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Title: Memoirs of a Mangy Lover by Groucho Marx, Leo Hershfield, Leo Hershfeld ISBN: 0-306-81104-9 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 05 February, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A good guide about how to laugh at yourself
Comment: True, several of the stories are quite outdated since a night out with the friends to play pocker is almost unheard of. By the same token the women of these tales do not have any resemblance with the direct and assertive New Yorkers of nowadays. On the other hand, the elements that compose the human race remain basically unchanged, such as the dilusion of self importance, jealousy, greed etc., ang Groucho Marx is just a genious to poke fun at all those facts of life.
Rating: 2
Summary: Has not aged especially well
Comment: While I definitely count myself as a Groucho fan, I was fairly disappointed by this book. By "has not aged especially well", I'm referring both to the subject matter (very tame) and the writing style (very dated). Frankly, I wonder if he would be at all surprised that it hasn't aged well: it looks to me as if he dashed it off in a hurry, perhaps for a quick paycheck. I found The Groucho Letters to be a bit better, but it likewise is no side-splitter. Perhaps his best writing was confined to the movies.
Rating: 4
Summary: Memoirs of a Mangy Marx
Comment: It's almost impossible to read MEMOIRS OF A MANGY LOVER without hearing the distinct voice of Groucho Marx echoing in your head. The writing style in evidence here is very close to Groucho's unique manner of speaking that was so prevalent in his movie, radio, and television careers. His train of thought weaves dangerously, one moment he'll be discussing romance in the dark ages, the next he'll be looping back to earlier sentences, picking apart his own grammar or dragging a double entendre from the brink of reason. The narrative moves quickly and easily, but the reader should be careful, as speedy perusal will cause you to miss some of the subtler jokes.
The subject matter is very much a product of its era and its author. Most of the jokes revolve around how terrible it is to be married, how much of a pain one's wife is, and how much men like to sit around playing poker. Not to say that the anecdotes and remembrances aren't hilarious, because some of them are painfully funny, but the subject matter is fairly limiting. Fortunately, Groucho is clever enough to keep the jokes moving so that it doesn't feel like the same story repeated endlessly. The book is just the right length for the amount of material. Any longer and it would have seemed repetitious, any shorter and it would have been insubstantial.
Not surprisingly, my favorite stories of the bunch were the ones that included cameos from the author's famous siblings. Harpo and Chico do put in short appearances here, which would give one the impression that some of the stories that are written about here actually happened. To be honest, most of the anecdotes seem to have been fairly embellished, so to differentiate between what is reality and what is the result of Groucho's mad mind is a game that simply can't be won. If you're looking for an in-depth and accurate biography of Groucho Marx, then there are loads of other books you should be investigating. This tome may not tell you much about Groucho Marx, but it wasn't meant to. It's a cliché to say that a really funny book will cause one to laugh out loud in embarrassingly public places, but clichés like that come about because of hilarious books like MEMOIRS OF A MANGY LOVER.
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Title: Groucho and Me by Groucho Marx ISBN: 0306806665 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx by Groucho Marx ISBN: 030680607X Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Groucho Marx: and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales : Selected Writings of Groucho Marx by Groucho Marx, Robert Bader ISBN: 0571198988 Publisher: Faber & Faber Pub. Date: 26 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Essential Groucho : Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx by Stefan Kanfer ISBN: 037570213X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx, Rowland Barber, Susan Marx, Bill Marx ISBN: 0879100362 Publisher: Limelight Editions Pub. Date: March, 1988 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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