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The Best of Clarence Day, Including: God and My Father / Life With Father / Life With Mother / This Simian World / and Selections from Thoughts Without Words
An American classic! Alfred A Knopf,1935 1st Edition Hardcover in Dustjacket. Delightful memoir of growing up in the 1880s-1890s in the Day family, an upper class family in New York City. Clarence Day senior is a "rich and vivid character,arrogant,hot-tempered, yet civilized and lovable" who is unforgettable after 5 minutes of reading.An earlier, shorter version was published in 1931
451 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1948
50 people want to read
About the author
Clarence Day Jr.
67 books17 followersAmerican humorist and essayist Clarence Shepard Day, Junior
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarenc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarenc...
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 4, 2025
Clarence Day died in 1935 at the age of 61. He suffered from arthritis starting as a young man.
He began to write some of his most humorous stories about growing up in the late 1870s while enduring severe physical pain.
Life with Father
Life with Mother
And God and my Father
are included in this book.
I found this book some years ago in an old bookshop and still enjoy re-reading it.
Some may remember a film called Life with Father based on this book staring
William Powell, Irene Dunn, and a young Elizabeth Taylor.
He began to write some of his most humorous stories about growing up in the late 1870s while enduring severe physical pain.
Life with Father
Life with Mother
And God and my Father
are included in this book.
I found this book some years ago in an old bookshop and still enjoy re-reading it.
Some may remember a film called Life with Father based on this book staring
William Powell, Irene Dunn, and a young Elizabeth Taylor.
February 18, 2024
I still read this book, although I read it many times. It lends itself well to a quick chapter now and then. I agree with Day in his explorations in This Simian World; it's curious to consider what different creatures we would be had we evolved from a species other than apes.
Usually I vastly prefer books to their movie counterparts, but the 1947 film version of Life With Father featuring William Powell, Irene Dunne, and Elizabeth Taylor not only offers skilled portrayals of Day's characters, the wonderful setting really brings the story and characters to life in a memorably rich way. When you've read the book, the film feels even more warm and engaging.
Usually I vastly prefer books to their movie counterparts, but the 1947 film version of Life With Father featuring William Powell, Irene Dunne, and Elizabeth Taylor not only offers skilled portrayals of Day's characters, the wonderful setting really brings the story and characters to life in a memorably rich way. When you've read the book, the film feels even more warm and engaging.
February 5, 2016
Life With Father:-
A neat, methodical man married to a woman who plays from heart, so that she is always hassled by his need of keeping accounts and he is always puzzled why she would not keep accounts, she welcomes unannounced relatives with open heart and joy while he is stressed about the disturbance they are certain to create in his routine, she wants to be left alone when ill and he wants to be petted an patted and massaged when he is ill and neither understands the need of the other in this respect, and on top of everything when she is given money to buy something she spends it on something else the house needs while charging for the first item she had taken money for so he is driven crazy and she is in tears telling him she won't stand being accused of mismanagement while she is trying to manage in so small a sum (he is not accusing her, merely attempting to comprehend the tangled accounts).
And then there are the four redheaded boys who are mixed in albeit most of the trouble seems to be either between the first son, the author, and the father (if any left over from the trouble between the parents, church, relatives et al) what with the delicate watch and the violin the son has to struggle with.
One of the most relaxing books, brings joy and smile and a melting of heart with the stories and the characters that one feels entirely close to.
......................................................................................
Life With Mother:-
One of the most delightful books one can ever find.
A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.
On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.
And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....
Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.
The good stories continue, this time with more focus on the mother and how she suddenly achieved a taste for some independence after going on a tour of Egypt with a friend and thereafter refused to give back the remaining money and declared she ought to have money of her own, and so forth - the endearing saga of impulsive mother and methodical defeated father continues.
.........................................................
A neat, methodical man married to a woman who plays from heart, so that she is always hassled by his need of keeping accounts and he is always puzzled why she would not keep accounts, she welcomes unannounced relatives with open heart and joy while he is stressed about the disturbance they are certain to create in his routine, she wants to be left alone when ill and he wants to be petted an patted and massaged when he is ill and neither understands the need of the other in this respect, and on top of everything when she is given money to buy something she spends it on something else the house needs while charging for the first item she had taken money for so he is driven crazy and she is in tears telling him she won't stand being accused of mismanagement while she is trying to manage in so small a sum (he is not accusing her, merely attempting to comprehend the tangled accounts).
And then there are the four redheaded boys who are mixed in albeit most of the trouble seems to be either between the first son, the author, and the father (if any left over from the trouble between the parents, church, relatives et al) what with the delicate watch and the violin the son has to struggle with.
One of the most relaxing books, brings joy and smile and a melting of heart with the stories and the characters that one feels entirely close to.
......................................................................................
Life With Mother:-
One of the most delightful books one can ever find.
A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.
On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.
And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....
Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.
The good stories continue, this time with more focus on the mother and how she suddenly achieved a taste for some independence after going on a tour of Egypt with a friend and thereafter refused to give back the remaining money and declared she ought to have money of her own, and so forth - the endearing saga of impulsive mother and methodical defeated father continues.
.........................................................
January 16, 2012
As another reviewer wrote, this was humorous without being laugh-out-loud funny. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Most of the book is a collection of essays about the author's childhood in 1890s New York. Father dominates these stories, as he did the household. A domestic tyrant with a soft heart, he is a great period piece (should he give Mother an allowance, or would that be just an added expense?) and an amusing character study.
"Thoughts without Words" is a short section: sketches with doggerel.
``This Simian World'' is an extended essay on the characteristics that humans share with monkeys, which allow us to dominate the world and determine the use we will make of our mastery. The second half of the essay is heavily anti-religious, which is well-written but not so original; the better part is the first half, imagining how a human race descended from cats or other animals would have been different. ("In literature they would not have begged for happy endings.") As I write that, I don't think I would have found the premise too interesting if it had been described to me in advance, but it is well done, with moments of beauty:
Most of the book is a collection of essays about the author's childhood in 1890s New York. Father dominates these stories, as he did the household. A domestic tyrant with a soft heart, he is a great period piece (should he give Mother an allowance, or would that be just an added expense?) and an amusing character study.
"Thoughts without Words" is a short section: sketches with doggerel.
``This Simian World'' is an extended essay on the characteristics that humans share with monkeys, which allow us to dominate the world and determine the use we will make of our mastery. The second half of the essay is heavily anti-religious, which is well-written but not so original; the better part is the first half, imagining how a human race descended from cats or other animals would have been different. ("In literature they would not have begged for happy endings.") As I write that, I don't think I would have found the premise too interesting if it had been described to me in advance, but it is well done, with moments of beauty:
The elephant? Ah! Evolution has had its tragedies, hasn't it, as well as its triumphs, and well should the elephant know it. He had the best chance of all. Wiser even than the lion, or the wisest of apes, his wisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister. Consider his dignity, his poise and skill. He was plastic, too. He had learned to eat many foods and endure many climates. Once, some say, this race explored the globe. Their bones are found everywhere, in South America even; so the elephants' Columbus may have found some road here before ours. They are cosmopolitans, these suave and well-bred beings. They have rich emotional natures, long memories, loyalty; they are steady and sure; and not narrow, not self-absorbed, for they seem interested in everything. What was it, then, that put them out of the race?
Could it have been a quite natural belief that they had already won?
And when they saw that they hadn't, and that the monkey-men were getting ahead, were they too great-minded and decent to exterminate their puny rivals? ...
If we had been as strong as the elephants, we might have been kinder. When great power comes naturally to people, it is used more urbanely. We use it as parvenus do, because that's what we are. The elephant, being born to it, is easy-going, confident, tolerant. He would have been a more humane king.
August 26, 2011
This was a very pleasant light read. These essays were published in the 20s about events taking place in the 1880s and beyond. Intereting little slices of life from the time period. The essays were published in magazines and then later published in 3 or 4 books. I really enjoyed "Life with Father" and "Life with Mother" but did not enjoy "this Simian World". Enjoyable and humourous---but not laugh-out-loud.
March 1, 2015
This is a delightful collection of short recollections of Day's family in the 1890's, horse & buggy days in New York City, each of which makes a nice gently amusing read before bed. A bombastic father, a mother who is a bit of a dither/ditz & who routinely gets the better of her husband, & a pack of red-haired children. The original movie is available for free at Archive.org, I think. Both the book & the movie are definitely classics.
Want to Read
February 2, 2009My book has the first three books mentioned.
May 30, 2011
Mine is the 1943 collection of "God and My Father," "Life with Father," and "Life with Mother."
June 18, 2016
Hilarious. Just Hilarious.
June 24, 2008
A must read...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews