Groucho Letters

No personage is too big, no nuance too small, no subject too far out for Groucho s spontaneous, hilarious, and ferocious typewriter. He writes to comics, corporations, children, presidents, and even his daughter s boyfriend. Here is Groucho swapping photos with T. S. Eliot ( I had no idea you were so handsome! ); advising his son on courting a rich dame ( Don t come out bluntly and say, How much dough have you got? That wouldn t be the Marxian way ); crisply declining membership in a Hollywood club ( I don t care to belong to any social organization that will accept me as a member ); reacting with utmost composure when informed that he has been made into a verb by James Joyce ( There s no reason why I shouldn t appear in Finnegans Wake . I m certainly as bewildered about life as Joyce was ); responding to a scandal sheet ( If you continue to publish slanderous pieces about me, I shall feel compelled to cancel my subscription ); describing himself to the Lunts ( I eat like a vulture. Unfortunately the resemblance doesn t end there ); and much, much more. That mobile visage, that look of wild amazement, and that weaving cigar are wholly captured, bound but untamed, in The Groucho Letters.