Archy and Mehitabel

I first read Archy and Mehitabel as a high-school student. My aunt from New York City, Aunt Althea, who always knew the hottest new books, recommended it to my family, and it went through us like a Covid outbreak, but with far more pleasing results. (I am not sure what brought A&M to Aunt Althea's attention, as it was published in 1916.)The premise of A&M is that Don Marquis hears the sound of typing from his office one night. He checks it out and finds that a cockroach is operating the typewriter by climbing up on the carriage and leaping head-first onto the keys. (By the way, I am old enough to have used mechanical typewriters, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, this would not work. So, I have the unpleasant duty of informing you that A&M is fiction.) A&M consists of these missives from the cockroach, who calls himself Archy. In addition, there are pen and ink drawings (presumably by Marquis) to illustrate most of the chapters. Archy is a Vers Libre poet reincarnated into the body of a cockroach. He implies more than once that his transmigration into a cockroach is "punishment" for being a Vers Libre poet -- why that deserves punishment is entirely a mystery to me.Archy tells of several other characters around New York that he talks with. The most important of these, of course, is an alley cat called Mehitabel. Mehitabel claims to have been Cleopatra in a past life. Archy suspects (and he's clearly right) that Mehitabel just made this up. Mehitabel knows no more about Cleopatra than her name and that she was a queen of Egypt. Mehitabel likes to think of herself as an artist and a lady, but she has no more idea of how to be those things than how to be Cleopatra. My favorite Mehitabel quote is "to hell with anything unrefined has always been my motto".There are some other characters in the cast, but Archy and Mehitabel are definitely the main draws. Anyway, it's heaps of fun.

MARQUIS, Don. archy and mehitabel. Doubleday (Anchor). 1916-1930; reissued 1973, 1990. 193p. $8.95. (pb)archyology: the long lost tales of archy and mehitabel. UPNE. Republished in 2009. 120p. $14. (pb)archyology ii (the final dig): the long lost tales of archy and mehitabel. Bloodaxe. 2000. 124p. $13.80 (pb)expression is the need of my souli was once a vers libre poetbut i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroachit has given me a new outlook on lifeThus wrote archy the cockroach in his fist communiqué to newsman and soon to be friend Don Marquis. The time was 1916. The US wasn't even involved in World War I and Prohibition was yet to come.Marquis was a columnist and reporter for the New York Sun but he was also a frustrated poet. His way out was to write columns in blank verse about Archy, a free verse poet reborn as a cockroach, and archy's raggle taggle alleycat friend mehitabel, who claimed to have been Cleopatra in a former life. His columns had been supposedly written by archy, one letter at a time. archy would climb to the top of Marquis's typewriter, then throw himself head first at the key he wanted to hit. He couldn't print capitals because he didn`t have the strength or reach to work the shift bar and a letter at the same time. Thus everything he wrote was in lower case with no punctuation.)archy's missals to his reporter friend are as enjoyable to read now as they were when they first appeared between 1916-1930. The political and social commentary that surfaces in some of them is dated now. It's the pieces about archy and mehitabel -a strange friendship--that are timeless. How can you not like a creature who writes: "i see things from the underside now/ thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket boss/ but your glue is getting so stale/ i cant eat it"? And mehitabel's devil-may-care approach to life (which usually treats her badly)? "i have had my ups and downs/ but wotthehell wotthehell/ yesterday scepters and crowns/ fried oysters and velvet gowns/ and today i herd with bums/ but wotthehell wotthehell..."archy and mehitabel was made into a not very good musical called Shinbone Alley. Carol Channing sang mehitabel's role on the short version recording of it. Channing was probably as good as you could get for mehitabel but unfortunately, the vehicle was inferior. For the true stuff, you still have to go these three collections of Marquis's columns. (The archyology books are only for fanatics -they're collections of the leftover pieces that somehow had not made it into he original collection.)

There are several Archy & Mehitabel books out there. This one isn't the largest or the cheapest but it is hardbound, and can honestly claim to be the cutest. Archy & Mehitabel go back to about 1920, when reporter Don Marquis invented the character and conceit of Archy, a poetic cockroach who stayed after hours in Marquis' newspaper office but could only communicate -- with difficulty -- by jumping up and down on the keys, banging his head for each painful character. Of course, upper case was out of the question. In the newspaper office, Archy's first and bestest friend was Mehitabel, a pussy cat -- or should we say alley cat, since Mehitabel's affairs are torrid and occasionally sordid. But wotthehell (to use a common Mehitabel expression), she has always been passionate in all her prior lives, going back to Cleopatra, though she is not all that well informed about the dynasties of Egypt (a failing Mehitabel attributes to the passing of thousands of years and possibly dozens of reincarnated lives). This book is an entryway into an era in which newspapermen (and they were still always men) were expected to be moody, literate, and even poetic. The whimsy, sharp good sense, bracing blank verse and poetic outcries (even if they are cat-calls) are well worth exploring, even by us moderns. THE BEST OF ARCHY AND MEHITABEL is a bit of Americana people are still enjoying today.Excerpt from the poetry in this book, a complaint by none other than Mehitabel:archy she said to meyesterdaythe life of a femaleartist is continuallyhampered what in hellhave i done to deserveall these kittensi look back on my lifeand it seems to bejust one damned kittenafter another

I loved this when I first came across it years ago, and am delighted to have this replacement for my lost copy. A for reviewing it, that's been done excellently by other reviewers. Read it and enjoy!

I had lost my copy and wanted to replace it. This hardback version is attractively aged looking and exactly what I wanted.

A wonderful book, first heard as a 'Book at bedtime' on the BBC, and much loved! So glad to find it, now I can lend it to friends and they can laugh too!

slightly old version, some of the pages beginning to fall out already,

Not enough people know about Archy & Mehitabel and that's a shame. Please republish!