Customer Reviews

National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really wanted to love this book...I still have my original copy of the 1964 Yearbook, and as far as I'm concerned, it's still the definitive edition. With the announcement of this HARDCOVER edition, I was hoping the publisher would take the opportunity to make this parody look like a REAL yearbook. One of the things the NL was great at doing was an Exact Parody of the thing they were satirizing. In the original edition the paper utilized different stocks for different functions. Also, the book could be placed upside down and backwards on a surface and aside from the paperback binding, it looked like a vintage yearbook. This version is loud, garish, the buttcheecks have been covered up, and the logo is wrong...Perhaps I'm a purist, but the design of this book is just all wrong. It should have been released in a dust jacket that could be removed, with a real looking binding of a yearbook underneath. Also, the printing inside the book looks like it was printed from an old copy of the yearbook magazine, instead of the original stats or negatives...Yes, the comedy is still great, but the design is greatly flawed...I'd only recommend getting it if you have to have it...Otherwise, hold out for an original copy, it just feels better!

I don't know how many copies I've had of the NATIONAL LAMPOON 1964 YEARBOOK PARODY over the years but they all disappeared. Shared them with friends and--POOF--they were gone. I just could not keep them to myself.

Thank God they've reprinted it! It's still one of the funniest books I've ever read.
I'd read an Esquire article about the life and death of Doug Kenney in the early 1980's and it described how Kenney threw himself into the project (reading yearbook after yearbook and even wearing his high school letterman's jacket to the Lampoon offices every day). He went on to co-write ANIMAL HOUSE (he played "The Stork") and then co-wrote/produced CADDYSHACK before he died in a hiking accident in Hawaii.
One weird detail: the picture of the kid who died (and no one seems to remember) is an actual school photo of Doug Kenney.

P.J. O'Rourke and the others also deserve the highest praise for creating what will be an enduring classic of American humor. I'll treasure this along with my own yearbooks!

Oh WOW, it's back! I purchased the original edition of this classic ages ago.

This hilarious, elaborate, and merciless satire creates a complete little world: Dacron (motor home capitol of the world), Ohio's High School, circa 1964. It captures the slightly clunky look-and-feel of school yearbooks, and includes lots of great B&W photos of the classes, clubs, sport teams, and events. Like Matt Groening's _School is Hell_, it is humor with a healthy measure of grim insight and honesty.

Fans of "National Lampoon's Animal House" may find some of the student's names familiar.

As a bonus, the last few pages contain ephemera: little forms from the owner's "permanent record," pages from a mediocre history book, Dacron High's poetry journal, the school newspaper, and so on.

There are some new additions in this special edition, but they're kind of perfunctory: A mock-cutesy "What Happened To?" newsletter, and an introduction that breaks the versimilitude of the piece.

Perhaps there's hope that National Lampoon's equally brilliant, even more elaborate Sunday Newspaper spoof (The Dacron Republican/Democrat) -- which has references to the yearbook -- will be released.

First things first: I am an admitted P.J. O'Rourke buff (the dude inspired me to start writing, which is either a good thing or bad), so I was interested to check this out. Plus, after reading Tony Hendra's book about the Lampoon and the creation of the Yearbook by Doug Kenney and O'Rourke, I decided to quit putting off my hesitancy to buying it and purchased it about two months ago. I haven't laughed as hard at anything in print since.

The context of the Yearbook is essential to understanding it; rather than just a "hey, look how crazy we were!" sort of Porky's approach, there's an underlying theme of "Animal House"-style anger at the authority structures that made social conformity and Vietnam possible. The writers had lived through the Vietnam era of the late Sixties, and they looked back in anger at the controls high school placed on them. There's real venom in these pages, if you know where to look.

But what struck me, and what made me appreciate this on the terms of being a simply good artwork, was the similarities to high school yearbooks even today. Sure, the layouts and hair/fashion styles change, but the general idea is the same: there are the popular kids, and then there's everyone else (including the "hero" of the piece, future Delta member Larry Kroeger). They all exist in the mythical Dacron, Ohio, and their school is really everybody's school. I can say, coming from a similarly awful school here in the great state of South Carolina, that nothing made me chuckle more than the laugh of recognition. I graduated in '97, yet I could identify and pick up on things that would've been true of any year (the snarky tribute to a fallen classmate, the peppy rememberence of a fallen President, the losing sports teams buoyed by a sense of "better luck next year").

The yearbook is so spot on, when I went back to my senior year yearbook I could immediately see such parallels. Our football team was(still is) a walking disaster, and little good could be said for the other sports. Our school play was just as clumsy as Dacron's "Julius Caesar", and our talent shows didn't improve much on the 'entertainment' provided by the 1964 class. It was these hilarious occurances that made me appreciate the book as simply more than a rant against the complacency of the Fifties; it was at long last a genuinely funny ghost of what it mocked.

I can't vouch for whether the "new" material takes away from the old (as this was indeed my first run-in with the parody in total), but I will say it seems a bit tame compared to what's part of the original. Plus, the "literary magazine" struck a chord, as I can remember my own sophmoric contribution to a similar publication in my high school (which sold about one copy, I believe). The "where will they be in ten years" list seemed like it could've been written by the idiots in my class, and the crude names assigned to the underclassmen (shown with the same exact photo every time) would not have been out of place in my school's tome either.

Overall, I enjoyed this far more than I imagined I would. There are obvious sight gags (the basketball team's hapless conduct had me in stiches), but the real meat is in the writing (whether or not O'Rourke can really claim a majority of the material, it seems a bit arrogant to take top billing over the late Kenney), which is dead-on. No matter when you graduated, you will recognize the figures in this book. And you will laugh your ass off, even as you cry tears of recognition.

Let's state it simply -- this is perhaps the funniest book ever published, even though the year 1964 is getting more distant all the time. Ingenious in its construction (a multi-level reconstruction of a typical high school yearbook), it is a hilarious, scathing, understanding, and even sort of poignant look at the kids of one year, one generation, in America long ago. Absolutely brilliant! (If you can find it, NatLamp also did an amazingly detailed town newspaper parody in the late 1970's that is also great.)

As the editor of my 1964 high school yearbook, I've always had great affection for the National Lampoon spoof. And although I still have my original copy, I wanted to see what they could do with the "updated" version. Sadly, not very much. Even though it's hardbound (sort of) it somehow loses the yearbook idea from the first moment you open it and see a full page advertisement for NL's upcoming "Big Book of Love" which features President Clinton's dog going after his crotch. How did that get into my beloved yearbook?

Further, a lot of the pages look like they were copied on a home scanner rather than using the original artwork. The pictures were among the funniest elements, but now many of the photos are just too dark. And the "update" on class members is unoriginal and forced. For instance, the artsy class member Forrest Swisher is now a priest and altar boy supervisor. Gee, who could have seen that coming?

Still, I give it high marks (4/5) because the original humor stands the test of time and is even strengthened by it. Not only does it capture Larry Kroger's high school yearbook, but his most personal school hygiene records ("picks at himself"), his family history, his essays, report cards, love notes, and even, hilariously, a few chapters of his American History text.

So I highly recommend NL's 1964 High School Yearbook, especially to those who have never seen it, but must subtract a bit for the implementation. We needed a better reunion.

I graduated from high school in 1964 and was stuck working on our annual that year. The Lampoon's 1964 Annual could have used ours as its model. The principal's letter, the layout for the senior through frosh classes (with pictures in ever decreasing size), the corny captions, the dedication to JFK who was assassinated during that school year, the "in memorian" for the student who died that year - I helped put together the same things except we were taking ourselves seriously! I marvel at the amount of work that went into this masterpiece. Just coming up with the hundreds of gag names used for the underclass photos must have been a major undertaking. The portion of the American history book that is included is almost worth the purchase price alone. It's also a special treat that this copy happens to have belonged to graduating senior Larry Kroger (who later went on to fame in "Animal House") with appropriately irreverant doodles and notes from Larry and some of his classmates. I love this thing!!

I am at a loss trying to recall another book that has ever been published that comes close to this towering achievement of humor. This thing is timeless in its genius. I first got a hold of this gem while in high school in '77-'78. I, too, had to resort to buying a used original copy on Ebay for about $120 a few years back. And now, here it is, in all its glory.

It is as funny today as it was back then. The new material is amusing, but the original stuff is the prime mover. There's just so much here, that it's difficult, if not impossible, to adequately describe this thing. Every single page has something (if not many, many things) that will make you laugh out loud, and hard. I gave my younger brother a copy a couple of weeks ago. He is still struggling to get through it (he laughs so hard he can't breathe).

I must agree that the pictures, which are impossibly funny on their own, look as though they were an afterthought in this reprint. They are, in a word, horrible. Dark at times, washed out in others. They look as though they were Xeroxed. Some pics (like the classic Spaz Leaking proudly holding his MEN sign for the Woodburning Club) are almost useless. Such a tremendous shame. I hope this problem is rectified in subsequent printings.

These shortcomings aside, the 1964 Yearbook Parody remains the book by which all other parodies or anything claiming to be humorous should be judged.

I have been waiting almost 30 years for them to reprint the yearbook. It's not subtle, but it's extremely funny for all ages. I don't think it's offensive at all. I have a copy from 1974 and have loved it for 30 years. My 21 year old son has read it since middle school and wanted his own copy. He's an editor of his college newpaper now and this book has been an inspiration. Now it's here!! Wonderful!!!!

This parody was a masterpiece in its own time. So many people have had more than one copy of it, because we passed it around, gave it away and then replaced it, and shared it with as many people as we could. Everything just seemed so perfect, right down to the tiniest details like the hundreds of (clever) names under the photos of the 10th and 11th grade students.

Admittedly, the additional material in this edition is fairly predictable, although a few of the scenarios (such as "F. George Furter" being set up to take the corporate fall for the Van Husens) are both inventive and plausible. And yes, the overall quality of the reproduced photographs is somewhat disappointing.

But for those of us who have been looking for a copy of this without any success for quite a while, this "39th reunion" edition is a "must-have." And for anyone else who was a teenager in the '60s, '70s, or '80s and who does not own a copy of the original edition or who (worse!) has never even seen or heard of it, this is also a "must-have."

Please disregard some of the comments made in other reviews (below) ----- about P.J. O'Rourke's politics, about a gay priest, about stereotyping a female Catholic high school senior, etc. ----- there is NO POLITICS in this, just funny and creative stuff. (A few people have made it their life's work to be offended by every little thing, and never miss a chance to complain and attack; perhaps they believe it demonstrates their exquisite sensitivity and superior powers of critical analysis.) If you liked Animal House or any of National Lampoon's early issues, just trust me and order your own copy of this yearbook.

And this time ... don't lose it!