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The Cat's Pajamas and Witch's Milk
Twin tales of middle-class hilarity and despair from the writer who was dubbed “America’s preeminent comic novelist” by the New York Times
When college professor Hank Tattersall sees his former flame, Lucy Stiles, at a campus concert, it sets off a chain reaction that results in one of the funniest and most unforgettable exit scenes in American literature—involving a locked door, an alcoholic dog, and a punning doppelgänger. The Cat’s Pajamas is the story of how Tattersall, a scrupulous self-reflector, falls from point A to point Z, rushing through a host of identities and indignities along the way. The unexamined life may not be worth living, he discovers, but the examined one is hardly a bed of roses.
In Witch’s Milk, Tillie Seltzer has her own trials to attend to. Chief among them is her marriage to Pete, the kind of guy who tucks a cigarette behind his ear and calls everybody Frisbee. When they first met, Tillie had more sophisticated tastes—dark strangers, homburg hats—but she was also a thirtysomething virgin whose prospects weren’t getting any better. When she cracked a joke about the honeymoon being over, Pete believed her. Now stuck in suburbia with a sick child and a philandering husband, Tillie takes a hard look in the rearview mirror. Her search for an escape route will lead her to the most unexpected place of all.
These short novels are linked by Tillie’s cameo appearance in Hank’s narrative and by the thrilling blend of satire, tragedy, and philosophy that defines the one-of-a-kind fiction of Peter De Vries.
When college professor Hank Tattersall sees his former flame, Lucy Stiles, at a campus concert, it sets off a chain reaction that results in one of the funniest and most unforgettable exit scenes in American literature—involving a locked door, an alcoholic dog, and a punning doppelgänger. The Cat’s Pajamas is the story of how Tattersall, a scrupulous self-reflector, falls from point A to point Z, rushing through a host of identities and indignities along the way. The unexamined life may not be worth living, he discovers, but the examined one is hardly a bed of roses.
In Witch’s Milk, Tillie Seltzer has her own trials to attend to. Chief among them is her marriage to Pete, the kind of guy who tucks a cigarette behind his ear and calls everybody Frisbee. When they first met, Tillie had more sophisticated tastes—dark strangers, homburg hats—but she was also a thirtysomething virgin whose prospects weren’t getting any better. When she cracked a joke about the honeymoon being over, Pete believed her. Now stuck in suburbia with a sick child and a philandering husband, Tillie takes a hard look in the rearview mirror. Her search for an escape route will lead her to the most unexpected place of all.
These short novels are linked by Tillie’s cameo appearance in Hank’s narrative and by the thrilling blend of satire, tragedy, and philosophy that defines the one-of-a-kind fiction of Peter De Vries.
- GenresFiction
275 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1968
27 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Peter De Vries
54 books164 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 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 8, 2014
I've called Peter De Vries the godfather of boychik lit. And indeed it was in his masterpiece Forever Panting that I found a model for male-centered comic fiction. But even the master has his off days. That's why the four stars. These two novellas read like a rehearsal for something else. And both have downer plot turns that seem so out of context to be needlessly morose. In The Cat's Pajamas, protagonist Hank Tattersall goes from being an instructor, to a reluctant ad man, to a kind of hermit. His work is all about deconstruction, which eventually becomes personal. In Witch's Milk, Tillie Shilepsky Seltzer finds a mate, who seems to be the perfect gentleman, except for his unabashed gimp and a quirky ability to murder the language. Her closest friends, a gay man and a meddling matron, are all about gossip and interior decorating. Nontrivial by comparison, husband Pete is the only person of substance she knows. And he disappoints, but not terminally. But the worst spoilers here are downright deathly. If you read Blood of the Lamb, which is almost unreadable for its gloom, you will guess what influence in De Vries's life was haunting him here. Too bad, I think, he couldn't stick to trivialities this time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 5, 2013
Two novellas, the first about a college teacher whose encounter with an old flame sends his life into a downward spiral, the second about a seemingly mismatched couple who survive a tragedy. De Vries can write hilariously (one character dreams up nonsense products like reversible mayonnaise, dehydrated water and fireproof pickles), but tragedy always bubbles below the surface.
December 14, 2020
*4.25 stars.
"If it was chamber music, it was torture chamber music" (5).
"The nineteen-year-old Gioconda standing at Lucy's side was a student in his creative writing class. For all her ethereality, he wanted to wash her typewriter out with soap" (12).
"'Mirth and grief have a common manifestation, the convulsion, and of course they share your tear ducts, like good neighbors sharing a well'" (62).
"Nestled well down in his fat pelican chins, he smiled into his punch cup at the carryings on " (67).
"The best account of what happened between now and the following spring is contained in a series of letters Tattersall got from himself in that period" (69).
"While the President sat magisterially trying to hear everyone out before deciding whether to release unto them Barabbas or another… " (86).
"So they came to no decision about what to recommend, but tabled the matter to another meeting, which meant another term. Which was perhaps just as well. But in rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Tattersall had noted a wide and rapidly spreading wet spot in the plaster there. Thus a serious leak in the plumbing was detected, in time to save the school hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars in repair expense, and making them all feel that something worthwhile had been accomplished by this meeting" (91). *So something useful can come from a meeting!
*Did he have to use the n-word during one of Hank's incarnations? Its very presence repulses. I know it was a different time, but still… even in a different time some people didn't stoop to such language.
"The vegetables went into a casserole…which tattersall baked in a bedpan" (162).
"'Now, that may be universally true of the really original artist, that he becomes a headache and his imitators. He thins out, you see, turns into a cliché. Christ becomes his disciples, the disciples the apostles, the apostles the church, and the church – yicch!'" (163).
"There was some leftover beef Stroganoff in the bedpan, along with a spoon from which, supposedly, it was extemporaneously eaten cold on impulse by any resident epicures" (168).
* I love how, as a traveling salesman, he begins selling "NO PEDDLERS ALLOWED" signs.
"'I think the truer it is that Everything Stinks the last one should call it to others' attention" (178).
"Tattersall was reduced to talking to himself, a thing which he did not mind except that, in the role of listener, his attention often wondered. There were times when he didn't hear a word he said" (181).
"Each of us has a single, special memory, cherished as our most beautiful, the key to our past; or if not that, at least the embodiment of all we yearn to unlock. Not the earliest recollection soiled with explanation by the psychologists, but the memory of some particular bliss heartbreaking to recall, safe from contradiction, which is perhaps the memory of purity itself. This is no doubt why snow is always evocative of childhood. Tattersall's great sweet memory was not an event, it was this poem. He remembered having to recite it before the class, and of doing so, but what he treasured was not the recollection of success, but the verses themselves and what they communicated. The fluttering flakes seemed like an enormous shuttling loom from which the whole tapestry of childhood was rewoven: the hope and fear of school, the poetry of the hours, the secrecy of dreams, all suspended in some eternal playtime. The silence deep and white, the rails softened to swansdown..." (181-182).
"Miss Lund let herself slump to the table in a semi-comic pantomime of flabbergastation" (246).
*Charlie's illness toward the end of Witch's Milk causes me to wonder if this is not a precursor to Blood of the Lamb.
"If it was chamber music, it was torture chamber music" (5).
"The nineteen-year-old Gioconda standing at Lucy's side was a student in his creative writing class. For all her ethereality, he wanted to wash her typewriter out with soap" (12).
"'Mirth and grief have a common manifestation, the convulsion, and of course they share your tear ducts, like good neighbors sharing a well'" (62).
"Nestled well down in his fat pelican chins, he smiled into his punch cup at the carryings on " (67).
"The best account of what happened between now and the following spring is contained in a series of letters Tattersall got from himself in that period" (69).
"While the President sat magisterially trying to hear everyone out before deciding whether to release unto them Barabbas or another… " (86).
"So they came to no decision about what to recommend, but tabled the matter to another meeting, which meant another term. Which was perhaps just as well. But in rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Tattersall had noted a wide and rapidly spreading wet spot in the plaster there. Thus a serious leak in the plumbing was detected, in time to save the school hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars in repair expense, and making them all feel that something worthwhile had been accomplished by this meeting" (91). *So something useful can come from a meeting!
*Did he have to use the n-word during one of Hank's incarnations? Its very presence repulses. I know it was a different time, but still… even in a different time some people didn't stoop to such language.
"The vegetables went into a casserole…which tattersall baked in a bedpan" (162).
"'Now, that may be universally true of the really original artist, that he becomes a headache and his imitators. He thins out, you see, turns into a cliché. Christ becomes his disciples, the disciples the apostles, the apostles the church, and the church – yicch!'" (163).
"There was some leftover beef Stroganoff in the bedpan, along with a spoon from which, supposedly, it was extemporaneously eaten cold on impulse by any resident epicures" (168).
* I love how, as a traveling salesman, he begins selling "NO PEDDLERS ALLOWED" signs.
"'I think the truer it is that Everything Stinks the last one should call it to others' attention" (178).
"Tattersall was reduced to talking to himself, a thing which he did not mind except that, in the role of listener, his attention often wondered. There were times when he didn't hear a word he said" (181).
"Each of us has a single, special memory, cherished as our most beautiful, the key to our past; or if not that, at least the embodiment of all we yearn to unlock. Not the earliest recollection soiled with explanation by the psychologists, but the memory of some particular bliss heartbreaking to recall, safe from contradiction, which is perhaps the memory of purity itself. This is no doubt why snow is always evocative of childhood. Tattersall's great sweet memory was not an event, it was this poem. He remembered having to recite it before the class, and of doing so, but what he treasured was not the recollection of success, but the verses themselves and what they communicated. The fluttering flakes seemed like an enormous shuttling loom from which the whole tapestry of childhood was rewoven: the hope and fear of school, the poetry of the hours, the secrecy of dreams, all suspended in some eternal playtime. The silence deep and white, the rails softened to swansdown..." (181-182).
"Miss Lund let herself slump to the table in a semi-comic pantomime of flabbergastation" (246).
*Charlie's illness toward the end of Witch's Milk causes me to wonder if this is not a precursor to Blood of the Lamb.
April 28, 2014
Two brief, related novels packed with humor and sadness both. My favorite part is Tattersall, the English prof who takes a Madison Avenue ad-writing job on the basis of his "commercials of the absurd": "Are you tired of detergents that don't get your wash really white? Light up a Kent." The essay I don't have time to write would chart how these advertisements expose what all ads basically do: stir up discontent and then offer inadequate solutions. Tattersall merely makes the existential despair a little more explicit.
November 10, 2018
double much fun. "books finished, while you read..."
December 12, 2022
You probably had to be there to appreciate it now. By 'there' is meant 1968, when this book was written (it is now Dec, 2022 as I write this). Back in the 1960's I'd discovered De Vries, and enjoyed his writing immensely. Had subsequently forgotten until a few weeks ago when a quote of his was cited by a newspaper columnist (I forget the quote and the columnist, and neither are really germane here), and in a fit of nostalgia I decided to take out another De Vries book, to see if he held up after over 50 years. No. Or perhaps I've just moved on. He's a very good writer, stylistically (must have, to have been on the New Yorker) and a good humorist in his day. I found this book to be a real slog. My sense was that De Vries was trying too, too hard; both in the verbal pyrotechnics department, and especially in the humor department. Many original observations and expressions, but there was something very dated about this book (or pair of novellas). There's a tragedy about them also... which I won't divulge here. So, 5-stars for style and originality, 1-star for contemporary interest; average=3 stars.
September 24, 2018
Meandering plotless excuse to flex wordplay and technical writing ability. Doesn’t hold up. Particularly when offensive racist undertones seep through the dated 1950s voice of the author. Yawn.
February 25, 2019
Sometimes witty always absurd. A bit dated though.
November 5, 2019
Two novellas, each funny and sad and interesting.
August 11, 2025
Both were sadly rather dull for me.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews