From Publishers Weekly
Gregory, a straight-jacketed child, is eternally trapped in a barren holding cell where he spends his time in drooling vegetation, banging his head on walls or shouting nonsensical, monosyllabic words. The only thing Gregory can communicate is his own name, which he enjoys screaming to the consternation of medical staff, therapists and asylum outsiders. This is a collection of low-brow humor based on Gregory's misadventures in confinement, a cartoonish, hyperbolic story presented in Hempel's casual, sketchy style. In "Gregory's Big Day," a man in a suit sets Gregory free to the outside world. Not sure what to do, Gregory stays paralyzed in the same spot for hours and eventually returns to the asylum's restricted confines. Even with his lack of communication skills, Gregory manages to make friends with creatures that crawl up through his sewage drain, such as a cockroach and a pseudo-intellectual rat named Herman Vermin. Herman also lends his sarcastic perspective to a few stories, including a fantasy sequence of Gregory as a pipe-smoking, goateed erudite; and a dream where Herman is writing a critically acclaimed autobiography, surrounded by rat-women and sycophants. Compared to Herman's self-absorbed reflections, Gregory is idyllic and carefree, demonstrating that ignorance can be bliss. While this anthology attempts to take witty punches at an absurd predicament, the asylum joke wears thin quickly.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Hempel created the little lunatic Gregory as "a repository for all my pent-up fears and insecurities" during a frustrating time. Gregory's adventures initially appeared during 1989-93, and Hempel hasn't revived the character. Seems things improved for him. Indeed, the differences between the earlier stories (A Gregory Treasury 1 [BKL My 15 04]) and this book's contents suggest that things were already getting better. The earlier pieces are wilder, more unnerving, and, it must be said, funnier. These are more outward-looking--literally, since a brief story is rendered entirely through Gregory's eyes, and in the two longest, Gregory slips the slammer, first because his cell door is left ajar, then because he is placed in a foster family (dysfunctional, of course, though only normally so). Whereas the earlier stories were gag-development scenarios, the escape story is a seriocomic character sketch, the foster-family story a sentimental sitcom episode. The cartooning remains brilliant, but Gregory's hilarious sidekick, the rat Herman Vermin, barely appears. Hempel's gain in lifted spirits was our loss in manic comics humor. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
