...so praised Lawrence Ferlinghetti of "I am Thinking of My Darling", adding "to read it is a little like having a 1940's New York City taxicab in your living room." Why this book hasn't become a popular classic is a mystery to me.

In his 1943 novel, McHugh draws a vivid portrait of sophisticated, urbane city unraveled by a mysterious disease. This epidemic attacks inhibitions: Friends, co-workers, even strangers drop spontaneously hug, celebrate, leave their jobs to pursue long-abandoned fantasies, and have guilt-free and always-safe sex. It's like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in reverse--instead of producing automatons, the intruder recovers your humanity, releases the repressed id, and generally induces a madcap euphoria.

So, what's the problem? If you're protagonist Jim Rowan (a minor planning commissioner soon to become Mayor after the latter runs off to a model train convention), the problems are potentially enormous--maybe the trains don't have to run on time, but they do have to run. As do the hospitals, police department, fire stations, transportations systems, and other essential human services. It also doesn't help when your spouse catches the virus and runs amok in the city.

Part of the genius here is McHugh's mixing of the silly and the sexy with the practical and scientific. There are intelligent discussions of psychiatry, epidemiology, city planning, and philosophy placed with discretion amidst the delirium. And, although it inhabits a particular American past, the book's slightly cautionary hedonism has an admirable egalitarian stance: Men and women share in the equal employment of desire.

This would have made a great movie, with the potential to rival the most intelligent of the screwball comedies. So as you read it, I suggest you imagine your own "movie," casting Jimmy Stewart or Fonda or Grant; Lauren Bacall or Eve Arden, Rosalind Russell or Jean Harlow. Set it in the New York of the Ritz, the Colony, and Sardi's, fill it with the sassy repartee of Bogart and Bacall--or Nick and Nora Charles-- and please, film it in sharp, shimmering black and white: Because they don't make books--or movies--like this anymore!

It's not a classic, it's not even well known enough to have a cult following, but Vincent McHugh's "I am Thinking of My Darling" is about as good a comedic novel as ever has been written. Few books achieve the same level of graceful humor that distinguishes the old Hollywood screwball films of the thirties and forties, but this is one of the few that does. A disease infects the population of New York city; it results in the complete loss of one's inhibitions. People go wild in the streets, doing whatever they want. Thousands leave their jobs and spouses; sexual sprees and non-stop partying are the norm. The novel follows the adventures of the hastily installed mayor, who must impose order to the chaos, even while catching the virus himself. He spends the novel trying to track down his wife, at the same time sexual obliging about half a dozen women, including his beautiful black maid (in a novel written in the forties!). McHugh crams his narrative with a wealth of quirky details, and manages to even sneak in some pathos. I read it with a continual smile on my face. Simply a great book.