Synopsis
The author journeys through the great outdoors with tales of Rancid Crabtree, Retch Sweeney, Game Warden Sneed, and fish-eating shrimp in Lake Blight
Reviews
McManus ( The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw ) is the author of a monthly humor column for Outdoor Life ; this volume collects some of those pieces. At his best, McManus is a brilliant humorist, particularly in describing human reactions to the unexpected. Memorable essays include "A Good Deed Goes Wrong," about an old woodsman's misadventure at ok? a toboggan run built by two boys, and a subsequent encounter with a bobcat; "The Clown," in which a terrifying math teacher given to grabbing pupils by their hair confronts a miscreant who has doctored his tresses with bear grease; and "A Good Night's Sleep," which concerns three outdoorsmen who wreak havoc on a hotel and its patrons. Certain pieces will appeal only to hunters and anglers, but other entries are so notable that the book deserves a wide audience.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Those intrepid yeomen, Rancid Crabtree, Retch Sweeney, and author McManus, the Mencken of Mud (The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, 1989, etc.), return in another collection of humorous pieces on hunting, fishing, and wasting time. McManus's patented recreational comedy deals with such mundane matters as fish scalers, used plywood, and scary critters. What follows inevitably is bucolic mayhem, do-it-yourself failure, and rafting on the Tushwallop River. Guest appearances are made by former girlfriend Olga Bonemarrow, Crazy Eddie Muldoon, and Henry P. Grogan and his son, Junior P. Grogan. Of course, there's wife Bun, who likes camping in. ``She likes a little something extra between her and the hard, cold ground, preferably several floors of a luxury hotel.'' McManus carefully builds a house of cards (Jokers), then takes a pratfall or two and knocks the whole construction down in risible catastrophe. Sometimes it's downright frightening. After one episode, Cousin Buck ``had a terrible expression on his face,'' the author tells us. ``I know the expression on my face was almost as bad, because I checked the next morning in the mirror.'' Brave woodsman he may be, but McManus sticks, along with Rancid and Retch, to the old familiar path. Never mind; it's all artfully devised, in an excursion that is as plain as beans and slick as soap, but funnier than either. There's nothing really new or earthshaking in these fey tales of hapless fishermen and numbskull Nimrods. But McManus watchers will want to know that the old rara avis is back in full plumage and chirping away, regular as the seasons. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Best-selling outdoor humorist McManus ( The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw , LJ 6/15/89) bags another in this collection of yarns featuring irascible woodsman Rancid Crabtree, "Phantom of the Woods" Retch Sweeney, boyhood pal Crazy Eddie, and others of McManus's acquaintance. Also meet hunting dog Strange, dog delinquent, whose prey of choice is year-old roadkill. Readers of McManus's humor column in Outdoor Life will enjoy his observations on the joys of pig-back riding, workshop puttering, and Sasquatch ducking. So will those who, like McManus's wife Bun, appreciate nature most from the window of a seven-story luxury hotel. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/91.
- Pamela R. Daubenspeck, Warren- Trumbull Cty. P.L., Warren, Ohio
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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