

ISBN 978-0-226-17056-5 (paperback : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-0-226-17073-2 (e-book)

1. Man-woman relationships Fiction. I. Title.

PS3507.E8673R48 2015

813'.52 dc23

2014014264

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

Reuben, Reuben

A Novel

by Peter De Vries

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago and London

Praise for De Vries, Reuben, Reuben

Peter De Vriess new novel, Reuben Reuben, is his longest, his most ambitious, and his best.

New York Times

[De Vriess] plots are twisting and ingenious, and he is even funnier in phrasing that twists and shapes a scene.

Commentary

There is something wrong with the world, and this man... knows. He expresses his knowledge not by caterwauling but through farce, parody, language-play, and a kind of commedia dellarte manipulation of absurd characters and situations.

CLIFTON FADIMAN

Peter De Vries is a master humorist and literary stylist... a vividly articulate master of our contemporary revels and a court jester to our follies.

MILES SMITH, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Of the few genuinely funny writers at work in America today, Peter De Vries is the most prolific and the best prose stylist.

Newsweek

Biographical Note

Peter De Vries (19101993) was born and raised in Chicago. He studied at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and at Northwestern, supporting himself with a variety of jobs that ranged from toffee-apple salesman to editor for Poetry magazine. During World War II, he served as a captain in the US Marines and returned home in 1944 to begin writing for the New Yorker. He then began using his incredible wit to create works outside of the magazine, writing twenty-three novels and a play, as well as novellas, essays, short stories, and poetry. His most notable works include The Tunnel of Love (1954), The Blood of the Lamb (1961), Let Me Count the Ways (1965), Reuben, Reuben (1964), and Witchs Milk (1968); some of these have been adapted into films and Broadway plays. Still infamous for his quips and puns, De Vries has been praised as the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic.

From The Golden Book of Favorite Songs, Copyright 1915, 1923, 1946 by Hall & McCreary Company. Copyright Renewed 1951 by Hall & McCreary Company. Used by permission of the publishers, Schmitt, Hall & McCreary Company of Minneapolis, Minn.

CONTENTS

SPOFFORD

one

GIVEN A LITTLE MONEY, education and social standing, plus of course the necessary leisure, any man with any style at all can make a mess of his love life. And given these, plus a little of the right to self-realization that goes with modern life, a little of the old self-analysis, any woman with any gumption at all can make a shambles of her marriage. Statistics show it every day. Romantic confusion, once the privelege of a few, is now within reach of all. Even of me, a chicken farmer. Im not going to say mere chicken farmer like you might expect, because in the first place I lack the humility for it, and in the second theres nothing mere about running a poultry ranch in Connecticut, as they now call them there. Nothing could be less mere, as the facts will show.

I was born here in Woodsmoke, but not this Woodsmoke. I no longer recognize the place. Im that most displaced of all displaced persons, your native son in a modern town. My father was the last of our line to live his life out without being made an alien in his birthplace by immigrants turning it into a tentacle of New York. Good thing he went out with his time, as he would of had strong emotions on the subjectThe Losing of the East. We were not taken captive into BabylonBabylon came to usbut our harps hang on the willows just the same.

My father was a man of feeling who always wanted his family to show their feelings for each other too. That was why he started a sociable little custom we observed every morning without fail. We always shook hands at breakfast. None of your half-hearted shakes neither, but firm grasps to show how glad we were to see one another again after a good nights sleep. Morning, Ma. Good morning, Grace. Luther. The hearty pumping went on across the steaming victuals till everybody had shaken hands with everybody else, and then we sat down. In falling in with this we three children were naturally following the example set by my parents whenever they met, like at a railroad station or bus depot. They always shook hands warmly.

I dont hold with reserve. Reserve is for Scandinavians, my father said. If we cant express the emotions God give us then we dont deserve them. Were only on loan to one another, so lets show our feelings while we can. These were orders none of us would dream of disobeying, as the other main way he had of showing his feelings was to bust you one in the jaw. He busted more guys in the jaw than you could shake a stick at, and the rest he shook a stick at. I mean the heavy hickory cane he always carried on the walks around town that became more and more familiar a sight as my brother Luther and I got old enough to pitch in on the farm.

My father always wrung the chickens necks to induce death, but after he passed on hisself my brother and I modernized the farm somewhat. We used axes, together with one them automatic plucking machines. Now days they have an electric knife for the small phlebotomy theres still no substitute for, but the automatic plucker is still in operation. I can hear it humming away downstairs as I sit and write this. After Luther left to go into insurance in Hartford, I ran the farm myself until I was in my fifties, when my wife died. Then I passed it along to my son George and his wife Mary, who I now live with in the same old farmhouse, occasionally waiting on trade in the salesroom off the kitchen. At least they think I live with them, though a glance at the property title might show its the other way around. So they try to tolerate me, except when I think of it first and tolerate them. Anyhow. I hope to sell parts of this that Im batting out to some magazine before it becomes a book, preferbly the Yale Review, as Yale would of been my alma mater if Id had any choice. I hadnt even finished grammar school when my father was snatched away (very suddenly, through the medium of pneumonia) and I had to pitch in on the farm. Luther finished high school by taking evening courses in Bridgeport, eventually bettering himself into insurance. My sister Grace and her husband live in Akron. I never enrolled in nothing again except for an evening class in creative writing, also in Bridgeport, some years back. I wrote a theme for the class describing my father: