The Portable Curmudgeon Compiled and Edited by Jon Winokur is a 299-page cloth-bound hardcover published by Nal Books of New American Library, stated first printing of October 1987. There are no perceivable defects to either the dust jacket or book, which is clean and unmarked with tight, unopened pages. The condition is near-fine.
Book Summary
Do you believe that cynicism is simply common sense? Do sunny smiles make you want to snarl? Do you have the feeling you may answer with something unprintable the next time you hear "have a nice day"? Then you will be in the best of company with the whiplash wits and sardonic savants brought together in The Portable Curmudgeon.
From Aristotle to Frank Zappa, from Tallulah Bankhead to Oscar Wilde, From Woody Allen to Leo Tolstoy, the quotations on these pages run like rapiers through the entire alphabet of annoyances--such eternal and infernal irritants as life, love, sex, children, government, psychoanalysis, and Doris Day. In addition to this wealth of wickedly barbed wit and wisdom, there are full-length profiles of and interviews with the towering world-class curmudgeons of past and present, including H.L. Mencken, W.C. Fields, Calvin Trillin, Fran Lebowitz, Roy Blount, Jr., Dorothy Parker, and Groucho Marx. Added as extra spice to this feast of vexation are dozens of witty anecdotes and numerous caricatures drawn with properly poisonous pens.
