PETER DE VRIES - Speech/Lecture - CD/DVD, LAUGHTER . .

Peter De Vries (February 27, 1910 - September 28, 1993) was an American editor and novelist known for his satiric wit. De Vries was born in Chicago, Illinois of Dutch immigrant parents. He was educated in Dutch Christian Reformed Church schools, graduating from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1931. He supported himself with a number of different jobs, including those of vending machine operator, toffee-apple salesman, radio actor in the 1930s, and as an editor for Poetry magazine from 1938 to 1944. He joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine at the insistence of James Thurber and worked there from 1944 to 1987, writing stories and touching up cartoon captions. Responsible for contributing to the cultural vernacular such witticisms, as "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" and "Deep down, he's shallow," was, according to Kingsley Amis, "the funniest serious writer to be found on either side of the Atlantic." But De Vries's life and work was informed as much by sorrow as by wit, and that dynamic is nowhere better seen than in his classics Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb. First published in 1982 and 1965, respectively, these novels reemerge with their sharp satire and biting pain undiluted by time. In all he published 24 novels, four of which were adapted for Broadway and major motion pictures. He had four children with wife Katinka Loeser; Jon, Derek, Jan, and Emily, who died at the age of 10 of leukemia. This experience provided the inspiration for his 1961 work, The Blood of the Lamb. De Vries received an honorary degree in 1979 from Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA. He died September 28, 1993 in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Novels

Books about Peter De Vries

Peter De Vries and Surrealism by Dan Campion