BOOK 183: A CURIOUS MAN: THE STRANGE AND BRILLIANT LIFE OF ROBERT "BELIEVE IT OR NOT!" RIPLEY: NEAL THOMPSON

BOOK 183: A CURIOUS MAN: THE STRANGE AND BRILLIANT LIFE OF ROBERT "BELIEVE IT OR NOT!" RIPLEY: NEAL THOMPSON

A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert "Believe It or Not" Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globetrotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities, and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable. 

As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripley's life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation for the strangeness of the world. After selling his first cartoon to Time magazine at age eighteen, more cartooning triumphs followed, but it was his "Believe It or Not" conceit and the wildly popular radio shows it birthed that would make him one of the most successful entertainment figures of his time and spur him to search the globe's farthest corners for bizarre facts, exotic human curiosities, and shocking phenomena. 

Ripley delighted in making outrageous declarations that somehow always turned out to be true--such as that Charles Lindbergh was only the sixty-seventh man to fly across the Atlantic or that "The Star Spangled Banner" was not the national anthem. Assisted by an exotic harem of female admirers and by ex-banker Norbert Pearlroth, a devoted researcher who spoke eleven languages, Ripley simultaneously embodied the spirit of Peter Pan, the fearlessness of Marco Polo and the marketing savvy of P. T. Barnum. 

In a very real sense, Ripley sought to remake the world's aesthetic. He demanded respect for those who were labeled "eccentrics" or "freaks"--whether it be E. L. Blystone, who wrote 1,615 alphabet letters on a grain of rice, or the man who could swallow his own nose. 

By the 1930s Ripley possessed a vast fortune, a private yacht, and a twenty-eight room mansion stocked with such "oddities" as shrunken heads and medieval torture devices, and his pioneering firsts in print, radio, and television were tapping into something deep in the American consciousness--a taste for the titillating and exotic, and a fascination with the fastest, biggest, dumbest and most weird. Today, that legacy continues and can be seen in reality TV, YouTube, America's Funniest Home Videos, Jackass, MythBusters and a host of other pop-culture phenomena. 

In the end Robert L. Ripley changed everything. The supreme irony of his life, which was dedicated to exalting the strange and unusual, is that he may have been the most amazing oddity of all.

(From the Hardcover edition.)

MY VERDICT: Despite that fact that I was eager to know the story behind Ripley, of Believe it or Not fame, and I have been wanting to read this book for ages, I was disappointed with this book. It dragged quite a bit and although there are some interesting facts, especially when you relate things to specific people and events from the past, the book is just too long. I would also have liked to see a few more of Ripley’s cartoons in the middle.

http://blackwhiteyellow.blogspot.co.uk

BOOK 97: THE QI BOOK OF THE DEAD: JOHN LLOYD AND JOHN MITCHINSON

The QI Book of the Dead (sold as The Book of the Dead in the United States) is the fourth title in a series of books based on the intellectual British panel game QI, written by series-creator John Lloyd and head-researcher John Mitchinson. It is a book of "quite interesting" obituaries.

FILM 1100: I LIKE KILLING FLIES

A documentary on the oddball Greenwich Village eatery, Shopsin's.

A little about the place:

Shopsin's is a diner formerly located in New York City's Greenwich Village. It moved to Stall No. 16, 120 Essex Street in New York City's Essex Street Market.

Shopsins was known for both its extensive (900-item) menu of unusual dishes concocted by chef/owner Kenny Shopsin, including items such as "Slutty Cakes", pancakes with peanut butter in the middle, and "Blisters on My Sisters", similar to (Huevos rancheros), and for Kenny Shopsin himself, described by Time Out New York as "the foul-mouthed middle-aged chef and owner.” Among Kenny Shopsin's quirks are his very specific rules, including a firm rule that the restaurant will not accept parties of more than four people. "Pretending to be a party of three that happened to have come in with a party of two is a very bad idea," wrote restaurant regular Calvin Trillin.

The restaurant and Kenny Shopsin were the subject of articles by New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin and of the documentary film I Like Killing Flies, directed by Matt Mahurin. An effort to re-create Mr. Shopsin's "Slutty Cakes" was described in a January 2009 Slate article.

Kenny Shopsin is the author of a 2008 cookbook Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin.

(information from Wikipedia)

Film 1033: In the Realms of the Unreal

Trivia: Henry Darger worked all his life in menial jobs in Chicago. Living alone and in poverty, he had no friends or close family. Spending all his off hours alone, he whiled away the hours working on a 15,000 page illustrated novel called The Realms of the Unreal. A stunning amalgam of religious imagery, fantasy, and heroic drama, the work was only discovered after Darger was moved to a hospital during the last days of his life. Darger also wrote journals and an autobiography. The documentary uses interviews with Darger's neighbors and narration of passages from his works, along with his illustrations, to explore the mind and work of Henry Darger.

Book 75: Auntie Mame – Patrick Dennis

Auntie Mame is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis that chronicles the madcap adventures of a boy, Patrick, growing up as the ward of his deceased father's eccentric sister, Mame Dennis. The book is a work of fiction inspired by the author's eccentric aunt, Marion Tanner, whose life and outlook in many ways mirrored those of Mame. In real life, Dennis was raised by his parents. The novel was a runaway best seller, setting records on the New York Times bestseller list, with more than two million copies in print during its initial publication.