Guestward Ho - Patrick Dennis

	A couple of Easterners go west to run a dude ranch. This was one of the funniest books I have read recently. I loved the tongue-in-cheek commentary that ran through the book. I could see this as a play where the wife was doing much of it as asides to the audience. It was the basis of a TV series in the 60's. Very enjoyable!

After little Patrick's father dies, he is left to the care of his eccentric and adventurous aunt, Mame. His childhood goes from one of routine and order to one rather more unusual, and over the course of his adolescence and early adulthood, his colourful Auntie Mame keeps providing him with amazing anecdotes. Each chapter starts with the author reading about some saintly spinster from New England who took in an orphan, leading to his own recollections of his life with his aunt. Suffice to say, anything the spinster did in the Digest article he's reading, Mame did too, only more elaborately and with a lot more hijinks.

 

While little Patrick's father wanted him raised with a proper, conservative education, Mame tries to enrol him at an experimental school, which enrages the head of his financial trust enough that he's sent off to boarding school. Mame eventually marries a fabulously wealthy Southern gentleman and does her best to become a proper Southern Belle, and where ordinary mortals may have broken their necks, she impresses the entire neighbourhood by staying on the back of an absolute monster of a horse throughout a long hunt.

 

When she is sadly widowed, Mame is nonetheless left wealthy beyond imagining, and sets out to write her memoir, until her mousy assistant elopes with her ghost-writer. Said assistant is then left pregnant and distraught, with Mame showing up shortly before Patrick's graduation from St. Boniface's Academy, absolutely careless of any danger to his academic record or reputation, determined that together they will help bring forth the unfortunate child to the world.

 

During his college years, Mame's lavish parties greatly impress Patrick's college chums, and as he grows older, his free-spirited and outrageous aunt does her best to try to help him smoothly through the vagaries of romance. During the war, she nearly kills both Patrick and herself trying to foster displaced war orphans, who sadly turn out to seemingly be demons in child form. Once Patrick finally does find a wife and beget a child of his own, Mame returns after multiple year abroad to tempt her great-nephew with tales of adventure and promises of journeys to exotic locations.

 

Growing up in Norway, I was entirely unaware of Auntie Mame, the 1955 novel that was turned into a movie, a Broadway play and a musical (which was also filmed). My best friend Lydia gifted me the book several years ago, and I have to admit it languished on my shelves until now, when I finally picked it up and was absolutely delighted. While some of Mame's escapades had me sympathising greatly with Patrick and rolling my eyes at her more outrageous turns of phrase and crazy schemes, I was also mostly entertained throughout. The book, which is more like a collection of short stories with a common framing device, that a continuous narrative, suggests that if Dennis, who based Auntie Mame on his real life aunt, experienced even half of the things he writes about in the book, he had a very eventful coming of age, indeed.

 

Apparently there is a sequel as well, about Patrick and Auntie Mame's travels around the world after he graduated St. Boniface and I suspect I am going to have to read that too. Having now had the joys to finally get to know Auntie Mame, I can't wait to see what she'd get up to travelling around Europe and possibly beyond. Thank you, Lydia, I'm terribly sorry it took me so long to read the book.

 

Judging a book by its cover: I absolutely love the cover for this book. The cover artist, John Fontana, did SUCH a good job. The yellow background has a textured pattern, evoking a brocade wallpaper, with the decadent Mame to the right of the cover, wearing a stunning gown and dripping in pearls and jewelry, as is only right and proper for a woman of her formidable wealth. Her darling boy, Patrick is clearly only a young child, wearing his school uniform, complete with short pants and a cute little red cap. On the back cover, which is mostly red, the lovely Mame is lounging at top of the page, resting on one elbow with a martini glass in her other hand. It's a lovely touch.

My love affair with Auntie Mame is comparatively recent. It started in a conversation with a new acquaintance, and I mentioned I was in the online book business.

Without missing a beat I was told in perfect Connecticut lockjaw that "books are awfully decorative, don't you think?"

My blank look was enough to upset the whole afternoon. I was not long in buying a copy of the movie (there were none to be had in the rental places) and nearly dying of laughter. Some few months later, getting on towards Christmas, I found a pulp copy of 'Auntie Mame' in an estate lot. It was meant to be.

Mame Dennis is not nearly as lewd as that cover and negligee would have you believe. It is an overripe fruit of sexual innuendo and gay pop culture. You can't turn a page without it screaming. I waited long enough to pick it up, but the movie did full justice to it and the additional scenes the book provides are hysterical.

Its blend of pure wit, cringe-inducing physical comedy and vicious satire (inappropriate for code-era Hollywood) and should please anyone bound to pick up a copy of the book.

 

Sequel! 'Around the World with Auntie Mame'

So many exclamation points!   And also it starts in a weird place!   

 

It's not too bad.   It's a pretty true to the episode recap.   But it's not that exciting, and it's not that well done.   I'd recommend this for a reluctant reader who's into Iron Man, but not for anyone else. 

Every once in a blue moon, on a night when the stars are celebrating with a glass of champagne, and the air is heady with the scent of perfume, a person like Auntie Mame is born. While often criticized as not being of much "practical merit," - that is, not having much insight into the world of commerce, nor much interest in it- these beings are as vital to the overall good health of society as is the food we eat and the water we drink. "Madcap Mame," Dennis' eccentric Aunt, may not have been the model surrogate mother, but she made sure that her nephew developed his spirit as well as his mind. If you are fortunate, as I am, to have a person like this in your life, this novel will make you appreciate her/him even more than you already do. And if you don't appreciate this person, Auntie Mame will have a very serious "Little Morning Chat" with you about that.