The Good Samaritan Strikes Again

A collection of humorous anecdotes by the author of The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw discusses worrying, McManus's first kiss, relieving stress through fantasies, and more. 150,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo. Tour.

James Thurber, echoing Wordsworth's definition of poetry, defined humor as "emotional chaos remembered in tranquility," a statement McManus ( Real Ponies Don't Go Oink! ) advances in this collection of 24 essays, most of which are reprinted from Outdoor Life . In his seven previous books McManus offered many pieces about hunting and fishing, and here he adds more, although they are the least successful selections. But the articles on his career in public relations and his concomitant desire to make himself invisible will provoke smiles, the one about his winning high school football team will bring laughter, and the title piece, as well as "Rancid Crabtree and the Demon Bat" and " The Fly ," will prompt guffaws. In these McManus recalls how he ineptly tried to help a man hurt in an auto accident, the flight of an enormous kite bearing the town drunk during a windstorm, and a practical joke played on the officious head of a college janitorial staff by his oppressed employees.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Pat McManus (Real Ponies Don't Go Oink, 1991, etc.), the Falstaff of Field and Stream, gathers his fall collection of sporting silliness for his eighth trek down his own well-beaten path. Ever mindful of Mother Nature and always careful of the environment, McManus once again recycles several of his most popular characters (wife Bun, Retch Sweeny, Rancid Crabtree, et al.), who strut their usual stuff along with rotten neighbor-kid Felton and rich guy G. Thomas (Goosey) Smith. The lead is played, of course, by the author, who takes the pratfalls like the old trouper he is. In an autobiographical mood (his favorite mood), he admits to doing public relations for the firm that made the world's supply of bim toggles on zitflangs. Blame him for that classic slogan: ``We toggle your bims!'' There are some pleasantries on being poor and on mean Christmas gifts that ring true, but there's also the feeling that the old domesticated woodsman is coasting just a tad from time to time. There's the hunting and fishing fooling, naturally. This time out, in his angling for laughs, McManus has a few strikes, but he doesn't get his limit. As he says, ``that's the way fishing goes. Sometimes nothing much happens.'' Anyway, the company isn't bad, and fans will be quite satisfied to go along. No masterpiece of comic invention, but at least a workmanlike assemblage, with few springs, bolts, or nuts left out. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.