Archy and Mehitabel

A hoot, just as I expected ever since my childhood, when I briefly saw a copy but didn't get a chance to read it. Some moments of poignancy, and plenty of social commentary and satire, too. It's interesting to read something topical that is this old. Most of it is pretty timeless & universal, but there's a reference to the Woolworth building (as the Empire State had not yet been built) and to the League of Nations, which Archy expects to fail (as WWII had not yet happened).

How to express the joy Archy has given me? Discovering him young in a long life of literature is a gift of rare value. And Mehitabel, what a kat. I quote her daily: "Life is just one damn kitten after another." And then the illustrator, George Herriman (whose name might be spelled some other way), he who created the incomparable Krazy Kat and her/his irritated mouse, Ignatz. Bricks. The world is a brick. How in love am I!

A potent mix of witty free form poetry and some top-notch drawings by Herriman make this volume a definite winner. These pieces originally appeared in newspapers and magazines in the 1916-1926 era, and numerous topical references to Prohibition and the like still keep their humour. A lot more thoughtful than many other pieces considered weightier.

The famous poems supposedly written by a free verse poet reincarnated as a cockroach. I don't know what his subject matter was as a human but as a roach he writes about his alley cat friend mehitabel and other urban lowlife (vermin, literally) circa 1920s. His poems are humorous but the humor is full of melancholy. I suppose these poems are technically doggerel but like most of Marquis' other fans I find more wisdom in them than I do in more famous and pretentious verse.

Archy is a cockroach who was a free verse poet in a previous life and who types up his thoughts on the boss’s typewriter when everyone is gone for the night. His best friend is an alley cat named Mehitabel who is always gay. They appeared in Marquis’ newspaper column in the early twentieth century. What I liked most about this book is that Marquis uses Archy to remind us that we should look at the world from perspectives other than our own. Archy gets quite philosophical at times, and my favorite quote from him is “If you get gloomy, just take an hour off and sit and think how much better this world is than hell. Of course it won’t cheer you up much if you expect to go there.”

Don Marquis published a number of volumes of serious poetry, But he's remembered for Archy the cockroach who wrote vers liibre on Marquis's typewriter at night, diving onto the keys but lacking the ability to hit punctuation keys or depress the shift key. The bits I enjoyed best this time were the moments when Archy, enraged by some affront, declares war on the entire human race or 'turns revolutionist'.

Droll, wry, and all too topical, Don Marquis's creation of the cockroach with the transmigrated soul of a poet is a satiric creation for the ages and George Harriman's illustrations are perfectly apt. May every generation rediscover Archy and Mehitabel!