Customer Reviews

Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

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This book was written in the late 1940s. I first read it in the 1970s and found it as relevant to the 70s (and the college experience of the 1970s) as it was to the 40s.

Today, in the 21st century, Dobie, his adventures, his point-of-view on life, college and (of course) girls (we call them "women" now, but Dobie uses the word "girl" in the most affectionate connotation one can give it) are still as fresh and relevant as it ever was.

"Love is a Fallacy" is one of the best short stories ever written and, possibly, one of the best expressions of the frustration of trying to get to someone's heart through their mind or intellect.

In another story, Dobie ending up in a Chemistry class because there happened to be a pretty girl on line at registration signing up for the class is not something perculiar to the 1940s. Let's face it, this kind of thing kept going on right through the decades up until the time when standing on line was totally replaced by electronic registration.

Dobie's experience with plagiarism (resulting from the conflict between completing an assignment or going out to meet a girl -- guess which choice wins?) is still relevant today, in the age of unlimited access to research materials thanks to the internet and the WWW.

This book led to the 1953 Movie with Debbie Reynolds and Booby Van and the famous TV series (1959 - 1963) with Dwayne Hickman and Bob ("Gilligan") Denver.

To any college "kid" who thinks that someone who went to college in the 1940s or 1970s doesn't understand the life and problems of a college kid in 2004: read this book. It will speak to you as much as it did to your parents and grandparents.

I adore this compilation of "Dobie" stories, as well as its companion compilation, _I Was a Teen-Age Dwarf_. Narrated in the first person, _Many Loves_ chronicles various romances in Dobie's life. The thing is, each vignette features a different Dobie! A very changeable guy, he is! Shulman captures very well th hyperbole of the memoir, and the selectivity of recollection! You won't find funnier books anywhere... Murphy's Law is alive, well, and prominently-featured in these books! Dobie sitcom fans may be a bit confused at first, but there's no mistaking it...the 'true' Dobie's definitely there!

I happened upon one of these Dobie Gillis pieces in an older anthology, and enjoyed it so much that I immediately purchased this volume. Despite the fact that many of these stories are over fifty years old, the campus boy-chases-girl situations are still fresh, and Shulman's swift-moving prose is punctuated with hilarious dry wit and bright comical twists. These are well-crafted short stories, some of the best examples of this genre I've yet come across.

TEACHERS -- It would seem to me that this material would be ideal core curriculum for 7th-10th grade English Lit. students -- Why it isn't being taught at this time is a great mystery.

The highest compliment I can pay this book is that it is the only American work that truly bears comparison to the great P.G. Wodehouse. Dobie, though far from a confirmed bachelor, captures some of the inspired daftness of Bertie Wooster's narration of his own impossible adventures.

I loved this book when I was a teenager forty years ago, and loved it just as much when I reread it last year. Don't make the mistake of confusing these brilliant stories with that dopey sitcom. You won't go wrong with this one.

Max Shulman's Dobie Gillis is a young man on the make who remains as funny today as he did when he was created back in the 1950s. The genius of Shulman resides in the cleverness of the situations and matchless beauty of the writing. The apparent simplicity of his prose -- every sentence a perfect thread in a perfect piece of cloth -- is actually a form of high art, unequalled by all with the exception of SJ Perlman and Woody Allen. Read it and weep (from too much laughing!)

I have read all of Shulman's books or nearly all and this one seems to have the most sophisticated stories. They are really well crafted and are some of the most entertaining and funny short stories I have ever read. Shulman's plots and use of language make for reading that grabs you and has you howling and reading passages to your friends. Buy this book!

To my eye, by far the best chapter of the book is 'Love is a Fallacy.' Professors in all the English-speaking world use this chapter as assigned reading for their beginning logic students, and with good reason. Shulman is the only man I'm aware of that can take a list of logical fallacies and make you fall over laughing with it.

That chapter is worth the price of the entire book.

Do yourself a great favor and read this book! I discovered this book when I was about 11 years old and I haven't been the same since! Max Shulman is as funny as hell and the situations Dobie gets into will make you ache with laughter!

By the way, this book makes great reading for youngsters. Its the funniest route I know to a powerful vocabulary. Shulman loves big obscure words like "propinquity" and "eleemosynary" and he knows how to use them both properly and humorously. My 10 year old daughter has just finished reading this book cover-to-cover, with a dictionary handy. The other day she called her teacher a "harridan" -- thanks to Max Shulman!

This is one of those fictional books you never forget. Each chapter is a different comical love story and not to be confused with the TV series of the same name. The book has some educational value, for example, the chapter on fallacies teaches concepts of logic in a humorous way. Rarely, does writing reach a level of comedy that causes one to giggle, but this book delivers a few belly aching laughs.

I first read this book about 1952ish. All my children (4) have read it, and they will have their children read it. Reading it today causes a resurgence of energy througout my system. Who says you can't enjoy good clean sex vicariously? This book is living proof! I have fallen in love with every one of Dobbies women. I even married one of them who thought that I could transmute base metals into gold. She didn't last long, and I settled for one of the literati, who wasn't much to look at, but what a soul, what a soul. If ever someones soul needs feeding, give them this book!