FFB Review: HAIL, HAIL, EUPHORIA! (2010) by Roy Blount, Jr. (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

After recently reviewing THE TIGHTROPE MEN by Desmond Bagley, today Barry Ergang reviews something entirely different with Hail, Hail, Euphoria! by Roy Blount, Jr. Make sure you check out Patti’s blog for the other reading suggestions today.

HAIL, HAIL, EUPHORIA! (2010) by Roy Blount, Jr.

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

I’ve been a Marx Brothers fan for as long as I can remember. Groucho is the first one I saw in early childhood on “You Bet Your Life,” his quiz show which started on radio and later aired on television. My maternal grandmother, who lived with us, preferred listening to radio rather than watching television programs, and I have a vague memory of listening to “You Bet Your Life” on radio with her one evening, then a night or two later watching the same episode on television with my parents.

Eventually I must have seen Harpo (and possibly Chico) guest-starring on TV, as well as some of the brothers’ films. In any event I loved the comedy, even if as a child I didn’t understand the wordplay between Groucho and Chico that I came to love later on.

This brings me to a digressive reminiscence you can read or skip over. Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, there was a Marx Brothers revival, and a local movie theater ran their classics over a period of several weeks. One of my closest friends and I attended several showings. On one of them—I don’t recall which and it doesn’t matter—someone in the audience had brought his very young son. Every time Harpo appeared on the screen, the little boy erupted in laughter and his father tried to shush him. It bothered me. Nobody else in the crowded audience voiced any objections—the child’s laughter was infectious—and I silently wished the father would be the one to shut up. His son, although too young understand the wordplay, loved Harpo’s antics, so why not let him revel in them? I can only hope that when he grew older, the kid came to appreciate the Marx Brothers as I and so many others have.

Which brings me to Hail, Hail, Euphoria! by humorist Roy Blount, Jr. I discovered its existence several months ago, as of this writing, when it was offered in an e-mail I received from one of two e-book sites I subscribe to: Early Bird Books and BookBub. Its subtitle is “Presenting the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, The Greatest War Movie Ever Made.” I’ve never considered it in terms of war movies, but it has not only always been my favorite of the Marx Brothers films, I’ve also long maintained that it is one of the greatest film comedies ever made. So of course I had to have this book, according to the author of which “In 2009 an international panel of critics voted Duck Soup the thirty-seventh greatest film of all time.”

Roy Blount, Jr. goes through the film scene by scene, offering his personal observations and analyses. I found some of his attempts at humor more than a little strained, and some—but not all—of his analyses and efforts at “critical insights” to be confusing and/or pointless meanderings. What really worked for me were passages of biographical information about the Marxes themselves, Duck Soup’s director Leo McCarey, how some of the final screenplay and what wound up on-screen diverged from the original, and the making of the film itself. Here’s an example of a Marxian anecdote:

“Groucho once interrupted a charity tennis match between himself and Charlie Chaplin by spreading out a picnic lunch on the court and eating it as Chaplin fumed. Harpo would pick the pocket of another guest at a garden party, count the money, slip the wallet back into the guest’s pocket, and then bet the guest a hundred dollars he could tell him exactly how much money he was carrying. Chico had to go on the lam sometimes when he owed too much money to the wrong people.”

What worked for me might not work for everyone. Some might find the author’s analyses more penetrating and intelligible than I did. Were I to grade Hail, Hail, Euphoria! according to Internet book sites’ usual one- to five-star rating system, I’d give it a three out of five.

Ultimately, I’ll leave it to Marx Brothers fans to decide for themselves.

© 2016 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work has appeared in a multitude of publications, print and electronic. You can find some of it in a variety of genres in e-book formats at Amazon and Smashwords. 

Storm Damage

While there are reports of damage in the area and across Collin County-- especially over in Wylie--we missed the worst of the dinner time storms. Very high wind, heavy rain, and marble sized hail was the worst of it here with ping pong and far bigger hail to the north and east of here.

Plain and simple--we were lucky.

Plano Hail

Yesterday was one of those days where every few hours the forecast got worse. By late afternoon we had slipped into the "marginal" risk zone of severe weather. Since that often seems to mean that severe weather is definitely coming I was worried. Especially since radar seemed to indicate the storm line was beginning to the west way further out than had been predicted.

By around ten last night I knew we were in trouble for sure as there was one particular nasty storm in the line that was aimed right at us. The same storm had tried to spin up a tornado in north Fort Worth before morphing into a major hail storm. In the picture to the right from one of the local radars, the light pink area is hail to the size of golf balls. Our apartment is located just a few miles north of where it says Shepton. The Shepton deal refers to Shpeton High School where both the boys went to school.

I moved my car under the carport into the empty parking spot for the vacant apartment next door and hoped for the best. Then a few minutes later the hail began smashing down. It quickly escalated to ping pong and golf ball sized hail that tore up the few plants on the porch and broke the edges of the pots. Fortunately, we were not hit with the 50 plus mph winds that were seen elsewhere in the area. That meant that a lot of the hail came down straight or on a slight angle and missed the apartment windows and did not go under the carport.

Local media is full of images this morning showing what hail can do when it is coupled with wind and blasted into homes and cars. We got lucky. The apartment windows held despite being hit repeatedly in cringe worthy impacts and the cars seem to be okay.

Our nerves are fried. The next round of storms is supposed to be on Ester Sunday which traditionally can be a very rough day weather wise.