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Let Me Count the Ways
The sins of the father are hilariously visited on the son in this witty and profound novel about the meaning of it all
Stanley Waltz is a Polish American piano mover and pugnacious atheist married to a born-again believer. His heroes are H. L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow, and if he confuses "illusion" with "allusion" and thinks a certain style of egg is "bedeviled," that does not mean his reasoning is any less sound. Unfortunately, his wife is immune to his intellect and insists not just on saving his soul but on taking their son, Tom, to the local gospel mission every chance she gets. It is enough to drive a man into the arms of a mistress "funny as a crutch and twice as perceptive"--and that is exactly where Stan goes.
This leaves Tom twice as mixed up as the average son. In the second section of this side-splitting and thought-provoking comedy, he is a professor of English at the local college, his questions about faith, doubt, and morality as unresolved as they are inescapable. As an undergraduate, he stumbled from girl to girl, breaking up with one because she was a nonbeliever, another because she was too pious. His marriage to a beautiful professor of comparative religion is no solution. In short order, he has an affair, breaks his leg, leads a funeral procession hopelessly astray, and suffers a nervous breakdown. Only a miracle can save him--if he can figure out what one might look like.
Stanley and Tom Waltz are a father-son duo unlike any other, and Let Me Count the Ways is Peter De Vries at his insightful, brilliant, lightning-witted best.
Stanley Waltz is a Polish American piano mover and pugnacious atheist married to a born-again believer. His heroes are H. L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow, and if he confuses "illusion" with "allusion" and thinks a certain style of egg is "bedeviled," that does not mean his reasoning is any less sound. Unfortunately, his wife is immune to his intellect and insists not just on saving his soul but on taking their son, Tom, to the local gospel mission every chance she gets. It is enough to drive a man into the arms of a mistress "funny as a crutch and twice as perceptive"--and that is exactly where Stan goes.
This leaves Tom twice as mixed up as the average son. In the second section of this side-splitting and thought-provoking comedy, he is a professor of English at the local college, his questions about faith, doubt, and morality as unresolved as they are inescapable. As an undergraduate, he stumbled from girl to girl, breaking up with one because she was a nonbeliever, another because she was too pious. His marriage to a beautiful professor of comparative religion is no solution. In short order, he has an affair, breaks his leg, leads a funeral procession hopelessly astray, and suffers a nervous breakdown. Only a miracle can save him--if he can figure out what one might look like.
Stanley and Tom Waltz are a father-son duo unlike any other, and Let Me Count the Ways is Peter De Vries at his insightful, brilliant, lightning-witted best.
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Peter De Vries
55 books165 followersPeter De Vries is responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms as "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow." He was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic." “Quick with quips so droll and witty, so penetrating and precise that you almost don’t feel them piercing your pretensions, Peter De Vries was perhaps America’s best comic novelist not named Mark Twain. . .” (Sam McManis, Sacramento Bee).
His achievement seemed best appreciated by his fellow writers. Harper Lee, naming the great American writers, said, “Peter De Vries . . . is the Evelyn Waugh of our time". Anthony Burgess called De Vries “surely one of the great prose virtuosos of modern America.”
Peter De Vries was a radio actor in the 1930s, and editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944. During World War II he served in the U.S. Marines attaining the rank of Captain, and was seconded to the O.S.S., predecessor to the CIA.
He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987. A prolific writer, De Vries wrote short stories, reviews, poetry, essays, a play, novellas, and twenty-three novels, several of which were made into films.
De Vries met his wife, Katinka Loeser, while at Poetry magazine. They married and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they raised 4 children. The death of his 10-year-old daughter Emily from leukemia inspired The Blood of the Lamb, the most poignant and the most autobiographical of De Vries's novels.
In Westport, De Vries formed a lifelong friendship with the young J. D. Salinger, who later described the writing process as "opening a vein and bleeding onto the page." The two writers clearly "understood each other very well” (son Derek De Vries in "The Return of Peter De Vries", Westport Magazine, April 2006).
De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1983.
His books were sadly out of print by the time of his death. After the New Yorker published a critical reappraisal of De Vries’ work however (“Few writers have understood literary comedy as well as De Vries, and few comic novelists have had his grasp of tragedy”), The University of Chicago Press began reissuing his works in 2005, starting with The Blood of the Lamb and Slouching Toward Kalamazoo.
His achievement seemed best appreciated by his fellow writers. Harper Lee, naming the great American writers, said, “Peter De Vries . . . is the Evelyn Waugh of our time". Anthony Burgess called De Vries “surely one of the great prose virtuosos of modern America.”
Peter De Vries was a radio actor in the 1930s, and editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944. During World War II he served in the U.S. Marines attaining the rank of Captain, and was seconded to the O.S.S., predecessor to the CIA.
He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987. A prolific writer, De Vries wrote short stories, reviews, poetry, essays, a play, novellas, and twenty-three novels, several of which were made into films.
De Vries met his wife, Katinka Loeser, while at Poetry magazine. They married and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they raised 4 children. The death of his 10-year-old daughter Emily from leukemia inspired The Blood of the Lamb, the most poignant and the most autobiographical of De Vries's novels.
In Westport, De Vries formed a lifelong friendship with the young J. D. Salinger, who later described the writing process as "opening a vein and bleeding onto the page." The two writers clearly "understood each other very well” (son Derek De Vries in "The Return of Peter De Vries", Westport Magazine, April 2006).
De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 1983.
His books were sadly out of print by the time of his death. After the New Yorker published a critical reappraisal of De Vries’ work however (“Few writers have understood literary comedy as well as De Vries, and few comic novelists have had his grasp of tragedy”), The University of Chicago Press began reissuing his works in 2005, starting with The Blood of the Lamb and Slouching Toward Kalamazoo.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 8, 2015
In this older book. De Vries continued his fascination with faith vs unbelief. And e continued his ability to be funny when dealing with heavy subjects. Never quite coming to a conclusion, he still insists that people continue to consider the questions.
The book tells the story of Tom Waltz, an english professor who has grown up in a hilarilous household where the father is a devout skeptic, and the mother an ardent fundamentalist. Tom is trying to be both (lots of luck on that front).
Anyone who loves De Vries' writing as I do will enjoy this book.
The book tells the story of Tom Waltz, an english professor who has grown up in a hilarilous household where the father is a devout skeptic, and the mother an ardent fundamentalist. Tom is trying to be both (lots of luck on that front).
Anyone who loves De Vries' writing as I do will enjoy this book.
October 11, 2013
"We live in a town called Slow Rapids, Indiana…" (7).
"…and worked his way up to persecuting attorney (sick)" (9).
"Elsie's Christian humility has an arrogant streak in it (like Christ's)" (17).
"The whole damn staircase was like a large intestine" (28).
"While they enjoy being swept off their feet, they do like preliminaries" (37).
"…he was constantly being sent to the principal's office for what he called 'injecting a little humor into the discussion'" (41).
" 'This is--listen carefully, make sure your ears aren't deceiving you--a Bible belt! Yes, it's true. A leather belt with Scriptural texts tooled into it all the way around'" (45).
" 'Spoiled children! Punks with infantile motivations, not masterful lovers having poetic affairs. You don't want to add a little poetry to your life, you just want to subtract a little of the prose'" (47).
"…a camp that was so awful even the counselors got homesick" (50).
"…and fall came, bringing with it not the clear sharp days that brace the spirit, but long weeks of the kind of drizzle old country Poles call 'kersniak,' or cabbage soup" (62).
"…for years of living have given me a low opinion of this species" (63).
"I sat there gorging myself on irritation and annoyance. I wanted her to annoy me. I looked for it, I cultivated it, I fed on it" (64).
" 'Oh Christ,' I said, thinking it aloud to myself more than saying it" (65).
"He got his nickname ironically of course, but not because of the speed with which he weelds a hammer, but because he never strikes twice in the same place. He bent three or four six-penny nails while I watched…" (65). *Spelling mistakes are the narrator's.
"He pulled a bandanna from his hind pocket and wiped non-existent sweat from his brow, then tobacco juice from his chin which was plenty existent" (66).
"…but when he left had contributed his bit to the deterioration of my mood--which was what I wanted. People bent on a self-destructive tear often find their spirits soaring at the same time they're plunging" (66).
"This is the beast sleeping in each of us, dozing lightly in some" (67).
"…and her figure was better if only by virtue of there not being so much of it" (68).
" 'Gives an old familiar dish a dash of the garlic of the forbidden,' the other man said. He was evidently the intellectual of the bunch" (74).
"…while around us clothed mammals alternately lose and recover their balance in a regulated error known as 'walking'" (83).
" 'You can't go home again.'
" 'But you still live there!'" (84).
"Living with unripened hysteria drove my father crazy" (85).
"…retrieving my necktie from the coleslaw…" (87).
"In the course of his three months' hitch, the poet in residence has done very little but reside…" (94).
" '…not for snobbish monkey-shines, you son of a bitch!'" (95).
"Shrill as are all these claims to individuality, they none of them compare with the affectation to which we now come. I am conscious of having to state it simply, letting it speak for itself. He spelled his name with an exclamation mark behind it--Hodges!" (95).
"...me alone grinning richly about...(96).
“...solidly caked masses of ordure in 6-point known as footnotes, like some waste extruded by the main text above, you know” (96).
“Eyes avoid me. Faces whisk themselves away on pretended missions elsewhere” (97).
“I agree with Samuel Johnson that there are not six consecutive lines of good poetry in Shakespeare. Yet what move us are the peaks, for which we endure the stretches of claptrap and the tiresome clowns and the idiotic plots” (97).
“A compulsive habit carried over from my teaching chores makes me instinctively grade everything I see, and in my mellowed mood I give Him a straight A for the day, also mentally jotting the word of constructive criticism” (99).
“...illustrated by a rounded gesture of both hands rather unfortunately like that with which lewd men carve a nude in the air to dramatize the concept of voluptuousness” (101).
“...river mists arise to meet the cold air above, so that we are continually treated to a succession of sunsets now largely out of date. Generally Pre-Raphaelite in feeling, they sometimes descend to the level of Corot, and bad Corot at that. At their worst they are sheer calendar art. I often tell Him as much” (105).
“For that reason she was an inflexible advocate of the temperance--if that is ever a good term fro the fantastical extremes usually characteristic of people so minded” (107).
"That you can't go home again is a truth inseparably linked to the fact that neither can you ever get away from it..." (124).
“If formative is the right word for so chaotic and jumbled a human result as I” (125).
“Saint-Beuve said, ‘Even the word Poland is touching’” (126).
“...and was therefore unprepared for the sight of a strapping blonde nurse, armed with a power saw, approaching the table on which I lay” (127).
“I mumbled something into the crook of my arm, which I didn’t catch” (127).
“Her arms were folded over a white and blue peasant blouse, with a scoop neck and drawstring, like that of a purse with precious contents. Such is the metaphorical line of thought set going in me by sight of girls so dressed” (128).
“The cast cracked open noisily, like a nut. As she separated the two portions, the contents began raining down to the floor. First the knife fell with a clatter, followed by the spoon, ruler and fork. I joined the women in glancing down curiously at these articles as though I had never seen them before” (128).
“I crushed the newspaper with a gasp of horror and thrust it deep into a convenient litter bin. I entered the nearest bar, where, nursing a whiskey, I tried alternately to recall the rest of what I had written and to keep it at mental arm’s length” (131-132).
“I cannot get the little man with the air cushion under his arm out of my mind. I want him to go from restaurant to restaurant of this rotten world, deflating them all with his pneumatic doughnut” (43-45).
“ ‘I don’t think you’re adolescent at all. I think you’re infantile. You’ve got a long way to go to be adolescent. That doesn’t mean you’re to be dismissed out of hand. Completely written off. In fact you fascinate me. I don’t see how anybody can get to be twenty-three and still remain two years old” (156).
"(Here a successful attempt is made to resist emphasizing the point by tearing up the blotter on her desk and eating the fragments.)" (162). *This is a comment made during a meeting. I can identify.
"Here Smadbeck made a vague gesture which came precariously close to describing circles in the air near his temple" (197).
"I think they should call it Pretty Good Friday, what with all the doubts they have to work out a compromise with" (207).
"What we worried about was where our next meal was coming from, but today they have to rack their brains about who they are" (210).
" 'And meanwhile my advice to all you Americans is, stop punishing yourselves. Leave that to God. He's so much better at it'" (213).
"Certainly its better than Nothingness. Oh give us the hand of God, if only the back of it" (217). *Lack of apostrophe is due to the narrator. Don't attribute it to me, by God!
"If you want my final opinion on the mystery of life and all that, I can give it to you in a nutshell. The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe" (217).
"…and worked his way up to persecuting attorney (sick)" (9).
"Elsie's Christian humility has an arrogant streak in it (like Christ's)" (17).
"The whole damn staircase was like a large intestine" (28).
"While they enjoy being swept off their feet, they do like preliminaries" (37).
"…he was constantly being sent to the principal's office for what he called 'injecting a little humor into the discussion'" (41).
" 'This is--listen carefully, make sure your ears aren't deceiving you--a Bible belt! Yes, it's true. A leather belt with Scriptural texts tooled into it all the way around'" (45).
" 'Spoiled children! Punks with infantile motivations, not masterful lovers having poetic affairs. You don't want to add a little poetry to your life, you just want to subtract a little of the prose'" (47).
"…a camp that was so awful even the counselors got homesick" (50).
"…and fall came, bringing with it not the clear sharp days that brace the spirit, but long weeks of the kind of drizzle old country Poles call 'kersniak,' or cabbage soup" (62).
"…for years of living have given me a low opinion of this species" (63).
"I sat there gorging myself on irritation and annoyance. I wanted her to annoy me. I looked for it, I cultivated it, I fed on it" (64).
" 'Oh Christ,' I said, thinking it aloud to myself more than saying it" (65).
"He got his nickname ironically of course, but not because of the speed with which he weelds a hammer, but because he never strikes twice in the same place. He bent three or four six-penny nails while I watched…" (65). *Spelling mistakes are the narrator's.
"He pulled a bandanna from his hind pocket and wiped non-existent sweat from his brow, then tobacco juice from his chin which was plenty existent" (66).
"…but when he left had contributed his bit to the deterioration of my mood--which was what I wanted. People bent on a self-destructive tear often find their spirits soaring at the same time they're plunging" (66).
"This is the beast sleeping in each of us, dozing lightly in some" (67).
"…and her figure was better if only by virtue of there not being so much of it" (68).
" 'Gives an old familiar dish a dash of the garlic of the forbidden,' the other man said. He was evidently the intellectual of the bunch" (74).
"…while around us clothed mammals alternately lose and recover their balance in a regulated error known as 'walking'" (83).
" 'You can't go home again.'
" 'But you still live there!'" (84).
"Living with unripened hysteria drove my father crazy" (85).
"…retrieving my necktie from the coleslaw…" (87).
"In the course of his three months' hitch, the poet in residence has done very little but reside…" (94).
" '…not for snobbish monkey-shines, you son of a bitch!'" (95).
"Shrill as are all these claims to individuality, they none of them compare with the affectation to which we now come. I am conscious of having to state it simply, letting it speak for itself. He spelled his name with an exclamation mark behind it--Hodges!" (95).
"...me alone grinning richly about...(96).
“...solidly caked masses of ordure in 6-point known as footnotes, like some waste extruded by the main text above, you know” (96).
“Eyes avoid me. Faces whisk themselves away on pretended missions elsewhere” (97).
“I agree with Samuel Johnson that there are not six consecutive lines of good poetry in Shakespeare. Yet what move us are the peaks, for which we endure the stretches of claptrap and the tiresome clowns and the idiotic plots” (97).
“A compulsive habit carried over from my teaching chores makes me instinctively grade everything I see, and in my mellowed mood I give Him a straight A for the day, also mentally jotting the word of constructive criticism” (99).
“...illustrated by a rounded gesture of both hands rather unfortunately like that with which lewd men carve a nude in the air to dramatize the concept of voluptuousness” (101).
“...river mists arise to meet the cold air above, so that we are continually treated to a succession of sunsets now largely out of date. Generally Pre-Raphaelite in feeling, they sometimes descend to the level of Corot, and bad Corot at that. At their worst they are sheer calendar art. I often tell Him as much” (105).
“For that reason she was an inflexible advocate of the temperance--if that is ever a good term fro the fantastical extremes usually characteristic of people so minded” (107).
"That you can't go home again is a truth inseparably linked to the fact that neither can you ever get away from it..." (124).
“If formative is the right word for so chaotic and jumbled a human result as I” (125).
“Saint-Beuve said, ‘Even the word Poland is touching’” (126).
“...and was therefore unprepared for the sight of a strapping blonde nurse, armed with a power saw, approaching the table on which I lay” (127).
“I mumbled something into the crook of my arm, which I didn’t catch” (127).
“Her arms were folded over a white and blue peasant blouse, with a scoop neck and drawstring, like that of a purse with precious contents. Such is the metaphorical line of thought set going in me by sight of girls so dressed” (128).
“The cast cracked open noisily, like a nut. As she separated the two portions, the contents began raining down to the floor. First the knife fell with a clatter, followed by the spoon, ruler and fork. I joined the women in glancing down curiously at these articles as though I had never seen them before” (128).
“I crushed the newspaper with a gasp of horror and thrust it deep into a convenient litter bin. I entered the nearest bar, where, nursing a whiskey, I tried alternately to recall the rest of what I had written and to keep it at mental arm’s length” (131-132).
“I cannot get the little man with the air cushion under his arm out of my mind. I want him to go from restaurant to restaurant of this rotten world, deflating them all with his pneumatic doughnut” (43-45).
“ ‘I don’t think you’re adolescent at all. I think you’re infantile. You’ve got a long way to go to be adolescent. That doesn’t mean you’re to be dismissed out of hand. Completely written off. In fact you fascinate me. I don’t see how anybody can get to be twenty-three and still remain two years old” (156).
"(Here a successful attempt is made to resist emphasizing the point by tearing up the blotter on her desk and eating the fragments.)" (162). *This is a comment made during a meeting. I can identify.
"Here Smadbeck made a vague gesture which came precariously close to describing circles in the air near his temple" (197).
"I think they should call it Pretty Good Friday, what with all the doubts they have to work out a compromise with" (207).
"What we worried about was where our next meal was coming from, but today they have to rack their brains about who they are" (210).
" 'And meanwhile my advice to all you Americans is, stop punishing yourselves. Leave that to God. He's so much better at it'" (213).
"Certainly its better than Nothingness. Oh give us the hand of God, if only the back of it" (217). *Lack of apostrophe is due to the narrator. Don't attribute it to me, by God!
"If you want my final opinion on the mystery of life and all that, I can give it to you in a nutshell. The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe" (217).
January 28, 2015
Read this book if you can find it for it's out if print and that's sad, for it's a great American novel.
December 13, 2023
DeVries is one of my touchstones. I count on him to deliver the pith and he always does. Like this, from this novel: “A major truth can be contradicted, while a minor one cannot. With trivial statements of fact such as ‘It’s raining out,’ or ‘She’s taking a bath,’ there can be no quarrel. But the large verities, like God is love, Life is good and Honor above all, stand each in the shadow of its opposite: there isn’t any, all is vanity, and honor is a word. Thus there are two sides to any question of importance, and the only thing for an honest man to do is take both of them.”
July 27, 2010
Often very funny, even slapstick, and yet DeVries creates actual characters and treats convincingly the product of a marriage between two very different parents: a confused son. First told by the father, a Polish American furniture mover given to language flubs ("boorgeoisie," "fluid English"), then told by the sophisticated but wiseacre son, the writing is a delight and the plot, while seemingly haphazard, eventually makes sense.
June 14, 2024
Apparently De Vries liked "Reuben, Reuben" so much that he wrote it again with slightly different characters (Midwestern furniture mover Stan Waltz instead of Connecticut chicken farmer Frank Spofford) and a new conflict (believers vs. atheists instead of farmers vs. commuters). If anything, this one is even better.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews