Thorne Smith (1892–1934)

It is, by this time, a cliche: boring business dude meets a manic pixie dreamgirl who shakes up his days, keeps him up all night, teaches him about love, and then passes into the great beyond. What makes this book still feel marvelously fresh is that the MPDG isn't all that wacky, she's married, and she's already dead at the start of the book. Other than drinking mind-bending Prohibition-era quantities of booze, the adventures themselves are amazingly simple. Topper and his ghost companions show more enjoy several good meals, but otherwise they spend the summer mostly sleeping rough, swimming in rivers and the Atlantic, canoeing, reading [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428891345s/338798.jpg|2368224] aloud, and just digging the beauty of nature. There is singing and dancing, even a little brawling, but it's so charmingly bucolic. After all, if Topper gets up to 25 MPH in his car it feels fast and dangerous, and it no doubt was since roads were iffy and there were still a lot of farmers with horses about.

I was worried about Topper's wife. Needlessly. Smith is a writer who can produce the banter of Coward, and also spend a lot of time telling us how Topper feels about his cat. I knew it was going to have a happy ending, but I didn't know the ending would be so perfect. The overall effect is charming, but never twee. Highly recommended. show less

In Topper, or, The Jovial Ghosts, by Thorne Smith, we meet Cosmo Topper, a bland banker in 1920s New England; his life is dull, and his wife Mary wants to keep it that way. Indeed, Cosmo's only real connection is to his cat, Scollops - until, that is, he takes a notion to buy a refurbished car, an automobile that was damaged in an accident that took the lives of its previous owners, George and Marion Kerby. No sooner does he get behind the wheel, however, than Cosmo realizes that while dead show more they might be, the Kerbys are very active ghosts indeed! And they are bent on, first of all, having fun and secondly, turning Cosmo's world upside down....Topper was published in 1926 and as such it has the faults of its time in terms of sexism, racism (of which there is actually very little, but that's mainly because there are very few scenes involving non-white characters) and basic mayhem, fueled by copious amounts of liquor, Scotch in particular. At the same time, it's very funny and makes some very arch observations about American society at that time, most of which aim to point up the hypocrisy of the era. Smith wrote a second Topper book, and in the 1930s there were three quite successful movies (which, if I recollect, typified the "screwball comedy" of that decade) based on his tales, but this is where his characters get their start. Keep in mind that the casual "-isms" of its time didn't generate the outrage then that they do now, and you may quite enjoy it. I found the constant drinking a bit wearing, but otherwise would recommend it. show less

There was a time when people didn’t have instant entertainment, when they weren’t fed what to think or feel. Before easy and cheap access to television, before radio, before movies ... okay, “talkies” ... there was little to entertain themselves. Books helped. And the readers still had to think. I found a copy of Topper Takes a Trip in an antique store, bought it, and though I’d seen the movie (it was entertaining, sue me), thought I should read this first.

Rich language. Mr. Smith show more sure had a way with words. Vivid imagery with stately descriptions. Now, I’m not sure if Smith ever drank because he exaggerated mightily the consumption of the milquetoast Cosmo Topper and wild, if generally ... dead ..., friends. Comical adventures, risqué in a way that seems a surprise for a book published in 1926. We need not be naive to think that people weren’t risqué, but in print? Regardless of its entertainment value, I can’t forgive Cosmo Topper his, um, spirit-ual indiscretions...but this book was written for a different era. Not that it was forgivable then, but that is just the way things were written. I might watch the movie again to compare, and I expect I’ll read the sequel soon enough. show less

The Night Life of the Gods was the first book of Thorne Smith's I ever read (thank you, Sandy!), and it made me a devotee. This, and Smith's works as well, are screwball supernatural hilarity, with a post-WW1 vibe. Smith practically invented a number of common SFnal tropes: the opposites switch bodies, the supernatural entity nobody else can see. Here, it's the Greek gods come to the modern era, to plague a modern man with their wanton willful ways. Really delightful.