Books: Peach-Fuzz Bluebeard

I WAS A TEEN-AGE DWARF (204 pp.) —Max Shulman—Bernard Geis ($3.50).

Ten years ago, when Doubleday published three early Max Shulman novels in a single volume, the editors boasted: “Although these three books were written by Shulman at the age of eight, critics have pointed out that they show the insight and penetration of a man of nine.” Now Humorist Shulman, 40, has advanced into the double-digit years. But his characters still uniformly resemble the Spock troops.

The teenage, 5-ft. 2-in. “dwarf” of this book first saw hard covers years ago in Shulman’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. A sort of peach-fuzz Bluebeard. Dobie consumes much of his one-track energyin the chase after females, and his main problem remains that of making himself acceptable to girls with developing measurements. Admits Dobie: “It used to make me pretty jumpy when a girl started getting her bust.” Most of the young ladies live next door in a bad real estate buy that happens to be the only flat-roofed house in Dobie’s part of Connecticut. As the gulls fly in from the Sound to rain clams on the roof, the families keep moving out, and turnover produces such attractions as Red Knees Baker, Rotten Girl Spencer, and Elizabeth Barrett Schultz.

The most alluring is Red Knees, who has a “massive brain” and knows “the kings of England and all kinds of scam like that.” She charges. Dobie for help with his homework, gets 7¢ a sentence for a parse job, 10¢ apiece for the provinces of Canada, 80¢ to tell who fought in the Hundred Years’ War. Her earnings buy forbidden lingerie. “Some day I will be allowed to wear black lace underwear,” Red Knees explains, “and when that day comes, buster, I mean to be ready.”

Dobie methodically woos her and the others (15 others) with slang of every vintage—words and phrases which, in the imagination of Author Shulman, ricochet along high school corridors in 1959. Dobie starts out safely enough, tells what “bugs” him, what’s “a gasser,” who’s “kooky” and “all that jazz.” But in no time at all, the gassers have become “marvy,” the jazz is “jive,” and people start “yacking away.” An echo from the past informs everyone to “stay loose.” Another, from the Dark Ages, adds: “In a pig’s eye!”

When her slip finally comes in, there’s no telling what Red Knees Baker is up to, for Dobie has long since gone off to a state university, where a coed named Chloe (“what a great heart beat beneath that flat chest”) mercifully ends the story by marrying him. All of which is one more example of what readers have known since Barefoot Boy with Cheek: Humorist Max Shulman is a sort of Seventh Avenue A. A. Milne. He has a corner on pooh.

Author Shulman’s new book is the first offering of Bernard Geis Associates, which claims to have hit upon “a new concept of book publishing and book merchandising.” It may not be new, but it is mighty neat. To promote his Dwarf, Author Shulman recently made TV guest appearances on Ralph Edwards’ Truth or Consequences and Art Linkletter’s Houseparty, is soon expected on What’s My Line? Next month Dobie Gillis becomes the hero of a CBS-TV series, and billowing ads will praise Dwarf in Esquire, Coronet, and probably in Look. By a funny coincidence, the following are among the partners in Bernard Geis Associates: Houseparty’s Art Linkletter (10%);Truth or Consequences’ Ralph Edwards (10%); What’s My Line? Producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman (10%); Esquire and Coronet publisher Esquire, Inc. (10%); Look publisher Cowles Magazines, Inc. (10%).

The man who thought up this remainder-proof scheme is Art Linkletter, and the man who operates it is Linkletter’s old friend Bernard Geis, 49, a sharp promoter who knows how to judge a buck by its coverage. Berney Geis was on the original staff of Esquire, also worked as co-editor of Coronet before moving into the book business with Grosset & Dunlap in 1945. After a private venture flopped, he went to Prentice-Hall, quit last year when Linkletter came to him.

Citing a Gallup poll, which suggested that only 17% of Americans regularly read books, Geis says that Bernard Geis Associates will be “doing America a great service by harnessing TV’s power” to increase the amount of reading in the U.S. Geis’s fall selections: a new book on kids by Partner Linkletter, an autobiography by Groucho Marx (another partner), and Dear Teen-Ager by Syndicated Lovelornist Abigail Van Buren. As for Shulman’s Dwarf, Geis Associates is on the third printing, may harvest as many as 60,000 prepublication orders.