Self-Help for the Hopeless
Categories: Rediscoveries , Staff Picks
A lot of people are good at something, and they like to write how-to books about it. Sometimes the writer sees things differently than you do, and you don't exactly get what you were expecting. A how-to-redecorate-cheaply book advises me to buy a $1,400 chandelier, for example. I had been looking for tips on wrapping old phone books with duct tape to make cute ottomans (or whole sofas, if you have access, say from work, to a lot of phone books and duct tape).
Maybe it's time to take a break from all the earnestness and read some parodies.
Elinor Goulding Smith's 1956 The Complete Book of Absolutely Perfect Housekeeping; an Uproarious Guide for Disorganized Housewives really is uproarious. Her decorating tips, for example, involve stealing art from your friends' houses under the guise of "cleaning it," and she's appropriately sarcastic about the phrase "window treatments" used in place of "curtains."
Some things have changed since 1956 (how many of us have to empty our vacuum-cleaner bags on newspapers now?) but not so much that anyone who's ever lived inside or raised children can't relate.
Donald Odgen Stewart's 1922 Perfect Behavior, a parody of etiquette manuals, seems dated now, perhaps because there are few real etiquette manuals anymore, but it's still very funny.
On the shelf right next to The Complete Book of Absolutely Perfect Housekeeping is the startlingly titled How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious. Charles Merrill Smith, a Methodist minister, is scathing and hilarious in his advice to young ministers; he ranks, for example, the relative desirability of various parishioners (medical specialists get a 7, while general practitioners only get a 6), and advises the minister never to quarrel with the person responsible for Sunday School no matter what heresies are being taught there. (Smith died in 1986 without, alas, reaching the Bishop level.)
Some other how-to parodies:
Trumped: Think Like a Bazillionaire
The Best Case Scenario Book (a parody of the tongue-in-cheek Worst Case Scenario Survival Book series). What happens if Bill Gates rear-ends your car and then asks if he can take care of the situation without involving the police? If the ATM machine suddenly starts spewing out money?
What Color is Your Parody?: A Self-Harm Manual for Job-Hunters & Career Changers.
Not a parody, but sort of in the same oddball-advice league is How Do You Get a Horse Out of the Bathtub?: Profound Answers to Preposterous Questions.
Happy housekeeping!
