Dan and I were flying back from somewhere, when we discovered a book recommendation list in the US Airways Magazine.  One caught our eye immediately as the “funniest unknown book in the world,” and we decided that we had to read it (which we’ve both just done).  The postscript by Anthony Burgess says it best, “The book you have in your hands or hand or on your knee is one of the great comic novels of the twentieth century.”

To get an idea of the character of Augustus Carp (whose autobiography was first published anonymously in 1924), I will include the first two introductory paragraphs for you to judge for yourself.

“It is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to preface it with some sort of apology.  But there are times, and surely the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary.  In an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down or is threatened with destruction; when every newspaper is daily reporting scenes of violence, divorce, and arson; when quite young girls smoke cigarettes and even, I am assured, sometimes cigars; when mature women, the mothers of unhappy children, enter the sea in one-piece bathing-costumes; and when married men, the heads of households, prefer the flicker of the cinematograph to the Athanasian Creed–then it is obviously a task, not to be justifiably avoided, to place some higher example before the world.

“For some time–I am now forty-seven–I had been feeling this with increasing urgency.  And when not only my wife and her four sisters, but the vicar of my parish, the Reverend Simeon Whey, approached me with the same suggestion, I felt that delay would amount to sin.  That sin, by many persons, is now lightly regarded, I am, of course, only too well aware.  That its very existence is denied by others is a fact equally familiar to me.  But I am not one of them.  On every ground I am an unflinching opponent of sin.  I have continually rebuked it in others.  I have strictly refrained from it in myself.  And for that reason alone I have deemed it incumbent upon me to issue this volume.”

Here’s more (are you laughing yet?…it’s actually sort of sad): “From the time of his marriage to the day of my birth, and as soon thereafter as the doctor had permitted her to rise, my father had been in the habit of enabling my mother to provide him with an early cup of tea.”  Augustus’s father instructed his mother to study childhood rearing manuals when Augustus was born, and he’d quiz her before bed each night.  “If, on the other hand, her replies had been judged adequate, it was an understood thing that she might claim an extra kiss.  So seriously, indeed, did my mother apply herself that she began to grow unattractively thin; and once, when she had failed in her examination on three successive nights, she actually burst into tears.  For this feminine weakness, when she asked his pardon, my father, of course, readily forgave her, merely pointing out that, with my future at stake, he was obviously unable to relax his standards.”

He describes himself as wide in girth, “unaddicted to athletics.”  I could go on and on, but you’ll just have to pick up a copy for yourself.  You’ll realize, soon enough, that you actually know people like this.

And finally, here’s a video that circled the e-mail list a while back, but was returned to my attention, via my sister-in-law Beth–the peppy and outrageous Mom Song for your enjoyment.  All the things a mom would say in a 24-hour period.  Enjoy!