archyology

Archy and his racy pal Mehitabel are timeless.

This sweet, sweet volume brings Marquis (and his cockroach and cat) back to us. It's such an unexpected treat . . . Readers (and children and grandchildren of readers) of Don Marquis will dearly love and welcome this book.

Archy is more peripatetic than usual in these books — he moves away from his old haunts in New York in order to observe the strange goings on in Paris, though with that same jaundiced eye . . . Marquis's gifts as a comic satirist have often been written about. Less has been said about the fact that he was also tilting at the excesses of American writers of bad free verse when he had archy write in the way that he did . . . [he created] two of America's most enduring comic characters.

Some years ago Jeff Adams, a Marquis buff, turned up a trove of papers containing a number of works by archy the cockroach which had escaped inclusion in any Marquis anthology. Four appeared at the time in The Atlantic, but problems with illustrations have delayed book publication until the present. Now, happily for true archyphiles and admirers of subtle encroachment, here they all are, with witty drawings by Ed Frascino.

Fans of Marquis can take heart, there's still more to come . . . Allegedly hurling himself headlong at the keys of Marquis' typewriter by night, archy would tap out his lower-case observations on our place in the cosmos while mehitabel pranced down Shinbone Alley . . . It's grand to see there's a dance or two in the old dame yet.

Delightful, quirky, unpredictable — a gem.

The whole book is a pleasure: the right words in the right places with the right drawings. Delightful drawings.

Archy's profound musings on love, politics, and much, much more are perfectly illustrated by Edward Frascino's witty and beautiful drawings.