Customer Reviews

How to Do Things Right: The Revelations of a Fussy Man

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These highly comic essays start with simple instruction--how to eat an ice cream cone, how to fold a map--and move swiftly to more complex issues. In "How Not to Drink and Smoke So Much," for example, you can commiserate with Hills about the beloved 'tuddy' and learn from his early experiments in cutting down. Hills' aptitude for ingenious acronyms is displayed throughout the book. The essays become progressively more revealing--as when he describes a midlife breakdown in all its schizophrenic absurdity--and more seriously philosophical. His ideas about "undoing America," Montaigne, and about the desirability of eccentric traits are humorous, but they have a distinctly profound underside. I give this book to all my coolest friends.

I first read L. Rust Hills when a friend loaned me his original little book (which is the first of this trilogy). His essays on such subjects as how to conduct a perfect dinner party, how to eat an ice cream cone, and so on are classics. This is not a book to be studied or pored through, but rather one to be picked up and enjoyed in small chunks.
But what about the other two books in the trilogy, here bound together? How To Be Good is not a book of humor, although it is written with humorous charm. It's a serious book about how to have morality in an immoral, or at least amoral, world. How To Retire At 41 starts out as a humorous look at how to adjust to retirement, and turns into a self-revelatory autobiography. Useful to start with and then affecting.
It's a surprise to have the trilogy together, but if you take each part in its own way (humor, morality, essay on life adjustment) it's really a gem.
Incidentally, I have several times lent my copy of How To Retire At 41 to friends contemplating retirement (or struggling with it) because it's very good in that regard. And I love the way it deals with, and dismisses, the question of finances in just a few sentences at the beginning!
For my vote, an excellent book to enjoy and to lend out. (Darn, who did I last lend my copy to???)

Thought folks might find this of interest...

I work at the Game Show Network, and while reviewing an old To Tell The Truth episode from 1972, I came across Mr. Hills as one of the contestants. Kitty Carlisle and Alan Alda picked him out of the lineup as the "real L. Rust Hills," and so did I. He just had the demeanor of a very witty and charismatic man, and after viewing the show, I was struck with the idea of checking out his work.

Peggy Cass said he didn't look fussy, that he looked like "an unmade bed." He was actually dressed very stylishly, and he also looked somewhat like George Segal, which is neither here nor there, but interesting to me. Probably the only contestant on all the To Tell The Truth episodes I've seen who came out with his hands in his pockets. Now that's a guy who's definitely sure of himself, fussy or not.

I actually listened to this book on tape (unabridged). The first three cassettes on how to do things right were hilarious! But, the remainder of the book was for the most part was a disappoinment. It had some funny and/or interesting bits, but the remaining was one rambling paragraph after another.

Have you ever heard of Rust Hills? I had not until I came across this book. He has quite good literary credentials that are evident in the unhurried, readable style. The Fussy Man's essays are funny, especially the one about how to eat an ice cream cone. However, the retired man is much more interesting to me. For one thing, he's real. The author humorously and philosophically discusses being retired. How to banish the angst? Routines and pursuits. He compares Thoreau and Montaigne on leisure time. He is spot on about the retired life, both in his humor and personal solutions. BTW, this book is still on my currently reading shelf since it's one you can dip into, enjoy, and leave for a while.

I read this book again recently after finding a copy at the library. I still am not overly fond of this book, but I don't dislike it as much as I used to. A lot of Mr. Hill's oppinions on life in general are very witty and reasonably funny. However, I still think that he dwells to much on the (un-funny) day-to-day routines of his life. Perhaps if he had sped things along a little I could have given his book four stars instead of three.

This guy really knows how to put people to sleep. I attempted to read this book on a flight from Dallas to Cincinatti. Thirty minutes after take-off (and when I began reading) I was fast asleep. As I never can sleep on planes, this can give you some idea how dull this book is. The first chapters were sort of funny, but the latter half seemed to be just a reproduction of his Day Runner ("6 pm January 17. Drool on self ") I think it could have been far better if the author had stuck to the actual title of the book (namely- How to do things right) instead of Ramblings of an old man.

If you're from an upper middle class background and are concerned about issues like how to retire young on a limited income, this book may be of interest to you. Mr. Hills, former fiction editor at Esquire magazine, comes from that privileged background and discusses it at length. Unfortunately, it began to disappear in the 1960s and is pretty much gone as an option for today's bright Ivy League English major.

The publisher, David R. Godine, suffers from the hubris common to quality presses -- the idea that they have discovered literary gems that only need be published to be fully appreciated. Godine accomplished this with its publication of several volumes of Orwell's overlooked essays, but the rest of its output is undistinguished.

If you do decide to read it, read the third book (How to Be Good) first, particularly "Professional Ethics, as Against the Morality of an Occupation" which appears on pages 198-200. It is especially apposite in the current Bush era.

The one thing that one does expect from a small press of this type is quality bindings and covers (witness the now defunct, and much missed, North Point Press). While that is true of many of Godine's other products, this offering disappoints in that regard.