Comfort Me With Apples

by Peter De Vries

In this famous, bestselling novel Peter De Vries focuses in upon a man and a woman facing love in all its forms and furies -- from the rites of adolescent initiation to the early days of wedded bliss and the lengthening shadow of discontent and discord to the treacheries and traps of illicit passion. Prepare for a golden harvest of razor-sharp wit and deeply probing human insight.

Genres: Fiction, Food, Humor

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Peter 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.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always like a good Peter De Vries book, but surprisingly I think this was my least favorite. I don’t really know why, but it just seemed like his typical wit, plot twists, irony, and characters full of puns, paradoxes, and satire didn’t gel like they normally do with a cohesive plot in the form of a novel. It was like an exercise in using characters that speak in puns, stringing a whole bunch of ironic scenarios together and calling it “the story.”
It wasn’t terrible by any means, much better than the average “Book of Lies”-type shit that SOME people read and what apparently passes for storytelling nowadays (do I need to heap on the scorn a little thicker? Am I sarcastic enough of is Joe the Asshole going to start hounding me again for my “vile attacks”?) But it probably was my least favorite De Vries. His protagonist is again an outsider, a Mad Men era man unhappy with convention who yet falls in to convention, all the while poking fun at everything and everyone around him while embodying the things he mocks. The target of satire is the Connecticut suburbs, marital “bliss,” affairs, homemade psychology and psychotherapy; but despite all of this I don’t really know where it ends up. Saying affairs are ok? Admit it and fall on your sword and life goes on? Is that the moral or the satire?

Not my favorite by any means, it was still amusing, fast, witty, literary, and a good historical culture book to show life in the 50s as the absurdity I think many felt.

[Stephen Hoogerhyde · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of De Vries' early novels; as such it shows glimpses of his incredible vocabulary and ability with puns and witticisms, but also some flagging invention in his plot. Consider it a promise of things to come.

As with every De Vries novel, it contains a beginning, a muddle, and an end (his phrase; I forget from which novel). As with most of his novels it is set in suburban New England, and deals with infidelity in marriage. In fact, that drives much of the plot. Interestingly the infidelity is never physically consummated, but it is there nonetheless. By the end of the novel our protagonist has ended his illicit relationship and is now a more attentive and uxorious husband to his longsuffering wife (a very familiar situation in De Vries novels).

As the main character (and narrator) observes, "We must make do with one another, in adventures as in marriage." Not exactly a ringing endorsement for matrimony, but in the end our hero does strive for connubial commitment if not connubial bliss.

The bon mots that De Vries sprinkles throughout the novel are far too numerous to mention, but here is one worthy of note and instruction: ". . . experience kept a dear school but fools would learn in no other."

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best of the novels De Vries wrote before his young daughter's death gave his humor a much darker tone in books like "Reuben, Reuben," "The Vale of Laughter" and especially "The Blood of the Lamb." This one deals with a couple of youths who dream of fleeing small-town Pennsylvania to become Parisian flaneurs - one of De Vries' endless variations on his own early days - and what becomes of them, career- and romance-wise. Gaspingly funny in spots, and the local journalist who dispenses go-getting wisdom via a column titled "Pepigrams" is one of his greatest secondary characters.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amusing, witty comedic sitcom right out of 1950s suburbia, with characters that behave much like the people in our old family photos might have done. On the basis of this one novel (he published 23 of them), I'm inclined to regard De Vries's style as comparable to that of the British author Kingsley Amis, who was in fact a fan of De Vries. But on the basis of the one other De Vries novel I've read ("The Blood of the Lamb", 1961), I'd say the comparison becomes less apt over time in that De Vries continued to mature.

[Ted Savage · Rating 3 out of 5]

One can clearly envision how Katinka De Vries’ eyebrows would twitch and her shoulders slightly deflate whenever her loving husband opened his mouth to speak with guests sitting around their dinning room table for the first time. “Please pass the hot potatoes.” It becomes a little wearisome after a while.

[doug bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suburban Satire

I read a few Peter de Vries novels in the 1980's, who was known for his satirical takes on life in the suburbs. He is adept at taking the mundane dramas of this environment and seeing the humor behind what is going on in these people's lives.

[Lrichter]

Imported from Library History

[Lily Rhiannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was okay. The writing style was quite jarring to get used to and the story felt a bit repetitive.

[john lennon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather than coming to one’s senses, one should let one’s senses come to one.

[Jill]

I was initially amused with the elaborately cute language of this novel set in the 1950's, but it started to wear thin after the first third of the novel. We follow the main character from high school when he meets a girl that he really isn't crazy about but can't figure out how to ditch here after many years of dating, so they end up married. They're living with their parents because he can't figure out how to make a living, but he eventually falls into the job of the advice columnist for the local paper. Much of the novel revolves around the antics of his best friend, who is severely job challenged..he doesn't know how to do anything and fails at everything. It's hard to care about these guys at all, and the novel finally skids and lumbers to an inconclusive end. The book blurb made it sound far more amusing and entertaining than it actually is.

[David Rickert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, but didn't find it as funny as the other De Vries books I have read. "Mackerel Plaza" is the best place to start in my opinion. Still an amusing tale of coincidence and foolishness.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially disliked narrator who was snobbish, superior and hypercritical. As book continues, life brings him down to a fat, unsuccessful, but more appreciative person who I came to like. Writing style is rich and very funny.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can see the foundation on which the author would build his later, greater works. A few of the throw-away jokes still have me chuckling, though.

[Kirsten Fahrenbach · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish this book. Read the first fifty pages and didn't like the topic about a married woman having an affair. Don't recommend.